Promote Your Business Right: Facebook Advertising Mistakes You Should Avoid

Advertising on Facebook can be one of the best ways to invest your advertising budget. With over 1.93 billion daily users, it is crucial to meet your customers where they will likely be at some point every single day; in their newsfeed.

Unfortunately, advertising on Facebook can sometimes come with its own set of difficulties. Facebook ad mistakes are incredibly common, and it is essential to get ahead of them before you waste too much of your ad budget. While trial and error is often part of the process, avoiding Facebook ad mistakes can save you money and gain new customers sooner than later.

Top Ten Facebook Ad Mistakes

Experience is often one of the best teachers. Learning what to avoid before you start can give you a leg up against your competition. Take a look at the top ten Facebook ad mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Strategy: Believe it or not, and this might even be you, most people dive into Facebook ads without knowing what they are doing and how they plan to reach their customers. A solid strategy is the furthest thing from their mind as they simply click “Boost” under the posts on their business page that are performing well. Developing a strategy and incorporating it into how you advertise can prevent you from making Facebook ad mistakes and can potentially save you a small fortune.
2. Out of Sight Out of Mind: Once someone discovers a solid strategy and their ad is converting, it is not uncommon for ad managers to simply behave as if the ad can be on autopilot. They rarely check back, and when the ad stops performing, they are confused as to why. Facebook ad fatigue can set in as your ad is displayed to the same audience over and over again, and your ad performance will quickly decline. Optimize. Optimize. Optimize.
3. Link Descriptions too Long: Ad managers and social media managers often want to fully describe what the customer is viewing. This prevents confusion and helps them make an educated purchase, right? Unfortunately, if your description is too long, it will likely get cut off and present poorly to potential customers. Short, concise, and to the point is the way to go.
4. Poor Targeting: With Facebook hosting tens of millions of business pages and hundreds of millions of people posting every day, it is important that your business correctly target your audience. Improper targeting will result in content getting lost and being displayed to those that have no interest in your product. Make sure that you identify your customers, where they live, their demographics, interests, online behavior, and more. This will result in your advertising dollars being spent more effectively as your ads will reach the right audience.
5. Improper Ad Type: Facebook offers an array of ad types. These can range from an image, reel, story, and more. Simply boosting an ad or doing a story ad might not be the best way to go if you have customers that don’t necessarily blindly scroll their newsfeed or check every story. Ensure that you identify the behavior of your target audience so that you know where to reach them best.
6. Don’t Be too Broad: You’ve entered in your target audience, demographics, age range, and more, and it popped out that your audience is 100 million or more. That is wonderful, right? While it seems like you want to reach the largest audience, it is entirely possible that only 100,000 or less are going to be interested in what you have to offer at this point in time. Adding more targeting to your ad will ensure that you skip this common Facebook ad mistake and reach those that are most important to your business.
7. Forgetting to Exclude Past Conversions: Facebook offers a fantastic feature that allows you to exclude audiences such as those that have already purchased your product or service. Since they may not need two or three TV Dinner Trays or another full-service business consultation for your SaaS, you can bypass this common Facebook ad mistake and save money by excluding those that have already converted.
8. Not Giving Enough Time to Optimize: It is hard to watch your ad perform poorly over the first day. It is tempting to watch it move and want to make changes when it is slow to optimize. STOP! It takes Facebook roughly 24 hours to optimize your targeting, and if you change things too quickly, it will take even longer. Take a break. Tend to other operations in your business. Do additional ad research. Do whatever it takes to help you not stress about it taking “too long” to get going.
9. Content too Unique: This might sound counterintuitive, but too unique is too much. People generally flock toward things they already know and like, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Take advantage of trends and content that is already going viral and utilize that to your advantage. If a dance, phrase, meme, or any other pop culture trend is making waves, ride it. It is a mistake to try and be the trendsetter unless you have experience and a massive following to get it going.
10. Forgetting to Optimize for all Devices: Sometimes, it is easy to forget that you are creating ads for people that view Facebook from many different devices. Your ad needs to be optimized for cell phones, tablets, computers, etc. Failing to optimize for a device that is commonly used by your target demographic is a costly Facebook ad mistake.

Bonus: Doing it Yourself Instead of Hiring a Professional: Not everyone has the budget to hire a professional, but if that is within your means, keep your expertise targeted at what you do best and hire someone that specializes in Facebook ads. They will skip hop right over the ad mistake period and start helping your business convert sooner than later.

Get Started

Unfortunately, Facebook ad mistakes are common, and they are bound to happen as you are learning. It is part of the process, and once you have made mistakes, you will likely not make them again. You can bypass that by hiring someone familiar with the process, or you can start running your own ads.

If hiring a Facebook ad professional is not within the budget, don’t be afraid to get your feet wet and make a few mistakes. Learning how to advertise your products on Facebook can accelerate your business and have a very positive ROI. Don’t let the potential of Facebook ad mistakes deter you.

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