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Advertising
Published:
June 21, 2023
Updated:
January 22, 2024

10 Common Facebook Ad Mistakes (and How You Can Avoid Them)

Gouri Sasidharan

10 Common Facebook Ad Mistakes (and How You Can Avoid Them)

Published:
June 19, 2023
Updated:
January 22, 2024
Gouri Sasidharan

Highlights

 There are over 2 billion visits to Facebook.com per day and it is the third most-visited website in the world at present. So, it’s natural for users to come across several Facebook ads. But are you worried that your ad is not one of them? 

With all the budget spent, the number of working hours, and a lot of intuition-based decisions, are your Facebook ad campaigns achieving the desired goal? 

Here are some common mistakes that could happen while overseeing the production of your Facebook ads and how you can fix them to ensure your prospects actually see your ads.

1. Targeting the wrong audience

With over 2.98 billion worldwide users, Facebook is a great platform to promote your brand or product through ads. But finding the relevant target audience is not a menial task. Failing to target the right audience can lead to low engagement and wasted ad spending.

For example, suppose you're promoting a high-end fashion brand targeting women aged 25-40, but your ads are shown to a broad audience of all ages and genders.

What can you do?

Did you know you could review and filter your target audience? If you explore your Facebook Ads Manager, a tool called ‘Audience Size’ tells you whether you are going with a narrow or broad audience. 

Another way is to find the right audience is by analyzing your competitors’ audience and reconnecting with users who have already shown interest in your product.

In the scenario above, you can refine your audience by selecting specific age ranges and gender preferences to ensure your ads reach the intended audience.

2. Including poor creatives

Ad visuals are one of the key elements to capturing the user’s attention. If they are dull or unappealing, they may not scroll stop, or generate clicks. A travel agency, for example, might have a problem engaging users with low-quality pictures or common stock photos.

What can you do?

Invest in good design and create high-quality visuals that match your brand and connect with your audience. To make this process easier, think about using workflow automation. It's like having a handy assistant that handles repetitive tasks, letting your creative team concentrate on making eye-catching visuals.

Here, for your travel agency, you can use vibrant pictures of real customers enjoying their holiday destinations. 

Facebook ad with captivating visual and copy for Great Wolf Lodge.
The visual vouches for a great getaway.

3. Wrong ad placement and size

Using the wrong ad size or placement in Facebook ads can result in poor visibility, low engagement, and ineffective campaign performance. For example, if you use an ad image that doesn't meet the recommended size requirements, it may appear distorted or cropped, negatively affecting the overall user experience. You and your team should know the required aspect ratio for each type of Facebook ad and its placements. If you don’t follow it, Meta can limit the number of ads that you can run on its platform. Moreover, incorporating a reliable brand compliance software ensures that your ads adhere to brand guidelines and industry regulations, preventing any potential issues in the long run.

Additionally, choosing inappropriate ad placements can result in your ads being displayed in locations where your target audience is less likely to see them, leading to wasted ad spend.

What can you do?

Nailing the right Facebook ad sizes and specs is a matter of simple job. But don’t know where to look? We have a set of free templates that could help you!

Also, you can always resize or scale your creatives which would both save time and resources.  

4. Weak Call-to-Action (CTA)

Failing to include a clear and interesting CTA in your ads can cause lower conversion rates. Without a specific action to take, users may not know how to engage with your brand.

What can you do?

Use strong and actionable CTAs that encourage users to take the desired action. For example, instead of a generic "Learn More" CTA, use "Get Your Free Ebook Now" or "Claim Your Discount Today." The CTA should be aligned with your campaign objective and clearly communicate the value users will receive by clicking on it. 

Also, make sure you’re not adding multiple CTAs to a single ad. It can be confusing for viewers and they may not take the next desired step.

You can even use AI to generate relevant ad copy and CTAs for your creatives in case you're struggling. Artwork Flow’s Creative Studio can generate copy for when you’re facing writer’s block and also scale the creative across dimensions. 

Babbel offers discount on all its learning packs.

5. Not optimizing your content

Forgetting to optimize your ads after they start running is one of the common creative mistakes that you are making in any ad campaign. This can lead to lower conversions and a bad ROI. 

Bonus tip #1: Track the performance of your ad campaigns every day to see how your ads are coming along the way.

