5 Costly Mistakes When Advertising on Facebook

Social media marketing is on the rise and plays an ever-increasing role in any business’s digital marketing strategy. It’s a crucial step in engaging your target consumer, building your brand and increasing your business’ economic bottom line, no matter what industry you are in or what your product happens to be.

 

There are many social media platforms out there, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, Digg, Blogger, Reddit, Wikis, and Stumbledupon. And one of the greatest aspects of all of them, and quite possibly why they became so popular in the first place, is that they’re a free form of advertising. It doesn’t cost anything to set up an account on any of these platforms and use it to build brand awareness, generate leads, build strong relationships with customers and learn about competitors.

 

Utilizing Facebook for Your Business:

One of the undisputed giants of social media, Facebook, is free to all users, including companies, but it also allows businesses to go further by purchasing ads that are published to targeted demographic user groups of the site.

 

Being able to personalize your online advertising to small, specific groups of people within targeted age, nationality, location, interests, shopping patterns, website usage, and countless other demographic groups is a major asset in informing customers of your exact product or service that meets their needs. It’s a great tool and should be seriously considered as a part of any social media marketing strategy, as it can be highly effective and relatively inexpensive. But in saying that, it’s important to remember that Facebook ads are a financial investment that could turn costly if not used (or utilized!) correctly.

 

Here are 5 common mistakes businesses make when using Facebook ads that end up costing them:

 

One: Having too many demographics represented within one ad. The beauty of Facebook ads is that you can target your ads – with amazing specificity, to those who want to see it most. Not using this to its fullest advantage decreases its effectiveness and costs you more in the long run.

 

Two: Running unpopular posts as ads. A great way to determine if you should spend money on a particular Facebook ad is to look at how it does outside of the paid advertising space. If your post isn’t generating likes and shares organically, it’s not likely to do so by paying for its continued distribution. Purchasing ad space for (or paying to ‘boost’) a post like this will cost you money but unlikely to generate much economic or social profit for your company or brand.

 

Three: Not managing a Facebook ad campaign after implementing it. Even the greatest and most successful of ads will always becoming less popular over time because your targeted audience, even though they loved it at first, grows tired of seeing it again and again. It’s a phenomenon commonly known as Facebook ad fatigue, and it will cost you money because over time, you’re essentially paying the same price for an unpopular ad as you did for a popular one.  The good news is that this is easily remedied through ad managing (tracking the constant shift in an ad’s value to differing consumer groups) and adjusting accordingly.

 

Four: Ignoring Facebook Pixel Settings. Facebook pixel is a code you place on your website that allows you to track visitors to and around your website. Using it to accumulate accurate visitor data is key to successfully targeting Facebook ads to the right consumer groups later on, so getting the settings right is important. To obtain the most thorough and accurate data, make sure your pixel cookie settings are set to first-party (by default Pixel is set to third-party but most browsers are preparing to remove third-party cookies in the near future and which, when done, would effectively strip Facebook pixel of its tracking power) and turn on Automatic Advanced Matching (this allows the tracking of microdata, a more focused subset of collected data that gives a bigger, better, overall view of your website visitors).

 

And for the record, even if you’re not using Facebook ads now, you’ll want to install this code anyway so that it can begin to gather data now, but used later. Because when it comes to marketing, especially in regards to Facebook ads, the more data, the better!

 

Five: Not using reminder or testimonial ads. As attention spans get shorter, it’s easier for your customers to forget to complete an action they started on your website, like completing an online purchase, signing up for an eNewsletter, or filling in an online questionnaire mid-way.  Using pixel to learn who they are and then using Facebook ads to prompt them to finish what they started is a highly effective marketing strategy.

 

Also important for any product or brand is the concept of trust. Consumers are social creatures that rely on trust when making decisions with unknown companies, so using customer testimonials within Facebook ads are a highly effective tool.

 

Using Facebook ads’ targeting capabilities to run reminder or testimonial-based ads are so effective, in fact, that not using them in your social media marketing strategy is a mistake that can easily mean a loss of potential profit to you, costly, indeed, even if perhaps not in a direct sense.

 

 

If you’re thinking about including Facebook ads as part of your social media marketing strategy but not sure the best way to do so, or are currently using Facebook ads but aren’t seeing the results you want, give us a call. We are a leading digital marketing and social media marketing agency in Estepona, Marbella with years of experience and can make the most of your advertising budget, no matter how big or how small it is!