So, FB ads, eh? They’re either wildly successful, and the best way to get clients/sell things, or a money leech that will swipe your budget and give you nothing in return. Depends very much on who you talk to.
Any time I see someone asking for advice on whether to spend on Facebook ads, I see a stream of people saying they simply don’t work.
But...quite obviously they do work. Millions of advertisers are having great success with them. So, why do they not work for some? Is it because they only work for specific things? Is it because you have to have a huge budget? Do they only work if you use an agency, who really know what they’re doing?
No, no and no.
The fundamental reason is a lack of understanding of the ads themselves. Not the technical aspect (although, that may well play a part), but how to advertise.
FB Ads Mistake 1 - Using the same, or similar ads as you do for Google
A working ad, is a working ad, right?
Except, it isn't, and this is the absolute biggest mistake small business owners make, when trying to advertise on Facebook.
Google advertising works because people are searching for what you do, and then finding you. They’re actively in the head space of looking for your product or service, meaning a relevant ad is likely to get them to click.
On Facebook, people are in a social space. They haven’t gone there to shop, and they’re not thinking about your product or service, at all (EVEN IF they came straight to Facebook from Googling it).
Advertising on Facebook is much more similar to print advertising, than it is to Google. It’s like having an ad in a magazine or newspaper that needs to grab people’s attention.
FB Ads Mistake 2 - Assuming people want what you do
This leads on from point 1.
If you assume that people have an interest in what you’re offering, you fall into the trap of advertising the features of what you offer. The ‘nuts and bolts’ of what you do.
What you really want to interrupt people with (and let’s be honest, that’s what you’re trying to do), are the benefits of what you offer.
Many small businesses don’t distinguish between features:
- it’s blue
- it’s personalised
- It’s easy
and benefits:
- it solves ‘x’ problem
- you will feel happier
- it saves you time
Understanding the difference between the two is fundamental in marketing – look up ‘selling the sizzle, not the steak’ to get a real feel for these differences (and see my previous post here).
In the first instance, don’t advertise from the perspective of ‘people will want this product/service’. Instead, start thinking about why they should.
FB Ads Mistake 3 - Not Following Meta's Advice
When you go into Ads Manager (and you have much wider control over ads here than you do from boosting posts, so if you're serious about ads, this is where to create them), to create a campaign, Meta will ask you what you want to achieve.
If you want to achieve sales, leads or another type of interaction - tell Meta and set up the appropriate ad to track or monitor this.
If you set up an ad to send traffic to your website, when what you really wanted was for people to fill in a form on a landing page, you're not letting the algorithm have the data it needs to optimise your ad for the end result.
You need to let the algorithm do its thing, and it can't if your end game wasn't clear from the start.
FB Ads Mistake 4 - Following Meta's Advice Too Closely
Meta, quite obviously, has a lot of data from a lot of advertisers to draw on. It will kindly try to pass this on to you by telling you things like 'video ads perform the best', encouraging you towards video over a single image.
Now, video ads may well work best, across the whole platform. But a great image will outperform a terrible video. Make the best ad that you can, and don't be swayed into trying to create something you're going to do badly.
Fb Ads Mistake 5 - Trying to Reach Too Many People With Too Small a Budget
Let's say the whole country could be your marketplace. Your potential ad reach is in the millions. Your potential ad spend, on the other hand, is substantially less.
Setting a low budget (£5-£10 a day) to try to reach a large number of people (10 million) is just not going to do much for you.
Ideally, you want people to see your ad a few times - not enough to irritate them, but enough that they get interested.
How do you achieve that?
Reduce your reach to match your budget. The quickest and easiest ways to reduce reach are by geographic area, gender and age. Play around with those until you get a reach to match your budget.
As a broad example, for a £5-£10 a day spend, I wouldn't want a reach much greater than 150-200k.
Fb Ads Mistake 6 - Giving Up Too Soon
Don't make asumptions based on one failed ad. There are many reasons why ads might fail, and each failed ad is a learning experience. You can dig into the metrics that Meta provides and see what went wrong, and work out what you could change to get better results.
You can know within a fairly small budget (less than £100 most of the time), whether an ad is working. The best thing about controlling your own ads is, you can react very quickly to tweak things and try again.
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