7 Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid In 2021

Are you spending tons on Facebook Ads hoping to generate lots of leads but methinks you just flushed your ad budget down the drain with little to zero conversions?

In this post, you’ll discover the Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes . Luckily, they are simple to fix.

It’s a well-known fact that Facebook is one of the largest and most powerful advertising platforms available to businesses of all kinds to leverage in hitting their target audience.

However, as a self-made entrepreneur, it might be discouraging to realize how much trial and error and steep learning curves are involved initially, much more so when wagering real money on tangible outcomes.

The good news is that many of us make these Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes, particularly when we first start. Whether your Facebook ads have failed to generate a single sale or you feel as though you aren’t getting a good return on your investment, here are seven typical-sometimes costly Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes and how to avoid them.

If you’re new to Facebook Advertising, we recommend starting with The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising.

1.Failure to make an initial investment in audience research

Having a good ad targeting the wrong audience, or is it best to have a lousy ad in front of the right audience?

Which one do you believe has a better chance of succeeding?

I’d wager that having the right audience comes first.

Facebook has a broad audience, and depending on what you’re offering; your audience may be larger, smaller, or even entirely different than the one you intended to target.

First, you’ll need to test specific audiences before moving on to more particular ad copy or format elements. However, that does not exclude you from making some educated predictions.

An intelligent way to think about targeting is to consider if you would be prepared to wager money on the likelihood that those people would be interested in purchasing your product-which is technically what you are doing.

For instance, you may believe that individuals like “Starbucks” on Facebook are interested in purchasing your specialized coffee.

Perhaps some of them will, but a wide variety of people on Facebook enjoys Starbucks; the current estimate puts it at over 33 million. You’re looking for a niche that corresponds to your products.

If you’ve picked a niche product, e.g., t-shirts for individuals who own pugs, you’ll have a far more straightforward job than someone whose products don’t appeal to a specific audience.

One of the most effective strategies for identifying potential target interests is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer:

• Who would they follow in terms of influencers or celebrities?
• From your competition, who do they buy?
• What are they going to search for (Google)?
• Which pages on Facebook will they “like”?
• Which magazines/blogs do they follow?
• Which subreddits would they frequent?
• Which apps are they likely to use?

Investigate and see what you can discover about their interests that set them apart from the crowd.

Suppose you come across a Facebook page relevant to the information you discovered throughout your investigation, like it under your personal profile.

Facebook may propose linked pages that may include other interests that you can target. Again, disregard those that lack a clear relation to purchasing intent.

You can leverage Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to generate more targeting suggestions based on the interests and characteristics of which you have a good sense.

Additionally, you may use it to gain insight into how that audience behaves, their spending habits, and more if you’re inquisitive.

2.Failure to optimize your ad creative for clicks and eyeballs

Once you’ve identified your target audience, a compelling creative campaign can help you increase your outcomes.

Numerous factors contribute to the success of an ad. The following are some best practices to consider:

• Create additional clickthrough opportunities by including links and product tags (you’ll need a Facebook Shop, which Shopify makes easy to set up).
• Experiment with various ad forms inside the same Advert Set, particularly video, as Facebook prefers this format.
• Collect social evidence- comments, likes, and shares over time with each ad you run, which amplifies the power of your ad.
• Create a focal point in your image, copy, or video thumbnail that draws the viewer’s attention.
• Consider including emojis in your copy to add personality and visual aspects.

3.Failure to isolate the subject under examination

In marketing, insight is frequently overshadowed by the imperative to get outcomes. And, while experimenting and testing with your ads are encouraged, you can truly learn as you go if you only test one variable at a time.

To avoid the Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes that entrepreneurs make, you need to first appreciate that different testing audience at various times with varying Facebook ads will not tell you much, even if you discover something that produces higher results.

Was the audience the culprit? Was it the ad that sparked your interest? Was it a coincidence of dates? Was it the result of several factors coming together?

To the extent possible, isolate a single variable to test so that you can proceed with actionable knowledge following the experiment. You should initially test at the Advert Set level with the audiences you’re targeting.

Bear in mind the following aspects of your Ad Manager account that you can modify and test:

• Campaign: Facebook will optimize your campaign based on your objectives-add to cart, purchases, etc
• Ad Set: The audience you’re targeting, the placement, and the scheduling of your advertisement.
• Ad: Links, format, and creative, among other things.

4.Failure to capitalize on all available insights

Many Facebook Ad Manager functions remain buried in their intricacy, particularly when viewing your performance to gain insights.

For instance, the default columns in the Ad Manager do not display all of the data that is genuinely important to you. You should customize your columns to obtain additional data lest you get sucked into making the Facebook Advertising Mistakes as many newbies.

