5 things to Immediately Fix on your Facebook Ads

We run a LOT of Facebook ads. We have clients spending anything from R300 to R30000 per day on the platform, so we’ve learned a thing or two about what really works.

Facebook advertising is incredibly easy to set up, but if you or your marketing team make careless errors and overlook some key points, it will cost you money and potential clients.

To save you endless time and effort trying to get your ads to generate the results you’re looking for, we’ve narrowed down 5 essential things you need to get right so that you can get the most from your effort and ad spend.

Keep reading and assess for yourself if your advertising is missing the mark, or hitting it out of the park.

1. Have You Selected the Correct Campaign Objective?

We see this all the time. People want to get page likes, comments, video views and conversions all in the same ad, and are totally confused when they don’t achieve all this and more.

That’s not how the Facebook algorithm works!

First decide what you want your advert to achieve, and then set up the campaign correctly from the start. If you are trying to get video views, then by all that is sacred, don’t select anything other than video views.

Also be careful of trying to run several campaigns with completely different objectives simultaneously.

What we mean by this is that in terms of strategy, you might get better results if you run a “Page Like” ad using the Engagement objective, let it run for a week or so and then create a “post engagement” ad to encourage comments, shares and feedback.

Don’t be tempted to try get the most bang for your buck by trying to squeeze every conceivable angle into your advert – people will see right through it. It comes off as unfocused, insincere and to be frank, desperate.

Focus on creating one stellar campaign with a few adsets (with different targeting) and maybe 3 different adverts and creative per adset. Do this well, and then refine those ads within an inch of their lives as close to perfect as possible.

2. Is Your Ad Spectacular?

There’s no way to get around this. The newsfeed is full of adverts and you need to make sure yours stands out.

Here are some common errors to avoid to level-up your ad game:

1) Cringeworthy copy: spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and ambiguous sentences are a big turnoff. Your writing needs to be razor-sharp. Check out some extra copywriting tips here.
2) Boring Images: social media is a visual platform. Whatever images you use must be eye-catching and immediately convey the message of your advert.
3) You don’t solve a problem: your ad is what we call “fluffy”. It doesn’t really tell a story or convince anyone that a) they have a need, desire or problem and b) your product/service can solve it.

Make sure that anyone who catches a glimpse of the ad can see how you can immediately solve their problem or create the know, like, trust factor.

3. The Most Important Word in Advertising

Surprise! It’s not about your business. Heck, it’s not even about what you are selling. It’s about THEM.

There are people out there who might be oblivious to the fact that your business can revolutionise their life. The focus at all times must be on the end-user, otherwise you’ve already lost.

That’s why the most important word in advertising is:

Audit your current ads and ask yourself honestly: are you talking about the product and what it does?

Or are you speaking to the consumer and how their frustrations can be met?

Is your copy engaging, sincere and client-focused? If not, go back to the drawing board.

4. Give Away Something GREAT For FREE

Yes, we mean it. Suck it up and produce something of value for your would-be customers.

Whether you create a cheatsheet to get them onto your email list or if you actually offer a discount voucher in the ad itself, people are hungry for a good deal.

People scrolling through Facebook owe you nothing. Not even a moment of their time. So the quickest way to see success is if you make it worth their while to pause their scroll and engage with your ad.

5. Change It Up

Is your marketing department relying on the same ol’ images and copy for months on end? Granted, once upon a time, that funny video ad you ran last year garnered a phenomenal response.

But nowadays? Not so much.

The feed moves at lightning speed and Facebook wants fresh meat. Get new images, shoot new videos and change things up when the analytics show things have gone stale.

Scrap that. Do all of the above BEFORE the numbers show that your ads have gone stale.

Ad fatigue is real, so don’t wait until your cost per result has doubled before you do something about it. This one is really simple to implement so whip your marketing team into shape and let them know you expect fresh ads at least every x weeks (you decide)

As digital marketers, we can tell you that the time of setting up a great ad campaign and letting it run weeks on end without a single change is OVER.

We constantly tweak and refine our efforts to ensure our clients are getting the best value for money and results as possible.

The Takeaway

If we can sum up the common thread linking all 5 fixes, the words that come to mind are comfort and complacency. Don’t be like that.

Facebook has made ad creation so simplistic, even a child can do it, but to really work with the platform and see fantastic results is a skill and an art.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that because you worked really hard on a campaign, it’s set to run for months on end.

In addition to the five fixes above, we want to encourage you replicate what we do at Big Domino Marketing:

• Check the ads daily
• Wait a few days to see how Facebook and the community respond (we are NOT saying change your ad daily, this would also completely mess with the algorithm).
• Challenge yourself and your team to constantly learn more about Facebook advertising: different imaging and video creation software, targeting options, custom audience creation, to name a few.

If you can get all of this right, we have no doubt you will start generating phenomenal results for your campaigns.