Facebook is everywhere. One must be living under a rock to not know the social media giant. If you aren’t on Facebook, you are most likely the odd one in a group. With 2.23 billion active monthly users across the globe, it’s indeed the biggest virtual community in the world.
As friends and families connect online, marketers are taking advantage of the huge population to sell their products.
Known for its effective ad targeting features, marketers spend a chunk of their advertising budget on Facebook with the aim of converting leads. Unfortunately, not so many of them can attest to getting great results. Facebook isn’t to blame for this. The platform offers everyone a fair chance to reach their target audience. The thing is, some people are doing the wrong thing.
Here are five advertising mistakes most marketers make on Facebook:
1. Advertising to the same people
The billions of people on Facebook outnumber your target audience. Targeting your ad is necessary to focus on audiences tailored for you.
But targeting isn’t a one-off.
Most marketers use the same targeting settings continuously. Hence, they are advertising to the same set of people over and over again.
Your ad campaign might be great. But after a while, it becomes boring due to continuous exposure. No one wants to have the same message in their face always. Doing this makes you a nuisance to them – one they wish to get rid off.
If you must repeat your ad to the same audience, don’t over flog it.
A consumer who didn’t respond to your message after seeing it for the second time isn’t interested in your offering, at least, not at the moment.
Increase your chances of conversion by changing your ad targeting settings to reach a new set of people.
2. Making changes too quickly
The moment you launch your ad campaign, you want to see results. When that doesn’t happen immediately, you begin to wonder if you did the right thing.
Most marketers can’t resist the urge to change their ad campaign within the first few hours. They end up making changes to a campaign that might have turned out great.
Seating by your computer monitoring your campaign in the first hours isn’t such a good idea. Your schedule is different from that of your audience. While you have the free time to be online, they may be preoccupied with other things. Give them time to see your campaign when they come online. If you must make any changes, do it after 24 to 48 hours.
3. Abandoning your ad
While making changes to your ad shortly after you launch it isn’t advisable, you shouldn’t abandon it completely.
Facebook provides automation tools to help you track your campaign, but they aren’t to be relied on a 100%.
Numbers don’t lie; pay attention to them. If after 48 hours, the numbers aren’t encouraging, your worries are valid.
Is your campaign gaining traction? What are your audience saying about it? If your campaign is silent, you should find a way to get it talking.
4. Using a wrong ad format
Facebook caters to a diverse audience. It provides different advertising formats to meet the individual needs of each segment of the population. Making a pick from the lot without consideration leads to little or no results.
Who are your target audience? What advert format appeals to them the most? Having figured these out, you need to also consider your advertising goal. If you are after generating traffic to your site, video advertising isn’t the best fit. A strong image with catchy lines will get users on your site faster than making them watch a video.
5. Doing everything at once
It’s prudent to try out the various Facebook advertising options to understand how they work. But that should be done individually. Combining everything together mixes up the results, making you oblivious of what actually works.
Measurement is key.
There’s no better way to figure out winning campaigns than through evaluating your performance metrics. Isolate each of them, and track their progress. In the end, compare various results at hand to identify the most viable.C
Facebook advertising isn’t a game of luck. Don’t launch a campaign and just hope for it to do well. The content, format and strategy of your campaign determine your end results. Learn from these mistakes of others to increase your Return on Investment (ROI). Advertising is meant to be a game of profit, not loss.
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