Facebook has come a long way from being the largest social media network to becoming one of the ideal platforms for online advertising. Nevertheless, Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tools. It is not only affordable but effective enough to grow your business.
As a matter of fact, a lot of marketers and advertisers have delved into Facebook Ads. They have used it to grow their business online.
Furthermore, a lot of advertisers have this misconception that Facebook Ads are complex in nature. But the fact is that they are of great use and are extremely powerful if you know how to use them properly.
Facebook Ads are a powerful platform for advertising, yet there are some marketers who still end up with negative ROI.
However, it is quite normal to feel nervous when your Facebook Ads are not performing the way they should. But instead of wasting all your time and energy in getting anxious, you should ask yourself where did you actually go wrong.
There can be a whole lot of possibilities of why your Facebook Ads are not working properly. You just have to identify the issue and put in your best to fix those problems.
Here are the possible reasons of why your Facebook Ads Campaigns are not performing well.
1. Wrong Audience Targeting
The most important part of your Facebook Ads Campaigns is the audience that you are targeting. There is no point of having the best ads in the world when you are targeting them to the wrong audience. They will anyways not at all work for you.
Facebook offers a wide range of audience targeting capabilities. Click To Tweet
There are still many advertisers who fail to take the advantage of the vast range of audience targeting options. They end up targeting the audience that is too small, too large or not relevant to their product/service.
Targeting the audience in Facebook Ads is quite different from that of Google AdWords. In AdWords, you keywords to build your audience. But with Facebook Ads, you start with an audience and then segment them according to the various demographics.
To make sure that your ads now perform better, base your audience according to the sales funnel that you will be marketing and your campaign objective.
Just in case, if you do not have a limit for your market size, to understand how well the ads can be targeted, you can use the results from your past campaigns.
If you receive a lot of responses, shrink your targeting criteria and if you receive few responses, adjust your targeting accordingly to reach the different audience groups.
2. Targeting Too Small Audience
If you become highly picky with the targeting options, you will see that your target audience will get smaller. It has certainly become a rule that if you apply too many targeting options, your target audience will become narrow or too small and hence your ads won’t run.
Applying too many targeting options makes your audience narrow. Click To Tweet
Since, in Facebook Ads, you basically start with the audience. It is, therefore, advised to get broad and then get narrow after putting a combination of demographics and interests.
Although is pretty good to run highly targeted ads, when you get too targeted, you ultimately make your target audience narrow which in turn increases the cost of your Facebook Ads Campaigns.
The reason why your audience is too small may be because you targeted the people who were connected with your Facebook Page, people who viewed a page of your website, people who watched your videos or those people who subscribed to you via emails.
The thing that happens here is that these people get to see your ads again and again which increases ad fatigue. This decreases the probability of getting the desired conversions.
3. Ads are Irrelevant to The Audience
You might have heard of Relevance Score if you deal with Facebook Ads. Relevance Score is a metric that tells you how interesting and appealing your ads are to your audience. It is calculated on the basis of positive and negative feedback that the ad receives from its target audience.
The more positive interactions the ad receives, the higher is the relevance score of the ad and vice versa. This score ranges from 1–10, 10th being the highest. You should also remember that the costs of your Facebook Ads Campaigns are going to go up if you have a low Relevance Score.
People on Facebook engage with your ads in two ways, positively or negatively. Click To Tweet
When people like, comment or share your ads, this means that they are engaging in a positive way. And when they report your ad as spam or hide your ad from their newsfeed, they are engaging in a negative way.
Each of the action of the people whether a positive or negative contribution to the overall Relevance Score. The better your Relevance Score, the more are your ads shown and the less you have to pay.
If you are facing low Relevance Score, you should not worry but focus on improving it. There are certain things that you can do to improve your Relevance Score.
You can start with split testing the images of your ads. It has been noted that images have a remarkable impact on the audience. In the same way, different images can have a drastic effect on different groups and audiences. You can use different variations of the images for different groups of audience.
The next thing that you can do is to refine your targeting options. Since no one likes to see the old Ad again and again, so make sure that you refine your ads on a regular basis and do not forget to make your ads interesting.
4. Not Setting The Right Campaign Objective
Facebook Ads gives you the opportunity to optimize your ads based on certain objectives of the campaigns. The main marketing objectives that are given to you are Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.
