Nowadays, you can’t reach your audience just through your business page on Facebook the same way that you used to. Any posts to your page have a low chance of being seen in the newsfeed, and will require additional Facebook Advertising campaigns to be setup in order to promote your posts to the audience you’re targeting. The good news is that Facebook has the ability to really fine tune and drill down who you’re targeting with your campaigns at this point, and this continues to improve. As a result, this is another great paid advertising option for many businesses.

However, as always, there are common mistakes that people make when setting up their Facebook business accounts and campaigns, so we’ll be covering those items off today, to help those of you who may just be getting started, or want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your advertising efforts.

First Mistake: Having No Goals or Incorrect Goals From the Start

First of all, while you’re kicking things off and putting together your strategy, it’s important that you actually produce some goals for your campaign. Are you trying to get conversions, increase brand awareness, or get engagement on an app?  Choose the right goal for each campaign, and then set it up that way from the beginning. You should be able to tell right away when you have hit or missed your goals, and have a firm target on your direction. From here, you can determine the actions you need to take in order to be successful.

Second Mistake: Targeting Too Wide of an Audience

Before getting started, you must know who you should be targeting. Make sure you understand your customer base, and at the very least, streamline who you’re showing your ads to. If you’re targeting every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world, instead of the specific audience who is more likely to be responsive to your campaigns, you’ll definitely be throwing money out the window.

Also, make sure to target fans as they will give you a more efficient ad spend. How so? You already know that, because as fans they’re in your target market! Just because they’re already part of your page, they won’t necessarily be seeing your page post just because you put it there, based on the more recent changes by Facebook.  A good idea is to try targeting fans of your competitors, as that’s another really effective way of targeting your ads to an already established and relevant audience.

Remember, don’t be too broad with your campaigns, it’s very unlikely that a 13 year old girl will be interested in your landscaping services, or your grandfather will want to know where to get a manicure.

Third Mistake: Not Setting Up Relevant Landing Pages & Calls to Action

If your goal is to have a visitor take a specific action on a page, you should make sure that is what you setup. An appropriate landing page should be created, with a single Call to Action, that is in line and relevant to your Facebook Ad text and image. Ensure that these are parallel, and help to draw the visitor to take the action you’re hoping for, and nothing else. Optimize your landing pages in order to increase the rate at which people follow through on a specific action to reach your campaign goals.

Fourth Mistake: Putting Everything in A Single Ad Set

At the Ad Group level, you have the ability to set your budget and create a multitude of ads. However, if you want to be able to retain better control over those ads, it’s best to not put everything into a single ad set. Generally speaking, Facebook will choose to display one specific ad the most within an ad set, so if you setup too many ads within one ad set, it’s likely most of them won’t be showing up on a regular basis. To reduce the chance of this happening, decide on how you’re going to break down your ad sets, and try to aim for no more than 5 ads per set. You can group ad sets around several different options, such as your ad goals, your targeting options, or the creative or images you’re using, to name a few.

Fifth Mistake: Not Testing and Improving Over Time

Like any other type of campaign, you should always be testing your efforts, and then making improvements however possible. Test your images, to see which ones work better for you and are bringing in more conversions or visits (or whatever your goal may be for the specific campaign). Also make sure to test out ad text – just don’t change too many things at once! One thing at a time, when making comparisons. As well, fine tune your campaigns as you go, to continue to optimize them in your favour and contribute to an increasingly efficient ad spend.

Summary

To summarize, when implementing your Facebook Advertising campaigns, common mistakes include:

1. Having No Goals or Incorrect Goals From the Start

2. Targeting Too Wide of an Audience

3. Not Setting Up Relevant Landing Pages & Calls to Action

4. Putting Everything in A Single Ad Set

5. Not Testing & Improving Over Tiime

Now that you know more about what common mistakes to avoid, make sure to check out our recent blog posts covering more useful Facebook Advertising tips, or download our new guide to Facebook Advertising by clicking the image below!