Consider including the following to gain a better understanding of ad performance, in addition to anything else you believe will help:

• Frequency: The number of times an ad is seen on average by each individual you reach. Occasionally, you’ll see a dramatic drop in the performance of your ads. This is because Facebook is simply presenting the same ad to the same people several times.
• Relevance Score: Indicates the degree to which your ad is relevant to the audience you target; based on your first 500 impressions, it has a significant impact on your costs.
• CTR: Click-through rate (CTR) refers to the percentage of people that clicked on your ad after viewing it.
• Conversion Value of Website Purchases: The overall value of purchases attributed to the ad.
• Budget: The amount of money allotted daily or in total to the advertisement set.
• Cost per Result: The amount spent to accomplish your campaign target.
• Reach The number of unique (not repeat) individuals you’ve reached.
• Cost-per-click: The amount you pay for each time your ad is clicked.
• Purchases made on the website as a result of the ad.
• CPM: Cost per 1000 impressions.

Additionally, you may use the “Breakdown” options to examine your ad success depending on various parameters, such as the devices used to make sales and the effect of gender on performance.

Additionally, you may adopt an effortless but highly effective practice of utilizing a uniform, understandable naming convention at each level of your Ad Manager account. This way, you can see at a glance who you’re targeting and what you’re testing.

5.Targeting a vast audience

Another Common Facebook Advertising mistake is paid to advertise, regardless of platform, targets too broad an audience.

While you may believe that everyone is a potential consumer, the people who see your ads are what you’re paying. Why would you spend reaching the wrong audience?

Say, a target audience of between 500K to 1.5 million makes for a decent starting point for many eCommerce enterprises.

If your audience is too large, consider limiting it down by focusing on interests that your primary audience “must also share.” If it’s too tiny, consider expanding the pool of users by adding interest until you hit the optimal spot.

6.Underutilization of your ad budget

The other effective way to avoid Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes is knowing that even though your primary objective is to generate sales, it is not the only return on your advertising investment.

Indeed, more value is derived from an ad that “failed” to generate any buyers.

It is possible to:

• Invite those who have liked or commented on a post on your page to like your Facebook page as well-click on the reactions of the post itself).
• Increase the number of likes and comments on your post to increase your ad’s social proof gradually.
• Directly engage with those who leave comments on your ads to assist them in making a purchase.
• In the future, you can retarget site visitors as “warm traffic.”
• Create an email sequence to reclaim any abandoned carts.
• Amass email addresses from site visitors.

There is also the vital insight that purchased traffic can provide.

I strongly urge that you install Google Analytics and Hot Jar and monitor how your traffic behaves on your website. This will assist you in determining whether the issue is with your audience, the layout of your website, or something else.

Heatmaps, in particular, such as Hot Jar, are beneficial because they enable you to monitor how visitors behave on your website visually: how far down the page they scroll before leaving, what they click on, and as recordings of real individual visits.

7.Impatience

When it comes to paid advertising, it’s easy to feel as though you’re wasting money if you do not see immediate results.

Occasionally, you may feel driven to seize control of your ads and alter them to “optimize” them as quickly as possible.

However, acquiring data and insight is critical, particularly at the start.

That is why it is critical to have a firm grasp on the amount of money you are prepared to spend to acquire a single consumer.

Among the Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes  is exasperation. You can’t afford impatience.

Assume your cost of goods is $25 and the product is selling for $58. This leaves you with around $33 to spend on customer acquisition before breaking even.

Be prepared to spend more than that initially as you test your audience and ads.

Make no adjustments to your ads, such as pausing or modifying them, until you reach 1000 individuals. At that point, you’ve gathered enough data to derive some insight from the performance of your ads, even if they generate no sales.

Another way impatience might hurt your performance is by preventing Facebook from learning over time. If you haven’t already put the Facebook Pixel in your Shopify store-which is relatively easy to do, check it out (Here), you should do so.

The Pixel is used by Facebook’s advertising platform to track and learn from user behavior to enhance targeting.

If you initially set your campaign’s target to optimize based on purchases, Facebook may not understand what a “purchasing” consumer looks like if you have no sales. However, as more purchases are made, that data set gets more accurate.

Thus far, what have you uncovered?

While Facebook advertising might prove challenging to master, as one of the most successful ways to spread any message, it’s undoubtedly worth investing in and glean insight from others’ experiences.

 The bottom line

Facebook is one of the most accessible and powerful advertising channels for businesses. Before adding more specific ad copy or format elements, you’ll need to test specific audiences first.

The Audience Insights feature on Facebook can help you target ads based on the interests and attributes of your target audience.

The Pixel is a tracking and learning device used by Facebook’s advertising platform to improve targeting. You should add the Facebook Pixel to your Shopify store if you haven’t already.

As a marketer, you are not immune to the seven Common Facebook Ad Mistakes listed above. However, if you want to get a higher return on your investment, Facebook gives you a better way to target potential customers based on their interests.

This way, you avoid the Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes, which can lead to increased spending with little to no results for your business.

Thus, what lessons have you taken away from your ads? Leave yours in the comments section below!