Thus, you have to choose the main objective and combine it with what you want to optimize your Facebook Ads for. Facebook will then prioritize your ads to show them to your target audience that is more likely to take the desired action.
Hence, while setting up the initial campaign, you must make sure that you choose the right campaign objective because choosing the wrong campaign objective can have a bad effect on the performance of your Facebook Ads Campaigns.
(I) Awareness
(i) Brand Awareness
This objective is better suited to those store owners who are looking forward to increasing the brand awareness of their business. This campaign objective is optimized to look to reach as many people as possible who will pay attention to your Facebook Ads. The main goal of this type of campaign objective to get as many impressions as possible.
To reach as many people who are more likely to pay attention to your ads and furthermore increase your brand awareness, you should use this type of campaign objective.
(ii) Reach
This is similar to the objective of brand awareness. The reach objective is designed to show your ads to a maximum number of people in your audience. This objective allows you to put a cap on the frequency on the ads and they are less likely to be shown to the same people.
Here, your ads are optimized for impressions and not the actions to be taken. This objective is particularly useful if you have a small audience size and wants everyone to see your ads. On the more, you can have a control on how regularly the audience sees your ads with the help of frequency capping control.
(II) Consideration
(i) Traffic
If you want to send the people from Facebook to your website where they do not have to take any specific action like filing a form or signing up, this is the best objective that you can choose from all the available options. This objective focuses on bringing more visitors to your website. It is also very useful if you are looking forward to promoting content mainly the blogs.
(ii) Engagement
This objective is ideal for giving your Facebook Page a boost. They show your ads to people of your target audience who are most likely to like, comment and share your posts. Furthermore, this is the best objective type when you if you want more exposure for your page content.
(iii) App Installs
This objective comes into action when you want to people to install your app. If you want to get as many downloads as possible to increase your app store ranking, the app install objective is a great way to start.
(iv) Video Views
As a matter of fact, the video content is becoming more popular as the days are passing. Owing to the increasing popularity and demand of videos, the video view has now become a marketing objective in Facebook Ads. This comes handy if you want people to watch your video.
(v) Lead Generation
The Facebook Ads that have the lead generation objective is displayed in the newsfeed and are direct clickers that are directed towards the lead form for collecting the contact information. This is one of the best ways to build a great database for your email marketing campaigns. You can also use it to create a form to collect the information of the of people.
(III) Conversions
(i) Conversions
This is one of the most important objectives if your aim is to increase the sales or complete a particular conversion oriented action. Here, your ads are optimized to get you the most conversions.
(ii) Product Catalogue Sales
This objective is perfectly designed for the eCommerce stores. This campaign objective will allow you to display your product variety. With this, you can create ads that automatically show products from your product catalogue based on your target audience. This comes in use to show product-specific remarketing ads to people after they have viewed the product on your website.
(iii) Store Visits
If you want to promote your multiple business locations to people who are nearby, you can use the store visits objective. This allows the people who are near to you, reach your store location.
5. Images Have Lots of Issues
The newsfeed of Facebook is indeed a very crowded place. The moment you open it, you get to see hundreds of images at once. Hence, to stand out from the crowd, you have to use an image that grabs the attention of the user instantly.
The image you choose should correlate with your ads and the offer. Click To Tweet
There is another aspect as to why you should use the perfect image. A majority of people use Facebook as a medium of social interactions. They are so busy rolling over the pictures of their friends, relatives and even acquaintances that they simply ignore your ads. They are least interested in viewing an ad that has a poor quality or irrelevant image.
Furthermore, when it comes to Facebook Ads, there are a lot of rules with respect to the images. The most common rule is the 20% Text Rule. According to the Facebook Standards, the images in your ads can only have 20% of the text which includes the logos, the slogans, watermarks or any other text that is there on the image.
You just can not have an image for your ad that is full of text. Click To Tweet
However, there are certain exceptions in the case of images. The 20% Text Rule is not applicable to the Product Image, Book and Album Covers, Games and Event Posters. Facebook also considers Magazine & Newspaper Covers, Movie & TV Show Poster, Charts as well as Graphs the exceptions of the 20% Text Rule.
