Samson Adepoju — May 1, 2017 Making mistakes with Facebook ads for small businesses isn’t uncommon; in fact, it can be a good thing. With some tips, you can leapfrog some of these mistakes and if you’ve already made some of them, don’t worry and keep reading, it’s time to bounce back.
One big mistake people make is to think that there is one perfect way of doing things. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s no wrong way or right way, to a certain extent. As long as your focus remains on how to make an offer that will have meaning to your target audience in order to get them to take an action like visiting your website, signing up for your email list or buying. You should always look to ease their pain points and challenges. And if you don’t see the results you were after, don’t panic. So what if your Facebook ad was a flop?
Maybe your message was off target or off topic. Just try something new the next time, that should be your mindset. Experimentation is very important, so play around a bit. It will help you get closer to what works for your business. And it can be fun also. Stop thinking that something is wrong with your ads, that you’re not targeting correctly, or not setting them up right, when it could just be your topic not resonating with your audience. They’re not that excited enough to actually hand over their name and email. So all you need to do is go back to the drawing board and try something else.
Another mistake people make is choosing the wrong objective. The objective is very critical. Name your campaign and pick the right objectives at the campaign level and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache. As I said, there is no set right way when it comes to choosing your objective either but you definitely want to choose the objective that most aligns with what the goal of your campaign. What I mean by that is if you’re looking to get people to register on your website, there is an objective called increase conversions on your website and those conversions would be great if you are trying to get people to register for a webinar or opt in for your service or download something. In such a case, your objective is increased conversions because when you choose that objective, you’re telling Facebook’s algorithm, show my ad to as many people within the target audience and to people who are most likely to take this action, converting on your website.
Facebook’s algorithm has all this data about its users so it knows the tendency of people. Why not let the algorithm do all the heavy lifting? People get mixed up on this and say, but I’m running a video ad so shouldn’t my objective be video views? Well if you are running a video ad and your goal is to get people to register or to opt in for something then use the increase conversions as your objective. Unless your goal is to simply get as many eyeballs or more of an awareness play for branding purposes and you don’t really care what action people take, then sure, video views is the one you want to choose.
Some people say it’s better to test the same ad over and over again without creating a new one because you don’t want to lose the social signals like the likes and the shares on that ad, which is true but there’s nothing wrong with creating a new ad when you are testing. Go ahead and create a new campaign for each target audience when you test an image or ad copy.
And you don’t have to create new campaigns because Facebook’s algorithm is set up to have you put multiple ads within an ad set so you can test three different ads against your audience and all three ads will be within the same ad set. That’s a good way to see what works and what doesn’t.
Something else people do is post an ad in the morning and then can’t seem to tear themselves away from the ad manager. It’s addictive, I know. But you need to give the Facebook algorithm some time to work for you and so what I like to say is let your ads run for at least 72 hours before you go making any changes to your assets because you have to give the algorithm time to get your ads into the overall algorithm in order to start delivering for you.
Should you get the urge to change an ad while the ad is running, say for example change out the headline to test a new headline, stop yourself. If you make changes midway, it messes with the algorithm. Give it enough time to get into Facebook’s algorithm to start delivering before you start making changes. I would say 40 hours minimum but 72 hours is even better, around that three-day mark.
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