6 Common Facebook Ads Issues and How to Solve Them

With 2.8 billion monthly active users, there’s a good chance that at least a portion of your target audience uses Facebook. If you’re dipping your toes into the world of Facebook Ads Manager, however, you may feel a bit over your head. Find out how to make sense of your metrics and optimize your ad campaigns with insight into these common Facebook ads issues.

Avoid These Facebook Advertising Problems

Facebook is constantly making tweaks to Business Manager and advertising options. However, one thing has stayed consistent over recent Facebook years; the algorithm is not kind to business pages. Seasoned marketers will note that organic reach has shrunk over the years. Even if you’re following platform best practices, businesses are all but required to run ads to show up in their audience’s newsfeed.

However, running effective ads takes more than clicking the ‘Boost’ button. If you’re guilty of making one of the following mistakes, then you’re probably not getting the most bang for your buck.

1. Targeting the Wrong Audience

One of the most important steps in setting up your Facebook ad set is determining your target demographics. To be effective, you’ll need to consider your target audience. For instance, a wedding dress boutique will want to set parameters in their ad set so that their content shows up for engaged women within a reasonable driving distance from their shop. However, a B2B company that offers a digital service may keep their location targeting broad and get granular when targeting interests or professions.

Taking it a step further, you may want to try retargeting or building custom audiences from your website traffic. However, keep in mind that off-platform metrics are limited as a result of Apple’s iOS 14 rollout last year.

2. Using Boring or Busy Images

If your audience is adequately defined, it’s time to look at your creative. Consider how you interact with social media on a daily basis. You likely check your feed while waiting in line at the coffee shop, in the couple of minutes before a meeting starts, or at night while you unwind. That means that your ad will need to catch a user’s attention pretty quickly to be effective. Keep the three C’s in mind when creating images and copy; concise, clear, and compelling.

3. Ignoring the CTA

On that note, if you haven’t incorporated a call to action (CTA) in your ads, you almost definitely should. Facebook allows you to set a button with relevant messaging, which you can link to a landing page, chat, or an Instant Experience.

4. Not Tracking Click-Through Rates

If you aren’t monitoring and tracking the results of your ad campaigns, it’s impossible to know what the money in your ad account is accomplishing. The goals of your ads may range from brand awareness to a bottom-of-the-funnel purchase. Whatever the result, keeping track of your click-through rates (CTR) and conversions will help you measure the effectiveness of your ads.

5. Failing to A/B Test

Different CTAs, audience targeting, images, and copy will yield different results. To know what works best for your goals, it’s best to test your campaigns over time. This means that you will run two campaigns at once and measure the results to see which performs best. From there, the top-performing ad is run against another ad to test and tweak continually for optimization.

6. Not Giving Ads Enough Time

Determining your audience, creating compelling images, and measuring and tracking the effectiveness of your ads takes time. If you cannot dedicate the resources and ad spend necessary, you are more likely to run ineffective ads.

Facebook marketing has numerous moving parts and can be challenging. If you could benefit from professional social media marketing services, consider contacting Front Porch Solutions! Our experienced digital marketing team can help you make the most of your Facebook advertising efforts.