Not getting what you want from your Facebook ad campaigns?

Nothing is more disheartening than knowing that your deeply thought out ad campaign didn’t work. Instead of dwelling on it, though, it is important to understand why it failed despite having spent so much time and money on it.

May be the targeting was wrong?

The logic here is simple. If your ad reaches people who are not interested in your products/services, why will they click on your ad?

Ensuring that your ad reaches the right audience is paramount, and despite the amazing targeting system that Facebook is equipped with, many fail to use it well. We have come across many who simply target everyone in a given location without thinking about other parameters such as age and interests. There are also many marketers who make the audience size so small that each lead costs a fortune.

Of course, there’s no defined market size that you should abide by, it is important that you understand your target audience thoroughly. Use data from your previous Facebook ads and analyze the leads you got from them. This will give you detailed insights on your audience and will enable you to optimize your campaign.

For example: If, in your previous campaign, you barely got any leads from Bangalore despite having targeted the city, you can eliminate it from your upcoming campaign and focus on the city that gave you qualified leads.

Perhaps it was the image.

Incorrect targeting is just one albeit major mistakes that marketers make on Facebook. Not using the right image/creative closely follows.

Think about it. Our attention usually goes to the image when we see an ad or a post on Facebook. If the image is not catchy enough, we scroll past it. Thus, the image you use for your ad must be relevant to your audience and compelling at the same time.

Yes, it would be very difficult to determine what would work. That’s why A/B testing ads is crucial. Run two or three ads for the ad group and see which one is performing better. Analysis will give you a clear understanding of the kind of images that you should use.

Or maybe it was the text.

Facebook ads consist of text lines, headlines, and link descriptions. People read these to understand what you are offering.

Keep in mind, you only have 90 characters for text line, 25 characters for the headline, and 30 characters for the link description. This makes it a real challenge to be creative. That’s why you must depend on an expert copywriter to give you the best copy for your ads. Risking it by writing sub-par copy can lead to the wastage of a lot of money.

Wait, did you choose the right type of ad to run?

Another extremely common mistake that marketers make on Facebook is choosing the wrong type of ad. We have ads for reach, engagement, lead generation, et cetera and if we choose the wrong one, we may not get the results we are expecting.

A few options that Facebook provides are: Lead ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, dynamic ads, video views, app installs & engagement, canvas ads, website conversions, and page ads. Remember, this is not even half the list!

Analysis – it is important to analyze your ads at every step to thoroughly understand the performance metrics. We can’t point at one reason behind an ad not working well. The reason may differ from one ad to the other and only when we analyze and ensure the relevance score is on par will our ads do well.

Did you miss out on something? Do let us know and we’ll add to our list.