4 Things That Are Holding Back Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Facebook is one of the premier platforms for digital advertising. The platform serves millions of users daily and offers advertisers some unique opportunities for promoting their product or service. However, most businesses aren’t able to optimize their Facebook advertisements and waste time and money as a result. SocialMediaExaminer.com reported that a mere 42% of businesses tracked their social media spending.

If you aren’t tracking your social media campaigns, your advertisements are never going to earn you the right amount of ROI. If you’ve not been seeing optimal results on your Facebook campaigns, here are some things you might be doing wrong.

1. Your target audience is too broad.

If you want to increase conversions, you have to qualify your prospects. You will achieve maximum ROI when you target people who have already demonstrated that they are interested in the kind of product or service you are offering.

You should add a section on your Facebook page which outlines what your company does and why you are better than your competitors. To entice your visitors even more, create a link which leads them to some free gift — an e-book, video or software tool which offers real value.

Additionally, you need to use Facebook’s age and income targeting tools to target your ideal customer profile. For example, if you are selling wedding photography services, it would make sense to target a slightly younger audience.

2. You’re selling too aggressively.

Selling a product online is a process which requires that you gain your prospect’s trust. If the first thing they see on your website or Facebook page is a link asking them to buy something, you won’t get too many conversions. Instead, you should employ a more indirect sales funnel.

Your advertisement shouldn’t directly ask for the sale. It should lead visitors to a page which offers them something of value for free. From this page, you can redirect visitors to your Facebook page and encourage them to like it. Once they’ve liked your Facebook page, you can send them to another landing page which asks for an opt-in and then leads them through a sales funnel.

3. You’re not tracking your campaign efficiently enough.

If you’re measuring the success of your ads solely on the ROI they generate, you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle. Often, making small adjustments to an ad can lead to tremendous results.

Facebook offers a comprehensive set of tools for measuring several different aspects of your ad campaigns. One of the newest additions to Facebook’s analytics suite is a tool called Conversion Lift, which is a tool that provides in-depth information about the performance of your ads. For starters, it creates two groups of audience members – a control group which won’t see your ads and a random test group which will see them. Once these groups are established, you can run your campaign and share the conversion results with Facebook. Facebook then uses this data to measure the impact that your campaign has by comparing conversions in the two groups. You can also use this tool to run multiple versions of ads concurrently to see which one performs the best.

4. You’re using ‘Boost Post’ too often.

Social media marketing requires a more nuanced approach than just throwing money at the problem. When you choose the Boost Post option, you’re putting yourself at the mercy of Facebook. They’ll put your ad wherever they want to, and while you will still have a little control over the targeting, it’s nothing compared to the power of the Ads Manager and Power Editor tools. Boosting a post is easy, but it’s less effective.

Facebook advertising offers smart advertisers massive ROI. You just have to take the time to understand how the different tools Facebook provides you work. Once you’ve used the tips mentioned above to elevate your campaigns, you’ll be able to outclass your competitors easily.