The 7 Biggest Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid

With Facebook allowing its users to advertise to anyone for as little as a dollar, it’s never been a better time to master this advertising channel. Plus, with the in depth Facebook ad targeting options available with FB ads, you can get your marketing message to reach absolutely anyone.

However, if you are unfamiliar with how FB advertising works, you can make some very costly mistakes. The 7 most common Facebook campaign mistakes to avoid are:

Mistake 1: Putting together one-hit wonder FB ads

When putting together a Facebook campaign, it is absolutely critical you run a variety of FB ads and test every aspect of the ad. Each Facebook ad includes a headline, description, image and call to action. By just launching one ad, you are minimizing your chances of success considerably. You are giving yourself only one opportunity to succeed.

Instead, run multiple FB ads and monitor what performs better. For example, run 4 exact same ads but try different headlines. After a day or so, you’ll notice that one headline performs better than the other ones.

Then, once you’ve found your winning headline, run another 4 exact same ads with the winning headline and try different images. Once you run all the ads, you will be able to put together a killer Facebook campaign, as you will know which headline, image, description and call to action performs better.

There are many other things you can test, such as the Facebook ad targeting options. You can test countries, age groups, gender, marital status etc…

For example, you can run an ad targeting Canada and another ad targeting Australia to check what gets you the best results.

You can even test your ad placement. Try running your ad on mobile phones, right hand side or in people’s newsfeed to see what works best for you.

Mistake 2: Broad Facebook ad targeting

Although Facebook advertising is a numbers game, the more people see your ad, the more likely you are to experience returns, this can end up being very costly and can lower your profit margins considerably. You see, the key with Facebook advertising is targeting a large group of people who have similar demographics, and speaking directly to this demographic group.

For example, should you be selling a weight loss product, you might be tempted to target pretty much anyone since everyone at some stage in their life will want to lose weight. However, you wouldn’t talk the same way to a male executive as you would to a stay at home parent for example. This is why when targeting on Facebook, choose a specific group of people and make your ad speak to them directly.

Let’s say you want to sell a food supplement for weight loss which works very well for busy people who don’t have time to exercise as well as fitness trainers who want to accelerate their results. If that’s the case, create a specific ad calling out all fitness trainers and another completely different ad calling out busy people who don’t have time to exercise. The more your ad speaks directly to a specific group of people and solves their specific problem, the more successful your Facebook advertising will be.

Mistake 3: Not matching the ad with the landing page

Another common mistake Facebook advertisers make is not matching the marketing message and feel of the ad with the landing page. In other words, the image, the description, the colours and the marketing message in the ad is incongruent with the landing page.

Let’s take this ad for example.

After clicking on the “sign up” tab, you get redirected to the landing page below, which matches directly the feel and the marketing message on the ad:

By not matching the message and feel of the ad with the landing page will cause visitors to leave the page without taking any action.

Mistake 4: Expecting to make sales from cold traffic

Another critical mistake Facebook advertisers make is expecting to make sales straight from their first ad. Although this can happen, it is very rare. People who have never come across your business, your brand or your products in general won’t part with their money straight away regardless of how good your offer is.

I always say:

“Cold traffic never buys”

Why? Because in order to get anyone to buy anything, they need to know you, like you and trust you. That’s how sales are closed. So in order to turn “cold traffic” (in other words, people who don’t know you) to “warm traffic” (in other words, people who know you, like you and trust you), you need to offer them value for free several times.

You can do this by advertising free blog posts, free videos, free tutorials, etc… without asking for anything in return. This will enable the people you’re advertising to, build a positive connection with you, so next time you do sell something, they are much more likely to buy.

Mistake 5: Not micro managing your FB advertising

One of the trickiest aspects a Facebook advertiser needs to tackle is “ad fatigue”. Ad fatigue is when your audience has seen your ad so many times, they don’t notice it anymore. The ad has become way too familiar to them, and stops grabbing their attention. What this means, is that you can experience great results from an ad and then that same ad that brought you all the traffic and leads you were hoping for, stops performing.

This is why, if you run FB advertising, it is critical you micro manage each ad. It is very important you closely monitor the performance of each ad daily, stop running the under-performing ads, invest more money in the ones that are performing the best and most importantly, rotate the images of the ads that used to be performing well, to combat ad fatigue.

Mistake 6: Not using social proof

One of the great advantages of social media, is the ability to benefit from social proof through likes, shares and comments. In other words, the more people engage with your ad by liking, sharing or commenting on your newsfeed ad, the more likely more people are going to do the same, because people follow other people’s actions.

So if you want your FB advertising to really stand out and generate lots of buzz, make sure it has lots of social proof in the first place. One trick we use to gather social proof for a Facebook campaign is advertising the ad to less expensive countries first, just to boost engagement. Then, we change the targeting to the countries and people we’re really after.

Mistake 7: Not using retargeting

Retargeting is advertising to people who have already performed a previous internet action. For example, if someone has already clicked on your ad but not taken any action after that, (for example they didn’t purchase or submit their details), you can keep on advertising to them until they do.

The main benefit of retargeting is generating better conversions because the people you are targeting with your ads have already expressed an interest in your offers. By not using retargeting, you will spend a lot of money showing your ads to people who haven’t prequalified themselves.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post on The 7 Biggest Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid. Remember to leave a comment below and subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the latest social media tips straight to your inbox.

About the Author

Corinna Essa

Corinna Essa is known internationally as the go-to person when it comes to social media marketing.

Corinna owns a social media marketing company helping businesses around the world leverage the power of social media without doing any of the legwork. Her company has been featured in many media outlets including Sky Business news, Working Women magazine, Ymagazine, Tasmanian Times, Channel 7 and 101fm.

Corinna is also the author of 2 bestselling books “Money On Demand – The 16 Fastest Ways to Becoming a Millionaire Online” and “Reach: The SECRETS to converting your social media audience into your network marketing downline fast”