Having a small image is also a problem. This is basically for the sidebar ads that have a relatively small area. You are going to lose a lot of detail. Your image will also look inappropriate if you try to shrink the image. It will look like a mess when you compress it.
It is true that some images work perfectly fine even when they are compressed. But it might not be the same for all the images. So it is always recommended to preview your image at a small size to make sure that it finishes.
6. Facebook Ads and Landing Page Do Not Correlate
When the visitors click on your Facebook Ads, they are directed towards a page that is specially created to complete the conversion objective. This page is popularly known as the Landing Page.
Just like the Facebook Ads are important for the advertiser, in the same way, the Landing Pages are also essentially important. Suppose you just wrote your best Facebook Ad that was highly engaging. The visitors are highly impressed by it and hence clicked on your Ad after being attracted by the offer that you mentioned in your Ad.
However, when the visitors were directed on your Landing Page, they could not trace the offer that you had mentioned in your Ad. feeling disappointed, they bounced back from your website without completing the conversion goal.
Make sure that your Facebook Ads and the Landing Pages perfectly correlate and match. Click To Tweet
On the more, if you are running a conversion or traffic campaign but then if your campaigns are not being followed by a good landing page, your visitors are going to leave without giving a second thought.
A lot of advertisers have this misconception that the Landing Page experience does not affect the Cost Per Click of the Facebook Ads. This is highly untrue. Having a bad landing page experience can actually reduce your Relevance Score that will increase the CPC of your Facebook Ads.
There are other reasons as well that lead to the bad landing page experience like having different Call-to-Actions in the Ad and Landing Page, not having a CTA at all, the message targeting everyone and not the particular audience, using unclear USP, giving poor mobile page experience and using no or wrong images.
7. Poorly Written Ad Copy
Facebook Ads do not give you a lot of space to give a detailed description of your product/service. You just have 25 characters for your title and 135 characters for the description. Precisely, you have a lot to say with just a little space. To make sure that your ads become highly productive, you have to use the characters as effectively as possible.
Use the character space effectively to make your ads highly productive. Click To Tweet
Just like the images are a very crucial factor for your Facebook Ads, in the same way, the Ad Copy is also a very important factor. The Ad Copy is a super important element in convincing your audience to take the desired conversion action, whether it is clicking on a link, watching a video, signing up or making a purchase for some product.
(I) Boring Headline
The most important element of the Ad Copy is the headline. Generally, the people surfing through Facebook are in a hurry and they just do not have the time to read your entire Ad. They just scan through the text, especially the headline.
On the more, you have to make sure that the headline of your Ad Copy is attention grabbing and not at all boring. Sometimes writing a simple and direct headline featuring your best keyphrase can work well.
(II) Not Having A Clear Value Proposition
You might be knowing that Facebook does not give you a lot of space to put as much of text as you like. Thus, you have to act smartly and include your value proposition in the available space. You have to give substantial time in figuring out what the people will get after clicking your ads.
While figuring this out you have to make sure that your value proposition is something that your potential customers need and something that they can easily get by clicking your ads.
To make the best headline, you have to manage to include your USP in it. Click To Tweet
(III) Ad Text is Not Appealing
If your Ad Text is not appealing, no one can save your Facebook Ads Campaigns from falling apart. What is the use of putting in so much of time, effort and money, when you are just writing a boring Ad Copy that no one actually cares about?
Consequently, you should know what it takes to write an attractive Ad Copy. To write an Ad Copy that is good enough to increase your conversion rate, you should first devote your time in understanding your audience.
Understand the intent of the buyers to make your Ads appealing. Click To Tweet
Once you have found your core buyers, you can easily see what their problems are and create an offer accordingly to help them solve their problems. Ensure that the Ad Copy is short, clear, precise and easy to follow.
(IV) Too Long Ad Text
This is another common and overlooked mistake that a lot of advertisers make while writing the Ad Copy. You have to understand that generally, people do not have the time to read a long text about the benefits and features of your product. They just need to have a quick understanding of whether they should click on your Ads or not.
Regardless to say that if you want to increase the engagement of your ad, you should ensure that the Ad Copy is short, clear, precise and easy to follow.
(V) Having No or Wrong Call-to-Action
It may be true that after having a great image and super compelling text, your ads might still not perform well. The reason being is that your Ads may either have a wrong CTA or no CTA at all.
