Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
Why Facebook Ads Can be a Waste of Money
Facebook ads are all the rage and can be a very useful business tool when done correctly. Unfortunately, most people don’t do their ads correctly and they just become a huge money pit.
Have you made any of the following Facebook Ad Mistakes?
Boosting Because Facebook Says So
Facebook is a business and has to make money for its shareholders. When a post is getting some engagement, likes, shares and/or comments, Facebook will send you a message congratulating you and suggest you boost the post. Boosting is good for Facebook as they get your money however, depending on the content, it may be a waste of money for you.
Wrong Content
If Facebook has suggested you boost your Friday funny or your Hump day Laugh before it is doing well, that is a bit of an ego boost. However, is it going to move your business forward, add value to your customers or attract new customers? Probably not. Running ads or boosting content just because Facebook says is a recipe for a very expensive campaign as the returns will be low to none.
When it comes to content for your ads, you need to be strategic and think about your business objectives. What are you trying to achieve with your ads? If you are running ads to a cold audience, an audience that has never heard of you, your business or what you are selling, then you can’t send them straight to a sales landing page and expect success.
Wrong Audience
When using Ads Manager with Facebook, you can get very specific with your targeting. You can select the geographical area, gender, age, interest, etc. Think about your ideal audience, your avatar, the special customer who buys everything you have to offer and refers you to others. The mistake a lot of people make when doing Facebook ads is they try and reach everyone.
A Mini buyer will never buy a Mercedes – no matter how fabulous the ads you run, what content or special offers you have. Running ads to people who have no interest in your product or service and never will is a waste of your advertising budget.
Be specific when running your ads and choose an audience who will be interested.
Too Targeted
If your audience or niche is really small and defined, you may find that being hyper targeted reduces the effectiveness of your ads. You need to help Facebook to understand who you want to market too. If your ad pool is too low then Facebook won’t be able to run your ads effectively. Small ad pools run the risk of your ad being shown to the same people too many times and they are likely to report you for the equivalent of spam.
If your ad pool is small, widen your net a bit, add in your next most likely customers, extend your age range or geographical location to get a larger audience.
No Ad Strategy
Why are you running ads if you don‘t have a plan, a strategy it will be very difficult to get a ROI – return on your Investment while running ads. You need to think about what content to run to what audiences. Are you running a multi ad plan where you start with a cold audience and broad content and then run ads to the people that clicked on that ad. These people are now a warm audience. Are you now going to run a more specific ad to your warm audience etc before offering a special offer or deal to your targeted audience?
Running Your Ads Too Long
If you run the same ads to the same audience sector, you run the risk of the frequency of your ads being too high and annoying people. Annoying people is obviously not what you want to do and getting a Facebook report certainly won’t help your ad campaign to be successful.
Too Much Text in Your Ad
Facebook wants you to be social, to add value to their audience. Facebook Ad images are not place to be writing an essay. It would be too small and no one would be able to read it. Facebook has a 20% rule. For your ads to run successfully, you can’t have more than 20% text. If you have text in the image for example, on a book cover, you can sometimes get away with a little more text however on the while 20% is the rule. To work out your text ratio, draw a grid over your ad image. 5 lines across and 4 lines down. Now you have 20 squares. Colour in every square that has any text on it. If you have more than 5 squares coloured in, you have too much text.
Facebook used to not approve ads that had more than 20% text. Getting your ad approved took ages as the text ratio had to be checked first. Now most ads will be approved even if they have too much text however, there are 2 problems with it:
- Your ads will be very expensive
- Your ads won’t be shown often if at all but you will still be charged.
Best practice to get the best value for money on your Facebook ads is to stay under the 20% text rule.
Use these tips to create a better RIO on your Facebook Ads.
Tune in next week to Small Business Talk Podcast with Cathy Smith.
