Critical Success Factors of Facebook Ads

With over 1 billion active users, and the ability to inexpensively target your customers based on thousands of variables, Facebook advertising can drive significant sales for any type of business.

However, most small businesses fail at Facebook advertising, because they find it too complex, or are not executing by the right strategy.

Facebook Advertising represents a brilliant opportunity for marketers. In September 2016, the total number of Facebook advertisers had reached 4 million — this figure was 3 million only six months before!

Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, attributes this growth to the continued mass adoption of mobile internet access across the world. Mobile advertising made up 84% of the company’s total sales in the second quarter of 2016.

Despite these facts, not every campaign is successful. Unfortunately, if your ads aren’t connecting well with your target audience, it is likely that you are making one (or more) of the following mistakes:

• Wrong Audience:

The first and foremost process is to clearly refine your target audience. The more specific with your targeting, the more likely people will resonate with your Ads.

Its recommended to write up a Buyer profile of your ideal customer and should include information such as age, gender, income, and marital status, their interests, pain points and values.

• Wrong Image Choice:

Facebook Posts with images are more engaging than those without. So, Selecting the appropriate images for your ads is crucial.

Remember that your advert will show up in your target audience’s News Feed, so fit in by choosing high-resolution images. You can include a border around your ad to make it stand out as well. Don’t neglect seasonal themes and current affairs such as Christmas trees and Easter eggs. Vibrant colors are great, but try to avoid blue and white as a scheme, as this can be confused with Facebook’s branding. Boring stock pictures won’t attract much attention. So It is recommended to go for Split testing.

• Boring Headline:

In the age of technological advancement, people have incredibly short attention spans. After image, if your headline doesn’t attract attention, they’ll simply scroll past your ad and you will end up missing the opportunity.

Being too witty or humorous can also be detrimental. It’s more effective to succinctly state how your product or service will benefit your customer. Benefits with specific numbers and a reasonable time frame work best.

You can go with a news headline, how-to headline, question headline or direct headline, but your headline should ideally address your user’s problem and how your product will solve it.

If you have an amazing USP, include it in your headline.

Always use powerful, emotive words in your headlines. Also, don’t be afraid to use negativity as an emotional driving force. Some people are motivated by running away from things they dislike, while others are motivated by moving toward things that they like – both play a huge role in purchasing decisions.

• No Call-to-Action

Usually when a person is viewing your ad, he will take action immediately. Whether you want the person to sign up to your mailing list, purchase a product, or download your free e-book, make sure to tell them specifically what to do right now and integrate a sense of urgency/scarcity to encourage action.

If you can provide something of high value as a free offer, this is often greatly effective.

• Poorly Designed and Developed Landing Page:

After winning half of the battle, when your prospect clicks through to your site, they should be taken to a landing page specifically designed for the Facebook ad campaign, so they can smoothly move through your marketing funnel.

Common landing page mistakes include:

• Sending prospects to your homepage instead of a specific landing page
• A poor design/layout or a stylistically incongruent page from what they would expect based on your ad.
• Too many distractions without one clear call-to-action.
• No privacy policy or terms and conditions link.
• No testimonials or proof elements.
• Usage of Jargons:

If a prospect is reading your ad and doesn’t understand some of the Industry related terms, this may immediately destroy the chances of them converting. In other words, speak in plain, conversational prose and don’t make your ads less intelligible than they need to be.

• Discussing Features, not Benefits:

As per human psychology, people tend to make purchasing decisions based on emotional inclinations rather than rational thinking. By focusing on the emotional benefits of your product in your ad instead of logical features, people will be more encouraged to buy.

• Underestimating Competitors:

By examining the ads made by other companies, even those in completely different markets, you can start to pick up on common patterns.

A good Facebook ad doesn’t need to be sophisticated, it simply needs to convert. So, don’t be afraid to take inspiration from those who have gone before you.

• Overlooking Conversion Tracking:

Being able to track your results with complete accuracy is only possible with Facebook Pixel — a piece of code that needs to be installed on your website. Once installed, you can track visitors from Facebook to your site and use this information to build custom audiences for your ad campaigns.

So, don’t get discouraged if your ad campaign isn’t working at first. You just need to keep tweaking until you succeed.

I hope you can avoid making mistakes yourself. If you can think of any other common Facebook Advertising mistakes? Don’t forget to mention it on the comments.

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