The frequency with which Facebook has been making changes to its algorithm is equivalent to the number of times two-year old throws tantrums.

With the number of advertisers growing daily on the platform the fight for Facebook ‘real estate’ is for real. As a Facebook ads marketer, I get an opportunity to audit many Facebook Ad accounts, every day. Unfortunately, most of the accounts have similar sort of issues. So, if you’ve burnt dollars, running Facebook ads and have come to the conclusion that they don’t really work for you, then you might have made some or all of these mistakes listed below:

i) Facebook Pixel not installed:

This one tops the list. So, if you’ve just been boosting a post because Facebook said, ‘spend $7 and reach 26,000 people’. Chances are you are left wondering, why your ads are not working? The probability is your website or landing page, doesn’t have pixel installed or set-up correctly or being exploited to the fullest. Do you need Facebook pixel? Yes! Of course, even if you are not advertising on Facebook immediately.
So, what is Facebook pixel?
It’s a snippet code unique to an ad account. It’s supposed to be placed on the header of every page of a website. The Facebook pixel collects data of the visitors, the pages the visitors are spending time on, the actions they are taking.
This helps in
• Showing your ads to the right audiences
• Build advertising audiences
• Unlock additional Facebook advertising tools
Read more about it here

ii) No strategy:

Facebook ads are a long -time investment. If you are just boosting a post or doing couple of ads promoting an event and expect to make millions, then you’ll be disappointed. Facebook ads like most online marketing channels are all about creating brand awareness, engagement, consideration and finally a sale or lead. So, before randomly putting ads together, get that strategy, in place.

Choosing the wrong campaign objective is third in the list: Facebook optimizes a campaign for the objective that is chosen. For instance, if you are after sales or leads then choose Conversion as an objective. If you are after reach, then choose that objective. This is how we choose an ad objective at Digital Street

Think of the end goal and then decide. That’s why getting the strategy right is important. What stage of funnel are you at? What is the goal of that stage? This will help you decide the objective.

iii) Targeting: Facebook gives us the opportunity to choose target audiences based on interests, behaviours and most importantly to target our previous website visitors, email subscribers, people who have engaged with our posts and ads. These are known as custom audiences. There’s more we can also target lookalike audiences. This means people like our target group. Therefore, it’s important for an advertiser to keep testing out audiences and find out the right target group for their business. Audience personas, therefore play a significant role.

iv)  Landing page: There’s no consistency between your ad and landing page. There are a few best landing page practices that Facebook likes us to follow. Ideally, have

a) the visual on the landing page to be same as the visual on your Facebook ad

b) the headline on the landing page to be the same as the headline on your  ad

V) Ecommerce stores U/X experience: We often have clients approaching us to get them overnight sales on an e-commerce store, that has hardly ever had any sales. Facebook ads are not a magic pill. Like any other form of advertising, the consumer needs to engage with the brand and trust it. E-commerce stores also need to have an amazing U/X experience for the consumer. Often the U/X experience is so bad that the end consumer leaves the website without making a purchase. Here are some tips on how to get better conversions through for an e-commerce store.

Vi)Retargeting: This is the secret sauce to making Facebook ads work. Have you ever visited a website, wanting to make a purchase but then left- as life got in the way. However, if that website followed you on Facebook, and reminded you to make that purchase, then remember, you are being RETARGETED. People get busy, lazy or whatever, and need to be reminded to ‘come back to complete that order’. About 70 percent sales happen at the retargeting stage. If you are not, retargeting you are leaving money (lots of it) on the table.

Facebook is all about user engagement and rightly so. For if you don’t have users, you don’t have people to advertise to. Beyond everything Facebook gives preference to user engagement- whether it’s the content or ads. The more engaging content we post, the better the user experience, the better the reach!

Wanting to train your team or need support to run those ads, book a call here