There is no denying the fact that Meta (formerly Facebook) is the largest social media platform, thus allowing businesses to get in touch with nearly 2.8 billion monthly active users. With more than 6 million active advertisers on Facebook, businesses of all sizes would wish to leverage the power of Facebook Advertising to achieve their targeting goals. With constant changes in digital marketing trends, social media marketing is about keeping in touch with the relevant audience and maximizing your advertising goals. With the metaverse concept becoming more dominant, you need to understand how Meta(Facebook) will impact digital marketing and avoid the common mistakes to increase your Facebook Ads ROI.
Consistency is the key in social media marketing. Social media marketing uses social media platforms to connect with your target audience. It is a form of online marketing which is different from traditional marketing, and the users can get in touch with your business just at the ease of a fingertip. It helps you to get in touch with a huge target audience. It allows you to build brand awareness, increase engagement rate, etc. so that visitors can take the intended action after reaching the landing page. In the technological world, constant changes are happening on social media platforms. To build brand loyalty and increase online sales, you need to write great content, optimize images accordingly and include short, engaging videos, etc.
What is Facebook Advertising?
Facebook is the most popular social media platform to date. It provides you with the opportunity to showcase your product or services to a wide range of audiences and promote your business. You can run various Facebook Ads and target the relevant audience to achieve your marketing goals. It is a place where users connect with family and friends. So, there are high chances that if a particular user is satisfied with your product or services, they will promote it to their near & dear ones, thus helping in peer-to-peer marketing.
Facebook Ads are a type of PPC ad, and you need to be very sure about how much you are willing to spend on a particular ad. In the Facebook Ad Manager tool, you need to define a specific Facebook Ad cost that you wish to pay. No one is immune to making mistakes, and more so on social media platforms that are so dynamic.
You need to set up ad campaigns in the Facebook Ad Manager tool and define the ad type you wish to run. Since Facebook advertising is paid, even the slightest Facebook Ad mistake could leave to draining your ad budget. It may even lead to losing potential customers as they may not find the ad relevant and leave the landing page without taking any intended action. As the organic reach on Facebook is declining and the impressions increasing, you need to perform a complete PPC audit to improve the Facebook conversion rate.
Facebook Ads - mistakes to avoid
Like all aspects of digital marketing, Facebook advertising is ever-changing. To keep the target audience engaged with the ad, you need to take the necessary steps in the Facebook Ad Manager tool like adding high-quality images, using relevant call-to-action, etc. With so many businesses using Facebook advertising, you need to choose the appropriate ad type, ad format, etc., so that the relevant audience is compelled to click on it. Let's see some of the Facebook Ad mistakes you can avoid in the Facebook Ad account so that your ad budget is not wasted.
1. Lack of clear objectives - The first and most important Facebook mistake to avoid is not being sure about Facebook advertising objectives. You should have a clear PPC strategy to make the most of your Facebook advertising cost. The goals should be clear about why you are advertising to make the most of it. The objectives should be clearly measurable, and this could be done using the different KPIs to see how your Facebook Ad is performing. Facebook Ads can have goals such as:
• Increasing traffic to your landing page
• Highlighting particular landing pages to increase lead generation
• Increasing sales
• Increasing page likes on your social media posts
• Increasing video views
• Increasing app installs
Having a clear objective before the start of the ad campaign would help you monitor the ad’s performance and then take the necessary steps to optimize the ad performance. To develop a clear Facebook advertising objective, you can consider some of the below mentioned points:
a. Define goals as a group - You can work on defining goals as a group, when setting ad campaigns in the Facebook Ads account. The ad campaigns should be clearly defined and the ad copies, ad descriptions, etc. should be clearly defined.
b. Consider an action plan - Defining goals is essential and another point to focus is having an action plan & strategy to achieve the set goals. The action plan may include ad scheduling, performing keyword research, PPC audit, etc.
c. Analyze KPIs - With multiple KPIs to measure, you need to be clear of the most important PPC metrics that affect your business and work on optimizing them. The KPIs may include average click-through rate, impression share, cost-per-click, quality-score, etc.
