Raaj Brar, CEO of Fetopolis lost $600,000 in Facebook adsIf you think you can run your ads without constant supervising, planning, and ad refreshing, don’t advertise on Facebook because your campaigns will fail. Don’t be like Raaj Kapur Brar, the CEO of Fetopolis who ran Facebook ads for four days and lost $600,000. To secure your first campaign’s success and evade catastrophic loss, avoid the five common mistakes inexperienced Facebook advertisers make.
1. Choosing the Wrong Objective
As the book that teaches beginners how to create and manage Facebook ads, The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising, states, if you choose the wrong objective, your campaign will fail. Because objectives determine your ads’ results, choosing the wrong one is a damaging and expensive misstep.
Facebook has 11 objectives. When deciding which objective to choose, think about your business goal. Do you want customers to install your app, to buy products from your e-commerce store, or to give contact information? For those three goals, you must choose specific Facebook objectives (the app install, product catalog sales, and lead generation objectives, respectively). If you don’t choose the right one, you will pay for the results you didn’t want.
2. Choosing the Wrong Ad Delivery Optimization and Bidding Strategy
To spend your budget wisely, you must choose the right ad delivery optimization and bidding strategy for your goal. Your chosen delivery optimization will instruct Facebook to show your ads to users most likely to make a desired action, whether that’s to install your app or purchase your product. Your chosen bidding strategy will tell Facebook which action you want to be charged for, may that be for a link click, an app install, or a video view.
When choosing your optimization and bidding strategy, think of your goal. If, for example, you have an app installs ad with an app installs objective, choosing the app installs ad delivery optimization will show your ads to users most likely to install your app. If you wanted to pay only for every time users have clicked on your ad to download your app, the Link Click (CPC) bidding strategy will best complement your objective and delivery optimization. If you choose the right ad delivery optimization and bidding strategy, you will be closer to achieving your business goal.
3. Not Refreshing Creatives
To run successful Facebook ads, you must refresh and A/B test your creatives every two weeks. If you don’t, your audience will suffer from ad fatigue, extreme indifference resulting from seeing the same ad too many times. When users suffer from ad fatigue, they will ignore your ad or, worse, hide or mark them as spam. Once they make one of those three actions, your ads’ relevance scores will plummet, your costs will rise, and your ads will be harder to deliver.
4. Recklessly Spending
Don’t be like Brar who spent more than $600,000 in four days. Instead, spend the amount you can afford. When choosing your bidding amount, don’t bid too low otherwise competitors will outbid you. After your ads garner lucrative results, increase your budget slowly. If your ads underperform, stop your ads and fix the problem before running them again.
5. Targeting Too Broadly
If you target too broadly, you will pay for ads targeting users who are not interested in your business. To ensure that you target only interested customers, use these three targeting tricks.
1. Target existing customers by uploading a customer list to Facebook Custom Audience.
2. Target new customers similar to existing customers by creating a Lookalike Audience.
3. Target new interested customers by targeting those who have interacted with your Facebook page.
It’s easy to make these five common mistakes when you’re new to Facebook advertising. Fortunately, there are numerous resources that can help you. In addition to AdvertiseMint’s blog, Amazon books, such as The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising, contains actionable advice on how to successfully manage Facebook ads.
