New To Facebook Advertising? Avoid These 3 Common Mistakes For Cheaper Conversions!
So, you’ve finally decided to take a leap into Facebook advertising and if you could ride the phenomenal wave that you keep reading about.
Congratulations!
You’ve really made an awesome decision, one that has tremendous potential to positively affect your business. Regardless of what your sister’s 14-year-old daughter tells you, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform that exists. To date, 79% of American internet users are on Facebook and there are 2.07 billion active monthly users world-wide. Add the fact that smartphone users check Facebook 14 times a day and you can see why making the decision to run advertising campaigns on Facebook is an excellent decision.
But what about rising ad costs?
Right, I figured that was mulling in the back of your mind-especially if you did your due diligence before you decided to start advertising on Facebook. Yes, the costs of advertising are continually rising and to be honest, it’s not going to stop anytime soon. However, there are two things that need to be taken into consideration so you’ll feel more comfortable about running your first campaign.
- If you’re going to start running Facebook ads now is the time to do it.
As I stated in my last article, those who decide to start running Facebook ads now and not later will be in comparison to the early adopters of social media that saw tremendous organic reach before the algorithm was implemented.
If you wait any longer you might have waited too long.
2. Most of the people that are new to Facebook advertising pay more for ads then they should.
Yup, you heard it right, most of the people that are new to Facebook ads pay much more for their results than they should. While there’s not much you can do about the bid prices of your competition, with the right tactics and skills you can achieve your desired results for much less than what David down the street (who never read a blog, took a course, or hired an advertising agency) did when he ran his first campaign and quickly decided that Facebook advertising doesn’t work.
Since you’re new the game I won’t overwhelm you with information in this article, but what I will do is give you three commonly made mistakes to avoid when running Facebook ads to get better results.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Mistake #1: Most people chose the wrong objectives and pay for it severely.
When you open your ads manager to create an ad the first thing you will do is choose your ad objective. You’ll see quite a few different options, but generally, the most common ones chosen are:
Engagement
Traffic
Video Views
Conversions
Today we are going to focus on the Traffic objective. You chose this objective when you have a piece of pre-engagement content like a blog post, a video or any type of content that you want to send cold traffic to. Once you chose Traffic as the objective you’ll be taken to the ad set screen where you can choose where you want to drive the traffic to, what audience you want to advertise to, where you want to place the ad, and your budget and schedule.
Right below Budget and Schedule you’ll find Optimization or Ad Delivery with the words “Link Clicks” and an arrow pointing down next to it, this is where most people make the mistake that costs them a ton of money.
Naturally one would assume, “Well, I definitely want people to click the link in the ad so they can go to my landing page and consume the content” but Link Clicks is not the option you want to choose. When you’re creating an ad to drive traffic to a piece of content, you want to click the down-pointing arrow and choose “Landing Page Views.
While both options seem similar they account for two totally different things. Link Clicks only account for someone clicking on the link, not actually if that person stayed on the landing page and consumed the content. Since we are accident prone by nature you can imagine how often someone in your audience might have clicked on your ad by mistake, been taken to your landing page, and left as soon as they got there. Or, think of all the times you clicked on an ad then got distracted by something going on offline and locked your phone.
Do you really think it’s fair for you to pay for those link clicks?
Luckily, you don’t have to.
If you choose the Landing Page Views option you’ll only have to pay for people that clicked your ad and stayed on the landing page.
Crazy how much a tiny little adjustment like that gets overlooked huh?
While Landing Page Views ads do optimize better than Link Clicks, they don’t ensure that someone has consumed the content. There is a way to set up certain pixels and triggers to your site that will let you know how long someone stayed on your landing page, then you can retarget people who didn’t stay long enough to consume your content but that’s a more advanced strategy that we’ll get into on a later date. For now, if your ad objective is to get people to your site and consuming your content make sure you choose Landing Page Views.
Mistake #2: Most People Choose the Wrong Type of Targeting
This is a mistake that we could brew an entire pot of coffee for to talk about, but I’ll try to keep it as short and sweet as possible. First, don’t choose a ton of options for one ad set, if you do you’ll never know which targeting options are converting and which ones aren’t. It’s to start off with a few targeting options at a time for each ad set, but more on that later. What I want you to draw your focus to is the type of targeting that you can do.
Many beginners chose to role with demographics and interests as their targeting options and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that you’d get better results by choosing behaviors. The reasoning is twofold and once I tell you I promise you’ll have an “aha” moment.
Reason number one is that there is less competition when you choose behaviors as targeting options instead of interests. Just about everybody and their grandmother, plus the people she plays Bingo with, choose interests as their targeting options, and if you’re choosing big brands or high profile people as your choice of interests you’re going to be competing with advertisers that chose those interests as well.
Reason number two is that it’s better to bet on what someone has done than what someone likes. Think about it, I’m sure you like the way the Rolls Royce Wraith looks, but have you bought one before?
See the difference? Did the light bulb go off?
You can still choose interests and demographics as targeting options, but try choosing some behaviors that you know your target audience has as well and see what kind of results you can get.
Mistake #3: Most People Don’t Split Test
This is one of the most commonly made mistakes and probably the number one reason why there are thousands of people think Facebook advertising doesn’t work.
There are a few golden rules to digital marketing and one of them is,
SPLIT TEST EVERYTHING.
I can’t stress that enough so I’m going to say it again,
SPLIT TEST EVERYTHING
Split testing is when you run two ads with minor changes to see which one converts better. If you go to the bottom part of the Objective section in ads manager you’ll see the Create Split Test option, if you check the box to left and click Continue you’ll be taken to the Ad Set section and below Offer you’ll see Variable. In the Variable section, Facebook will ask you “What do you want to test?” and you’ll have the option to choose Creative, Delivery Optimization, Audience, or Placement.
If you choose Creative you can test the different creative aspects of your ad like video or photos, long form or short form copy, etc. If you choose Audience you can test different targeting options i.e.: interests, demographics, and behaviors.
Once you decide what you want to split test Facebook will run both ads simultaneously and at the end of the campaign you can see which one got the best results. There’s no need to worry if someone in your audience will see both ads because Facebook will divide your audience into random, non-overlapping groups to make sure no one sees more than one of the ads that you’re testing. If you’re just starting out with Facebook ads I advise that you stick to split testing your creative and audiences only until you get a good understand of how it works then you can move on to the other options.
Yes, the cost of Facebook ads are steadily rising and aren’t coming down anytime soon. But any smart marketer knows that he who can spend the most to acquire a customer wins, so don’t let what you’ve been reading in the blogs scare you from taking advantage of a great opportunity to grow your brand before it’s too late. When starting your first ad campaigns things can seem daunting and a bit overwhelming, but if you avoid these three common mistakes you’ll increase your chances of yielding better results for much lower costs.
