Facebook can be a powerful way to target potential and current customers, track the ROI of your campaigns down to the penny, and grow your business’ influence. Despite this, brands are making the same few mistakes over and over again when it comes to their Facebook advertising.
Here are five of the most common reasons campaigns fail and how to avoid them.
1. Poor targeting
There is no excuse for poor targeting, as Facebook makes it easy to narrow down your target audience by age, gender and interests, so you can literally tailor your promotion to only reach those who are actually interested in what you have to offer.
2. You’re not noticeable
Your advert is one of hundreds of messages on the viewer’s screen and they will skim over most of the content until something catches their attention. You therefore need to make sure that it’s your advert they’re looking at. Your ad needs a clear image under an attention-grabbing headline, accompanied by engaging copy. Keep the copy short so Facebook doesn’t truncate it, and use a relevant image that is noticeable in the mini right-hand images.
3. Not identifying yourself
In addition to being noticeable, you need to make sure you identify yourself in your advert. It sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how often brands forget to mention the company they’re promoting. Vague adverts scream ‘spam’ to the viewer and will harm your results.
4. Posting Poor-Quality Content
If you’re going to have a brand page, you’ll need to keep it active with content. Think about the kind of content that would be useful to people who like your page. Don’t just fill it with promotional posts or people will quickly unlike you.
Also, make sure you ask people to engage with your content, as when someone interacts with your post, this increases the likelihood that your content will show up on their News Feed in the future.
5. Not Tracking Your Conversions
When you buy advertising on Facebook, you can tell it what the objective of the ad is. It might be to direct purchases from your web site, or subscribers to your e-newsletter. Facebook lets you track these conversions and report how many people did what you wanted them to do. With a little bit of effort, you can even tell Facebook what each conversion is worth and it’ll calculate the return-on-investment for you.
