As online entrepreneurs, we’re used to high learning curves and dusting ourselves off when things haven’t gone perfectly.
Sinking money in to a Facebook ad campaign that didn’t offer an ideal return can certainly sting. But trust me, it has happened to the best of us.
Here are some of the reasons your campaign may have failed and what you can do next time.
Start your campaign off right.
I’m a huge believer in ad testing. But this can get tricky when you’re just getting started in advertising your business. If your budget is small and you’re testing, your ad budget might be “too small” to gain any social proof traction. You need about 10,000 impressions to evaluate which ads work and which don’t, so if you are working with a tiny budget, it can take a while to hit that threshold. If you’re serving the same target audience many different versions of the ad, your ads likely aren’t gathering the likes and shares that they might if you test one ad at a time.
In order to start your campaign off right, you can start with a much higher daily budget and taper off once you’ve figured out which ads are working. You can also set up your ad with a campaign budget versus daily budget and slowly increase your audience targeting.
Get Relevant.
You’ve probably heard of Facebook ads relevance score. If you haven’t, the Facebook relevancy score is a 1-10 number that shows how relevant your ad is to your target audience.
And having a low relevance score can cost you A LOT. AdEspresso recently published a test where they ran an ad with a relevance score of 2.9 points versus one with a relevance score of 8.0 points. The ad with the 2.9 score ran on an average of $0.142 per website click while the ad with the 8.0 score was at a cost per click of $0.03.
That’s a 473% difference! If you’re working with a small budget, that’s a HUGE difference in the amount of click throughs you’ll get.
The Ad Fatigue Struggle is Real
We like to think that everyone loves us and wants to see our ads… but the truth is people get sick of seeing them grace their newsfeed.
Ad fatigue is the symptom of people seeing your ads for multiple times. A high ad frequency means that the same user has seen a particular ad for already 5 or 10 times.
If someone has seen your ad three times or more and hasn’t clicked on it, odds are that they’re just. not. interested. Because of the high frequency of seeing the ads without taking action on it, your costs per action on your ad increase something fierce when your ad frequency increase above 3. Keep an eye on your audiences and the delivery frequency. If you notice your prices increasing and your click throughs dropping, this is a sign that now is a good time to switch up your advertising.
Make Sure You’re Optimizing Your Ads
If you’re running a great ad in the same campaign as a terrible ad, your overall spend and success is going to be somewhere in the middle.
You want to make sure you’re pausing your crappy & expensive ads and letting your best ads continue. You can also duplicate your best ads and make adjustments to the audience, headline, creative or ad copy.
You want to make sure you’re frequently checking in on your ad campaigns to get rid the low-performers and give the high-performers a boost.
Don’t Adjust Too Much Too Quickly
According to Facebook: “It takes our ad delivery system 24 hours to adjust the performance level for your ad. It can take longer when you edit your ad frequently. To fix it, let your ad run for at least 24 hours before you edit it again. “
If you’re jumping in to your campaign day after day to tweak campaigns and make adjustments, you’re not giving Facebook a chance to adjust and optimize the last changes you made. You only want to make an adjustment once every 24 hours, then let your campaign settle in before making more changes.
Too Much Text on Your Ad
If your ad is showing too much text (20% or more), you’ll likely be paying higher rates for its delivery. If you need to include text, frequently check whether your ad’s being delivered at a normal rate. You may also receive a notification in your ad account from Facebook that your ad may be costing “too much” because of it’s high amount of text.
There are many more reasons that might affect your Facebook ad campaign’s success.
If your last campaign was a flop, comb through the statistics and insights to see where you might improve next time.
Some insights and areas to focus on include:
- CTR
- Relevancy Scores
- Frequency
- Landing Page Conversion Rates
- Negativity Score
I’d love to hear what other mistakes and problems you’re experiencing with Facebook ads – I’ll do my best to help you!
