5 Common Facebook Ad Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

5 Facebook Ad Mistakes and How to Fix Them

In this digital age Facebook advertising is a must have for small businesses looking to reach a wider audience. With over 2.8 billion monthly active users Facebook is the biggest platform to connect with potential customers. But many small business owners struggle to get the results they want from their Facebook ads.

This post covers 5 common Facebook ad mistakes and how to avoid them. Follow these tips and you’ll improve your ad performance and get more from your ad spend.

Having The Wrong Campaign Objective

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is choosing the wrong campaign objective. Facebook has 11 campaign objectives, each for a specific goal. Choosing the wrong one will waste your budget and underperform your campaigns.

How to Fix This: Define your campaign goals before you set up your ad. Understand what each campaign objective means on Facebook and align your objective with your overall marketing strategy.

For example:

If you want to drive website traffic select the "Traffic" objective. If you want to generate leads choose the "Lead Generation" objective.

Choosing the right objective means Facebook will deliver your ad to the people most likely to take your desired action, making your campaign more successful overall.

Not Installing and Using the Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel is a powerful tool that tracks user behaviour on your website and optimises ad performance. But many small businesses either don’t install it or don’t use it to its full potential.

How to Fix This: Install the Facebook Pixel on your website as soon as possible. Set up custom conversions to track specific actions (e.g. purchases, form submissions). Use Pixel data to create Custom Audiences and retargeting campaigns.

By using the Pixel you’ll get insights into how users are interacting with your website. This data will allow you to create highly targeted campaigns and get better performance and more from your ad spend.

Facebook has its own section on how to set up Facebook Pixel. 

Relying too much on the "Boost Post" Button

The "Boost Post" button might seem like an easy and quick way to promote your content but it often delivers worse results than actually optimising the post. This is because it has limited targeting options and no advanced features of the Facebook Ads Manager.

How to Fix This: Set up a Facebook Business Manager account. Use the Ads Manager to create and manage your campaigns. Use advanced targeting options and more ad formats.

The Ads Manager gives you more control, better budgeting and more ad formats for your small business. So you can create campaigns that are not only effective but also cost-effective.

Targeting the wrong audience or using the wrong audience size

Audience targeting is a key part of successful Facebook advertising. But many small businesses either cast too wide a net or too narrow a net and both will harm your ad performance.

How to Fix This: Get to know your ideal customer profile. Use a combination of targeting options, interests, behaviours and demographics. Test different audience sizes to see what works. Create Custom Audiences from your existing customer data. Build Lookalike Audiences to expand to similar potential customers. It’s all about testing and seeing what works for you, see what works best for your business. 

As a general rule of thumb, an audience size of 500,000 to 2 million is ideal for small businesses. But this will depend on your industry, campaign objective and budget.

Not matching Ad Creative and Landing Pages

While great ad creative is important many small businesses forget to match their ads to their landing pages. Lack of consistency will confuse potential customers and harm your conversion rates.

How to Fix This: Make sure your ad creative matches your overall brand and messaging. Design landing pages that match the look, feel and offers in your ads. Keep consistency in colours, fonts and imagery across ads and landing pages. Have prominent and clear calls-to-action (CTAs) on both ads and landing pages.

This consistency will build trust, improve user experience and boost conversion rates so you get the most from your ad spend.

Bonus Tip: Continuous Monitoring and Optimisation

Not a mistake but many small businesses have a "set it and forget it" approach to their Facebook ads. Not monitoring and refining their campaigns will lead to declining performance over time, it’s not a one and done deal, you have to continuously refine and better your ads. 

How to Improve Your Facebook Ad Management: 

Review key performance metrics regularly like CTR and conversion rate. A/B Test on different ad creative, copy and targeting options. Adjust budget based on data. Stay up to date with Facebook's latest features and best practices. 

Facebook makes it easy to keep up to date with their best practices, all you have to do is go onto their website and just do the research. 

If you feel as though this is too much time and effort for your business and want someone to do it for you, book a call with us. Conquer The Internet is always ready to help take your business to the next level not only in marketing but also in getting your business where it needs to be.

Book a call with our Founder Matt, we promise not to use any sales jargon, just a friendly chat to see if we can help you. 

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