You’ve invested a lot of time and effort into creating the perfect Facebook ads, only they’re not performing like you expected to. If you’re puzzled why, FeedbackExpress has seven possible reasons for the causes.
1. Your Campaign Objective Doesn’t Fit Your Campaign
Facebook gives you a bunch of campaign objectives to choose from, like increasing traffic, conversions, reach, brand awareness and more. But if your actual goal doesn’t match your campaign, then you might not be having much luck with it.
If you’re just starting out, then your campaign objectives should be centred around things like expanding your reach and brand awareness. As you get deeper into the game, look at objectives like product catalogue sales (dynamic product updating) and video views (for introducing new products).
2. Not Enough People Are Reached By Your Ads
So you’ve matched your campaign objective with your end goal(s), but still not getting results. A really common reason is there just isn’t enough attention on your ads. You have to remember the behemoth that is Facebook: real estate is extremely precious, and you’re competing with funny cat videos, travel photos, links to articles, memes and tons of other stuff that catches someone’s eye.
Some things to consider are whether your ads look credible or clickbait-y and whether they’re dry and boring or inspire emotional reactions. And at the end of every ad should be a call-to-action.
3. Your Ad Campaign is Too Small or Too Big For Your Needs
Scaling properly can be one of the trickiest things of any Facebook ad campaign, as it requires a deft touch and knowing what’s too much and what’s not enough. And because each ad campaign needs advice on a case-by-case basis, here are two general rules you should be following:
- When you’re just starting out, or if you’re a small store, then slower, smaller scaling is much better so you can introduce changes gradually. You don’t have that much of a customer base that you can afford to alienate buyers, so slow and steady is usually the way to go.
- When you’re more established, you can scale faster because you’ve got a more solid foundation to absorb any errors or misdoings.
4. Your Ads Are in the Wrong Spots
There are tons of places you can put your Facebook ads in, ranging from Instagram (which is owned by Facebook), mobile feeds, news feeds, audience networks and others. Knowing where to put certain ads can be key to having them convert as efficiently as possible, which is especially important considering the cost of your ads fluctuates with their placement.
Generally, putting your ads in audience networks and Facebook is best for conversions and traffic, while Instagram tends to work great for brand awareness.
5. You’re Targeting the Wrong Audience
If you’re unfamiliar with ad campaigns, then one important thing to learn is different ad platforms have different requirements. For example, Google AdWords works on specialised keywords, while Facebook Ads hone in on audience and interest segments. Knowing where to cast your net means the most appropriate eyeballs will be seeing your ads.
When you’re just starting out, going with reach or brand awareness is a good place to start. And you’ll likely want to start off broadly so you can see exactly where to target, then narrow your focus from there so you can hit as closely to a one-on-one as possible.
6. Your Ads and Landing Pages Don’t Match
Let’s say you’re running an ad campaign that focuses on traffic or conversion, and you’re seeing the increased hits to your site. But if people visit your site and are greeted with a mess, not knowing how to search products or find the payment process too complicated, then you’re not making much use of that traffic. Take a good, hard look at your site to make sure it has things like a mobile design, visually appealing style, clear offers and policies (e.g. don’t advertise free shipping if it’s not available 100% across the board), and sales or specials that match the ad.
All of these things can make users feel burned, cheated, ripped off or confused, and none of that is good news for you. The more of that you can eliminate, the better use you can make of your Facebook ads.
7. Maybe Nobody’s Actually Seeing Your Ads
Finally, one possible reason that your Facebook ads might not be performing is nobody cares or sees them. Users are constantly bombarded by ads and it’s really easy to get fatigued by them, or develop a blind eye to them because everything just looks the same after a while.
If this happens (i.e. you notice a sudden and steep drop-off in your ROIs), then it’s time for a drastic change. Sometimes this means going in a totally different direction with images and style so you can re-catch your user’s attention, and sometimes it means taking a temporary break so you don’t over-saturate your users and risk permanently turning them off. Or maybe you need to totally reconsider who your audience is and start advertising to a new demographic. Facebook ads are usually fairly effective, so look carefully at why there’s such a big and sudden change.