2. Ad type - Facebook offers different ad formats to choose from that best suit your business. You need to be crystal clear about the kind of audience you are targeting so that your time and ad budget do not get wasted on the inappropriate ad type. Ad types include image ads, video ads, carousel ads, instant experience ads, collection ads, messenger ads, link ads, lead ads, etc.
Along with these Facebook Ad options, there are also different ways you can place your ads so that the users can get in touch with your business 24/7 across the globe. You can place ads on:
• Desktop
• Mobile or
• Right-hand sidebar
• To ensure the success of your Facebook Ad campaign, it is crucial to figure out the ad type that would work best with your objective. Depending on your ad objectives, there are specific ways you display your ads:
• Lead ads (for mobile): This would use a pre-populated form to get the information of the user. Lead ads are used to find the people who may be interested in your product or services and collect information from them such as name, address, contact number, etc. With lead ads, you can do market research about your target audience and what changes will be done in PPC strategy by adding a feedback section.
• Link ads - This ad type has a link directing to the relevant landing page. This link would be in the form of a call-to-action prompt. These prompts can be sign up, learn more, buy Now, etc.
3. Audience segmentation - There are millions of users on this social media platform. It would help if you worked on audience segmentation to make the relevant audience click on the correct ad type. This is another Facebook Ad mistake you need to keep in mind your PPC strategy to avoid any ad fatigue. With so many businesses using Facebook Ads to reach the target audience, you cannot drain your ad budget on irrelevant clicks. For this, you need to define your ad objectives when setting your ad campaign. Facebook has inbuilt features that allow you to target the correct demographic of people. Some of the significant demographics to target are defined below:
• Location - Location targeting is one of the essential features provided by Facebook Ads. It would be best to target the audience depending on factors like country, state, zip code, etc. It is also necessary to include in your ad campaign as Facebook has visitors across the globe, and what suits the visitors at one corner of the world may not be beneficial to users at other places. Facebook Ads can even be streamlined further to target people in a particular area.
• Demographics - This demographic includes considering users based on age, gender, marital status, etc. It would help you to show ads that are appealing to the relevant audience, thus increasing the chances of improving the Facebook conversion rate.
• Interests - Another essential factor to consider is to target the users based on interests. When defining the target market, you need to segment the audiences based on interests so that users with similar interests click on the ad. It can be understood with the fact that there are chances that people who love sports have different interests as compared to people who like shopping.
• Engagement - To get more users to click on Facebook Ad and reach your landing page, this is a handy way to get your content across to users who have a high chance of taking the intended action. Segmenting your Facebook Ads on engagement means you can target people who have recently liked, commented, or followed your post on social media.
• Behavior - Facebook Ads has a targeting tool called Facebook Pixel. This pixel tracks the behavior of a user and displays ads accordingly. It is a very effective way to target your ads. For instance, say someone recently visited your landing page, and then Facebook shows them ads related to your landing page. You can even consider performing remarketing to retarget the users. This time you can consider working on a buyer persona so that the visitor gets converted into a customer.
4. Understand nuances of budget control - It is one of the most essential Facebook Ad mistakes you need to consider, as all advertising efforts revolve around the ad budget. When it comes to bid adjustment, Facebook provides you with a wide range of options in the digital advertising realm. These different options allow you to spend a specified ad budget, thus saving money for your ad campaigns. There are myths regarding PPC advertising that small businesses cannot benefit from a small ad budget. The truth is, with a proper PPC advertising strategy, you can improve the Facebook conversion rate and achieve the desired business ROI.