There are several ads existing and constantly evolving along with your target audience. So, just like how you would update or optimize an old article or blog post, optimize your ad posts as well. 

What can you do?

Keep a close eye on key metrics like click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, return on ad spend (ROAS), and more. You can use Facebook Ads Manager or creative analytics tools to track and analyze the data. Identify underperforming ads or where they have gone wrong and make data-driven decisions to optimize them. For example, if an ad has a high CTR but a low conversion rate, consider optimizing the landing page.

Bonus tip #2: For conversions, always remember to link your ads to either a landing page or a product page. The homepage is majorly designed to drive brand awareness and not convert users.

6. Neglecting A/B testing 

Imagine running a single ad with the same image, headline, and copy for an entire campaign. Does that sound interesting? While finalizing your ad, not trying different variations of your ads can stop you from optimizing your creatives and facilitating a smooth customer experience. Testing your creatives is a good way to improve your campaigns rather than focusing on different audiences. 

What can you do?

Create multiple ad variations with different images, headlines, or CTA buttons. Test each variation against a specific audience segment and analyze performance metrics. For instance, you can test two variations of a headline: one focusing on affordability and another emphasizing quality. Determine which version resonates better with your audience and allocate more budget to the winning ad.

Don’t want to blow your A/B testing budget? Use Artwork Flow to say hi to AI-enabled creatives that can run on Facebook and give you real insights into each element such as text sentiment, color, aspect ratio, and text area (%).

7. Not mobile-friendly

If your ads are not optimized for mobile, it could lead to a poor user experience, as a significant portion of Facebook users access the platform through their mobile devices. Your ads may not display properly or load slowly, resulting in high bounce rates.

What can you do?

Ensure that your ad creatives, landing pages, and website are mobile-friendly and responsive. Optimize image sizes for faster loading, use concise and scannable text, and ensure your landing pages are easy to navigate on mobile devices. Test your ads across various mobile devices to ensure a seamless experience for your potential users.

Facebook is a mobile friendly app too.

8. Ignoring personalization

Have you been customizing your ads based on your audience's behavior and preferences? If not, then you need to think from their perspective before planning an ad campaign.

What can you do?

To create an ad your target audience would click on, you need to learn how they are reacting to your creatives. A creative intelligence tool uses predictive analytics to get insights into how your customers are responding to your ads. This helps you to craft personalized ad content that speaks directly to your target audience, increasing the chances of engagement and conversions.

9. Reusing the same content

If you’ve been using the same ads for the past couple of weeks or months, then it’s high time to replace them. Seeing the same ad in a loop can cause banner blindness among users and you might see a dip in engagement.

What can you do?

You can repurpose instead of reusing your content. There’s a difference between the two. Repurposing means identifying an ad that gives you excellent outcomes and you can do multiple iterations keeping the base and tone of message the same. Now it’s super easy to create with creative automation software

10. Avoiding your competition

If you are not aware of how your competitors’ ads are performing there’s a void in your advertising strategy. You cannot find inspiration or find out how you’re doing with the audience on Facebook. 

What can you do?

If you want to learn where your ads are standing in the market, then make it a healthy practice to analyze your competitors’ Facebook ads. This not only helps you in finding inspiration but also helps you to design ad strategies that make you stand out. 

Make no more mistakes with Artwork Flow

Artwork Flow checklist

Artwork Flow provides powerful tools like creative intelligence and creative automation software that turn your ad strategies into a breeze.

1. Creative intelligence

This product allows you to say goodbye to all intuition-based decisions about your creatives. From analyzing your audience's behavior to giving you insights into how your ads are performing (based on KPIs such as CTRs and conversions), Artwork Flow can help you boost engagement along with maximizing ROI for your Facebook ads.

2. Creative automation

It helps reduce your team’s work by half. Whether you're scaling creatives, proofing them, or personalizing and localizing your ad content, you can collaborate with your team and publish from anywhere. Such tools help you maintain brand consistency and stay compliant across several creatives and social media platforms.

Conclusion

There’s tremendous competition for advertising on Facebook. So, to achieve your advertising goals, it is best to avoid these common slips. This way you can improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and maximize your return on investment. Remember to continuously monitor and optimize your ads based on performance data for ongoing success.

Want to run successful ads on Facebook? Connect with the Artwork Flow team today for a free 7-day trial or to book a demo.

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