11 Reasons Why Your Facebook Ad Campaign May Not be Working for You

1. You're Not Reaching the Right Audience

Facebook has huge amounts of data, but, its user generated and therefore cannot be 100% accurate. Algorithms used by Facebook when we check in or share posts means assumptions are made about that user and in turn, factor into the suggested audiences that are generated. If you look at your own interests that Facebook assume you like, you will see some that are just not “you”, so in reality, some of your targeted audience may not be interested.

2. Your Audience is Too Broad

If you try and target a broad audience you are increasing the amount of competition that would be targeting the same demographics. So, this translates into a higher pay-per-click and less impressions, therefore a lower conversion rate.

But bear in mind that sometimes, where you are running a brand awareness campaign, for example - your objective is to increase the visibility and interactions with your brand not necessarily conversions. A broad spread is useful, but you still need to filter out certain demographics.

3. Your Audience is Too Narrow

But! If you narrow the field too much this can also limit your results, so trying to get too specific whilst not as costly on a pay per click option, also means your ads may not get the traction you want.

4. You're Not Retargeting

One effective way to assist your campaign is with retargeting/remarketing. If a prospect has made an interaction with your business, the likelihood is your offering is of interest to them. By retargeting, you can spend more time focusing on the people who are interested in your business and less on those who aren’t.

5. You're Not Using Video

If you’re not using video, especially on Facebook, you’re missing out on a hugely engaging market. Take a look through your news feed and you will see a huge number are videos. Engagement with video shows that they make an impact, particularly if they are short snappy tit-bits that deliver your messages in a slick, engaging way. 

With the latest statistics showing that attention spans are reducing to less than 6 seconds, you need to make sure that the content you deliver can grab attention.

6. You're Using Generic Stock Images

How often do you scroll through your feed and see the same image used by different companies all vying for your attention? When surrounded by images from family gatherings and selfies, the highly polished images stand out a mile and often turn potential customers off. Whilst we all want to make sure that our businesses hold a degree of brand integrity, sometimes getting a little dirty and raw on the images can engage more than a fully polished and posed version. 

7. Your Copy Isn't User-Focused

Read through copy that you find engaging and you’ll usually see that its uses words like your and you. It speaks to the person reading and engages at a personal level. 

Any copy that starts using us, we, and I, fails to engage as a reader is typically more interested in what is best for them and not best for you. If you can speak directly, or as close as possible to your audience, the likelihood of encouraging more interaction with your business is stronger.

8. You're Asking Too Much

The process of buying is a staged affair, a buyer will go through a number of stages before they purchase. Through this process, you will need to target the buyer at their current stage, which means you need a staged marketing campaign. 

It can be split simply in the three stages of awareness, consideration and decision. If you just focus on decision without the other two, expecting conversions is unrealistic.

Don’t ask too much of your audience at one time.

9. You're Not Using a Custom Landing Page

You’ve don’t the hard work and your customer has clicked… but where do you send them? How often have you clicked a link that just goes to a home page where you need to then search for the offer you wanted to take advantage of?

Make sure that you have a custom landing page that offers your customer all of the information they need to take up your offer. It can be a blog post, or a product page with an offer banner. But whatever direction you point your customer in, ensure they can take up the offer you present to them easily.

10. You're Not Spending Enough

Like many things in life, you do get what you pay for. Facebook Ads are not exempt from this philosophy. Facebook is cost effective compared to many other platforms, but if you budget too low you will see low or declining impressions. 

One option is to increase your pay-per-click (manual bidding) or your budget (automatic bidding) to see how much more interest you can generate with a small budgetary increase. 

11. You're Not Split Testing

If you don’t know what a split test is, you need to get on the band wagon immediately! Split testing should be a standard implementation you make across all your campaigns. Simply, it allows you to test multiple adverts with slight differences to see which one works best across a selection of the data.

This allows you to see which is the most effective and efficient campaign. It can also choose which one performs best, then collate positive feedback to improve your campaigns.

Conclusion

All of the points above allow you to find best practice for your advertising strategy via Facebook (and other social media platforms) and ensure you are communicating in the best way to your prospects and as a result, turning them in to long term customers.