For most ad types, you can spend a minimum budget per day in the range of $1 to $5. You can even adjust the bid amount to have the maximum advantage of Facebook advertising cost. Facebook Ads have a feature of creating an account spending limit for overall ad campaigns, thus saving ad budget. Depending on your Facebook advertising cost, you can even set daily or lifetime budgets. A daily budget helps analyze the ad budget daily and monitor the Facebook conversion rate. On the other hand, the Lifetime budget informs Facebook about how much you are willing to spend over the entire runtime of your campaign.
5. Not creating enticing content - You should focus on writing great content that keeps the visitor's interest engaged with the Facebook Ad. It is another Facebook Ad mistake that you need to avoid in the Facebook Ad manager tool. You should focus on writing content that resonates so that the visitor takes the intended action after reaching the landing page.
The audiences won’t click on Facebook Ads that do not match the visitor's interests. You need to write engaging content that entices the customer to click on it. You need to figure out on writing the content for image ads, text ads, etc. You should consider writing ads designed for carousel ads, lead ads, etc., so that the visitor takes the necessary steps to reach the landing page and take the intended action.
Eye-catching content helps in increasing traffic to the landing page and creates an urgency to convert. With a proper PPC audit, you can figure out the essential marketing tactics with a better click-through rate and leverage buyer persona to have maximum Facebook advertising benefits. You should also consider writing content based on the ad type you wish to advertise.
6. Irrelevant landing pages - When you have created an engaging Facebook Ad, it is only half of the task done as you also need to consider where your ad takes users after they click on it. After the visitor clicks on the Facebook Ad, they reach the landing page where all your ad description is shown to the user.
So, you need to write excellent product page descriptions that keep the user's interest engaged.
You need to make sure that the ad is relevant to the content on the landing page so that the user does not leave the page. You can run special offers, discounts, etc. so that the user feels that they do not miss out on opportunities if the intended action is not taken. While Facebook will advertise the content on the user’s news feed, the landing page should ensure that the user takes the intended action and increases sales for your business.
7. Skipping A/B test - You have various ad types and ad formats that you include to set up ads in the Facebook Ads manager tool. So, you need to perform an A/B test for ad campaigns to figure out what ad content is most engaging. You need to avoid another critical Facebook Ad mistake, i.e., not performing the A/B test.
This A/B testing helps you experiment with different ad campaign versions to realize which works best. It would help you analyze what version of your ad drives more traffic to the landing page, has better clicks on the ad, improved conversion rate, etc. You can test multiple ad types with different ad formats, images, text, etc. Facebook will send different variations of an ad to the target audience, and you need to analyze which ad campaign performs better.
8. Optimizing ads for all devices - Another critical point to focus on is optimizing the ads for various devices. Facebook is used by people across multiple devices. So, you need to optimize your Facebook Ads for multiple devices so that the relevant audience can reach your landing page.
Facebook is a social media platform with users who primarily interact with friends, family, etc. They access the platform across desktop and mobile devices, so you also need to optimize your Facebook Ads for mobile devices. With the launch of mobile-first indexing, you also need to optimize your Facebook Ads for mobile devices so that none of your target audience is left untouched. Social media marketing success is synonymous with strong visuals, and you need to ensure that you optimize images for various devices. You need to use the appropriate image and work on proper ad placement so that the relevant user makes a click.
Round off
It’s not surprising that businesses have been flocking to social media platforms to accomplish their advertising goals like running YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc. Facebook has the most prominent target audience of all the social media platforms, and with a proper PPC campaign analysis, you can improve the Facebook conversion rate. Facebook advertising provides you with the opportunity to reach this wide range of audiences. As Facebook Advertising cost varies for all businesses, you need to improve the PPC campaign performance to increase traffic to the landing page. In the Facebook Ad account, if you feel that running Facebook Ads with the new metaverse concept in demand will be troublesome, then getting in touch with a digital marketing company can be of great help. They have expertise in lead generation, performing remarketing, search ads, video ads, email marketing, competition analysis, etc. and deliver tangible results for your business.
References:
• 7 budget-wasting Facebook Ad mistakes (+ how to avoid them)
• 5 common Facebook Advertising mistakes to avoid