There is no doubting the power of Facebook marketing. Being the largest social network in the world, Facebook has a huge potential to drive high quality leads to your business. There are many reasons to use Facebook Ads. In fact, everyone seems to be jumping on the Facebook marketing bandwagon, so it is no surprise that newbies will end up wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars on Facebook ads without optimising them.

So how do you make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook ads? Here are 7 common reasons why Facebook ads underperform, and how to avoid or get out of these traps!

1. Unrefined audience targeting

Audience size – the bigger the better right? Most marketers target a huge pool of users, thinking that more impressions will lead to better results. However, having an audience size that is too large means that you are wasting money showing your ads to people who are not interested in your brand or product. It is important to segment your audience so you know which audiences are responding to your ads best.

How can I fix this?

There are a few types of targeting strategies to segment your audience:

• Demographic targeting: Selecting audiences based on demographic information, such as gender, age, location, language, whether they have children, etc.
• Interest targeting: Selecting audiences based on their interests. This is where you can think outside the box and target interests that may be related to your business.
• Connections: Selecting audiences based on their connections to certain pages or apps.
• Custom audience targeting: Importing information from a known audience of your own.

We suggest running several ad groups with different types of targeting methods. This is so you can test for the most effective targeting strategy. As a rule of thumb, your audience size should not exceed 50,000 per ad group. Remember to also exclude certain audiences to further refine your targeting!

2. Poor relevance score

Your ad’s relevance score determines how frequent your ads are viewed by deciphering how relevant your message is to your selected target audiences. Ads with higher scores will be shown more often compared to those with lower scores. You can find the Relevance Score in the lower right-hand corner of your ad set. Your ad set is rated on a scale of 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best scores.

How can I fix this?

If your ad has a low relevance score, it is probably due to message mismatch. To get a better message match, the keyphrase you target should be in both the headline of your ad and landing page.

Here is an example. If your ad’s headline says ‘Flash Sales – 20% Off Selected Products’, but on your landing page you do not mention anything about ’20% Off Selected Products’, your relevance score will take a hit. So you should always make sure your ad’s headline corresponds to your landing page content!

3. Choosing the wrong campaign objective

Your campaign objective can dramatically affect the performance of your campaigns because Facebook will optimise your campaign to make sure you achieve your goal.

How can I fix this?

So how do you know if you have selected the right campaign type? Well, what is your main goal? Are you looking to drive sales or get sign-ups for an event? Then a conversion-focused campaign will be suitable. Looking to get more Facebook page likes? Consider an engagement campaign. There are plenty of options to explore, but in general, these two types are the most common and effective. Not sure how to proceed from here? Find out how to optimise your Facebook Ads via your bidding strategy.

4. Not experimenting

Many digital marketers skip this step because it seems unnecessary. However, it is this very step that separates the good marketers from the great marketers! This is because even if you construct the perfect ad, the truth is you never know how well it will perform until you test them.

How can I fix this?

Create several variations of the same ad by testing different images, copy, and even formats (if you are running single image ads, try video ads as well). For example, you can run ads with the same images but different copies, and/or ads with the same copies but different images. Let the ads run for about a week, then turn off the ones that are not performing as well as the others.

5. Not trying retargeting

Retargeting can be extremely useful if you are looking to get more qualified leads. It is commonly used to direct ads at viewers who are already familiar with your brand and visited your web pages. Thus, they will be more likely to take action and convert.

How can I fix this?

Add tracking pixels to your website so you can target website visitors, and create them as a separate audience to target your ads. You can locate your account’s pixel under the ‘events manager’ tab, and under ‘set up’. After following the instructions to install the pixel code, create a custom audience for retargeting by going back to the events manager and selecting ‘Audiences’ > ‘Create Audience’ > ‘Custom Audience’ > ‘Website Traffic’.

6. Poor ad creative

Sometimes the problem lies with the ads themselves. After constructing the perfect campaign with the perfect audience targeting, do not forget to examine the ad creatives!

How can I fix this?

The most effective headlines tend to be short and sweet – they need to capture your main value proposition and not be too wordy. The best performing headlines were found to be about only 5 words long! For the ad copies, you can get some inspiration from these Facebook ad examples that have proven to be effective!

Also, visual content tends to be favoured by Facebook over pure text. Links with videos were found to get clicked on 7 times more than links without videos, and images were found to improve user engagement by 94%! Truly, pictures are worth a thousand words.

Regarding what kind of visual content to use – we found that single image ads featuring peoples’ faces tend to perform much better than those that don’t. For even better results, use hero images which allows the consumer to picture their future self after their experience with a product or service.

7. Ad fatigue

While it is crucial to make sure your ads deliver to your audiences, showing your ads too often can be detrimental to your ROI. This phenomenon where your ads get featured too often is called ad fatigue. So why is this a bad thing? This can be a huge problem for your brand’s reputation, as people are getting bored or frustrated with your content. This will cause your costs to skyrocket because poor click-through rates will increase your cost-per-click.

How can I fix this?

Take a look at your ad frequency. Generally, a frequency value below 10 is healthy for Facebook ads. Consider creating new ads or lowering your budget.

Moreover, ad fatigue can be caused by an audience overlap between your ad groups. To check for audience overlap, select ‘Audiences’ from your drop-down menu, select 2 or more audiences, and click on Actions > Show Audience Overlap.

See this guide for more details on how you can take action against audience overlapping!

In conclusion…

Being organised, systematic, and clear of your goals is key to a successful Facebook marketing campaign. With some experience and this article in mind, you’ll be on your way to becoming a Facebook Advertising pro!

Still overwhelmed by all the info? Outsource all the hard work to a Facebook Marketing Agency and get the best out of your digital marketing campaigns!