New marketers usually get onto Facebook ads, spend lots of money, lose it and then start wondering why things aren’t working for them. The reason why things don’t go according to their initial expectations is that there are a bunch of common mistakes that make which end up ruining everything.
In this article, we are sharing a list of common mistakes made by new marketers according to Steve Bruce, the owner of SteveBruce Agency. Steve is a Facebook marketing expert from the USA who has worked on hundreds of clients’ Facebook ad accounts. He has conducted free Facebook ad campaign audits for people on Reddit and here are the common mistakes he noted in the process.
- Having multiple interests and/or behaviors in one ad set (stacked audiences)
Doing this defeats the purpose of testing because you don't know which interest is bringing in the results. Many other reasons to not do this during testing including you could have a great interest stacked with a bad one and that could skew the potential results. There are some instances where maybe it would be okay to have 2 stacked interests if the audiences are very small, but what I was seeing people do often is stack over 10 interests and behaviors into a single ad set.
- Using CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) too early
CBO is not recommended for the testing stage in Facebook ads. Some people do fine with CBO for testing but it logically doesn't make sense because you don't have much control over the allocation of your budget. This is why adset budget is better for testing because when you want to put $20/day into one and set and $20/day into another, you know that the test is even. CBO most likely won’t even out that budget. Facebook will recommend doing CBO by giving you messages inside of the ads manager but most of what Facebook says in their ads manager is not based on your current situation. They don't know that you are in a testing phase and don't have enough data to do a CBO, they just see that you are trying to spend a certain amount per day and they recommend CBO. You should use CBO once you've properly tested at least 4 audiences with ad set budget optimization.
- Creating lookalike audiences with low-quality data
In the beginning, when people don’t see sales, they rush to create lookalike audiences from video views, website traffic, and page engagement. The problem is that most of these lookalike audiences are based on people who don’t buy. The issue could be that you are getting very low-quality traffic from Facebook and creating lookalike audiences with such data is just going to find more people similar to that low-quality data.
There is probably something wrong with your targeting as it is and you need to stick to interest targeting and optimizing for purchase conversions. If you have a sort of "niche product" and you think that you can't target them based on interests then you are not thinking outside of the box enough to find interests to test.
- Interests narrowing and exclusions
A rule of thumb when it comes to Facebook's targeting is you want to make it easy for Facebook to find who it is you are looking for. When you add too many constraints on your targeting, it requires Facebook to work extra hard on figuring out who to put your ad in front of and Facebook makes you pay for that extra work it has to do by raising your CPM substantially.
- Trying to target high-income people
Just because someone has a lot of money doesn't mean they are going to shop at your store. You aren't going to have better luck targeting the top 10% of zip codes based on income for your $20 sunglasses. Higher-income people resonate better with name-brand products that have credibility behind them so you would probably need to build up credibility, stellar branding, and high-quality products before attempting to target high-income people on Facebook.
- Targeting interests that are too obvious
Your target demographic has many layers to their personality and social media behavior. When you sell a certain product and you only target the interest that is literally named the same thing that your product is, then you are limiting yourself to interests that your competition is probably targeting as well. Some of the best interests I've run ads towards with Facebook ads are two or three degrees of separation from the product. I've sold supplements that were geared towards people who engage in certain activities, so instead of just targeting "supplement", I targeted "activity" interests. I've targeted music interests based on certain elements of a product that I've run ads for, and the product wasn't a music-related product at all but people who liked that product typically listened to a certain type of music as well.
- Focusing on cheap link clicks instead of purchases
The amount that you pay for a click does not matter if you are getting little to no sales. You want to pay more for expensive clicks from people that Facebook deems as likely to make a purchase or whatever action you are wanting them to do. I've audited a few campaigns where they ran two ad sets and the owner of the ad account concluded that "Ad Set 1" was better than "Ad Set 2" because it got clicks for half the cost. But neither of them got a sale, so neither is better than the other. I've also audited campaigns where the store owner says "this ad did well, it got over 1 000 clicks" but it got zero sales. Typically this was done with an improper campaign setup anyway so none of those clicks were going to convert.
- Not testing ads and audiences for long enough
One campaign that I audited turned off an ad after just a few hours of letting it run because Facebook was spending the money too fast. I recommend letting a test run for at least 5 days. If the ad is set up properly then you will have some good days, some bad days, and some okay days. I've seen many times where the best day ever is right after a very bad day. Know that a bad day is still data for Facebook because it is learning what not to do.
- Hanging on to an audience that stopped working
Audiences, ads, and campaigns can eventually stop working after a certain amount of time, regardless of how well they worked at one time. There are many reasons for this to happen which would be a whole post on its own, but if you're struggling to get an audience to work then just move on and try again in the future. I audited a campaign that was running ads to a specific lookalike audience that was set up very odd and it wasn't producing them very good results recently anyway, so I recommended that they turn it off and try setting it up a different way that would be more likely to work. The user did not take the advice because that was their best-performing audience many months ago. This is why you want to be diverse with your targeting so that when an audience stops working, you don't cling to it.
- Setting up a funnel that is filled with low-quality data
Running traffic campaigns is just going to get you a ton of traffic that is most likely not going to turn into a purchase. You are more likely to get a purchase from 100 high-quality clicks than you would 1 000 low-quality clicks. Traffic campaigns give you the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel traffic that Facebook has to offer. What I see people do is set up a funnel with traffic campaigns at the top, and retarget at the bottom with a campaign optimized for conversions. This makes sense in theory, but in practice, you are just continuing to retarget the low-quality traffic. And it just costs too much money to spend going after those low-quality clicks over and over again when you could just go straight for the purchase conversions campaign traffic. Those are the ones that are more likely to purchase without needing to see the ads 5 times. There are a lot of impulse buyers within those campaigns. Do this even if your store has zero purchases.
- Worrying about 4 steps ahead when they are still on step 1
"I'm spending $50/day but what should I expect when I am scaling and spending $1 000/day?" This is one of those situations where a person can be trying to solve a problem that hasn't even happened yet. You're essentially taking focus away from the step you are at right now and projecting it into a future scenario that may or may not happen.
Conclusion
Most of the mistakes shared in this article were from ad accounts that are in the early testing stage and spending under $100/day. The majority of these mistakes are related to what not to do during the testing stage in an ad account.
To succeed as a newbie in this space, you should always be learning from successful individuals and be ready to adapt quickly. Our website has lots of guides and case studies from successful Facebook marketers who are sharing their strategies, experience, and tips that can help new marketers to see success.
