The 3 Biggest Mistakes To Watch Out For When Setting Up Your Facebook ads

When I first started marketing, there was little to no advice on what to do but more importantly, there was little to no advice what NOT to do.

This meant that I made almost every mistake in the book, from targeting the wrong people, stopping ads too soon. Almost any mistake you can imagine - I made it.

Although at the time it felt horrible, I'm actually really glad I made so many mistakes. Like a piece of coal being forged into a diamond, my mistakes hardened me. I was able to see the flaws in ads before they happened AND prevent them.

I know that might sound minuscule now because I do marketing for a living, but back then it was a great development.

Although being able to make good ads was great for my own conversion rates, it was similar to breaking out of the matrix. I was able to see the flaws in the system.

Every ad I saw other businesses running were horrendous .Making the same mistakes over and over. That's actually the reason I wrote this article.

To try stop you from running the same horrendous ads I see other businesses running.

So, here's never waste money on bad marketing.

"Boosted Posts" The Bane of Small Businesses

This is the mistake I see most often and it's costing people thousands. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. They all do the same thing. They have a massively convoluted advertising system that actually works you can choose. Or they have a much simpler system of "boosting posts", which is complete horse sh*t.

Now I understand the Facebook & TikTok ads manager are hugely overcomplicated just look at this,

BUT! You shouldn't get tricked into using boosted posts and I'll tell you why...

They're not designed to get you clients, "boosting your post" means pushing your post out to more people to get more "interactions".

Facebook and TikTok like to hide behind the term "interaction" because it sounds like something useful, someone filling out a form, sending you a text asking about your service etc.

It's actually the opposite, "interactions" don't help you in the slightest.

An interaction merely means someone liking or commenting on your video.

That's fine and dandy when you're trying to get famous but when you're trying to make money back on ad spend it is far from ideal.

My honest advice, take the extra time it takes to learn how to navigate the real ads manager. It might take longer but your wallet will thank me in the future.

If you don't have the time to run your own marketing campaign, you can always get in touch with us here and I'll personally look over your marketing strategy and make sure you get a return on investment you're happy with.

Anyways that brings me on to the second most common mistake that I've personally made myself...

Ad Fatigue. The Sudden Death of A Good Campaign

When you're running an ad and it's performing well, the first thought is to let it keep running - not changing a thing. This works in most other things in life, we've all heard the saying, "Don't fix what isn't broken," but in marketing, leaving things alone is like setting off a ticking time bomb. One moment you're fine and money's coming in, the next moment you're spending hundreds a week to not get a single lead.

The reason for this is something called "Ad Fatigue", I made a whole article on it you can check out here:https://www.taitmarketing.co.uk/post/why-ad-fatigue-is-killing-your-advertising

The short story is, if you run the same ad for too long it gets shown to the same people multiple times.

This is terrible as it means your ads only get shown to people who aren't interested.

The way of fixing this is changing your ad creative (the photo or video in the ad) every 1-2 weeks. This allows your ad to target different people.

Again, there's a lot more which goes into stopping your ads from fatiguing but that's the general idea. This bring me on to the last and probably worst mistake you can make.

Treating Your Ads Like A Game of Hot Potato

I've seen it time after time with clients, they run an ad for 2 days it doesn't work change audiences and run for another 2 days and it doesn't work.

They repeat this cycle multiple times until they run out of money and decisively conclude that "Advertising just doesn't work".

Normally having this level of initiative is a good thing so I don't totally blame people when they do this.

However, the important thing most don't know is it actually takes Facebook's & TikTok's algorithm a few days to figure out where to place your ad.

This means if you change your ad every couple days, you restart this process over and over again and are never able to market to the right people.

What you should do is wait a few extra days, normally 5-7 days is a good time frame to see if an ad works or not.

I know it might seem daunting to let an ad keep running when at first it doesn't perform well, however the alternative is a sure fire way to lose everything you put in.

To wrap this up, if you're able to avoid these 3 mistakes your ad should be in a great place to make you some serious money.

On the other hand, if you'd like an expert to take a look at your marketing campaigns you can contact us here.

Otherwise,

Talk Soon.

Ryan