If you yourself are unclear about the action that you would like the people to take, they will just move on to the next post in their news feed.
If your potential consumers are attracted by your ads and are ready to convert as well, the next thing is the CTA that they will look for. The moment they find the CTA, they will convert otherwise they will just move on.
Hence, by not including a strong and compelling CTA, you just lost a bunch of potential consumers who were on a verge of converting.
The above was the case of having no CTA at all. The next case is when the advertisers put in the wrong CTA. You might have heard the saying, “No information is better than having wrong information”.
By having no CTA your potential customers have just swayed away. But when you have a wrong CTA, that will lead them to click on your ad. This will cost you some amount.
Moreover, your visitors will get disappointed when they get directed towards your Landing Page because of the wrong CTA. Thus, they will bounce back.
(VI) Ads are Stale
You should be very careful about the staleness of the Ads while advertising on Facebook. There are a lot of experts who believe that the Ad becomes stale in a span of 2–3 days. So in order to prevent your ads from coming under the stale banner, you should consistently revise your Facebook Ad Campaigns to get more attention of your potential visitors.
If you are running Ads that are especially for certain holidays, you should make sure to turn them off after the holiday gets over.
8. Ads have been Wrongly Placed
There is a function in Facebook as pertaining to the placement of the ad. On the more, by default Facebook recommends displaying your ads on all the available placement opportunities. While some placements might prove to be good for your ads, there may be times when some placements might not just work for you.
Ad Placement directly affects the cost of Facebook Ads. Click To Tweet
If you are not placing your ads correctly, then it is quite obvious that your ads will not perform as they should have been.
When the Ad Placement is considered, it is not just the desktop or the mobile that is talked about. Placement options in Facebook Ads also include the Facebook News Feed, Mobile Feeds and Audience Networks as well.
You can conduct A/B testing of the placement options to find the best placement that works for you. Choose those placements that are the most appropriate for the ad type that you are creating, the objective that you are trying to achieve and the audience that you are targeting.
If you want to increase your conversions, then Facebook and Audience Network are the placements that are going to work the best for you. Furthermore, if you are looking to increase your brand awareness, you will see that Facebook is going to provide better results.
9. Ad Frequency is too high
Just imagine that when you log in to your Facebook Account, you are shown the same Ad again and again. You get frustrated while seeing the same ad and out of frustration you just report the Ad as spam. The same could happen to your Ads as well.
As an advertiser, you should better know how many times you are planning to show your ads to the user so that he/she can take the desired action.
You should understand that Facebook Ads are interactive. In the sense that the people can submit feedbacks and it can be both positive and negative. However, positive feedbacks can enhance your Relevance Score while negative feedbacks can actually drag your Relevance Score down.
Maintain your Ad Frequency in Facebook at a medium level. Having too low Ad Frequency would mean that you are missing a part of your audience. Whereas, having too high Ad Frequency would mean that your audience is seeing your ad more often than necessary. a high Ad Frequency leads to Ad Fatigue, which is a symptom where the people see your ads multiple times.
If someone sees your Ad more than 3 times but still does not click on it, then there is a high probability that the person is not interested in your Ad. This makes you deliver the ad to the uninterested audience and you start losing money. The best way to prevent Ad Fatigue is to set up optimization rules based on the frequency of the Ad.
10. Conducting Inappropriate A/B Testing
A/B Testing is the life supply of any Facebook Ads Campaign. Even a slight change in the Ad Copy, image or the targeting options can increase your conversions. Experiment with the Ad Copy, targeting options and other elements as well.
However, there are certain advertisers who could be doing A/B Testing on Facebook the wrong way.
(I) Conducting A/B Testing Too Early
If you think that it is very appropriate to test your ads just one day after you have actually launched is typically a bad idea. Let your Ads gather enough impressions and clicks.
(II) Testing Too Many Variations at One Time
This is no brainstormer. If you test many variations of the Ads at one time, you will not get the significant conclusions. Testing more than one variation will lead to a complex data that will be hard to interpret. However, it is quite difficult to get the results for a multi-element test. Decide which element do you want to test and then conduct the A/B test.
(III) Stop A/B Testing At All
This is particularly the most overlooked mistake. The advertisers do not even realise that they have made this mistake. When they find out a certain image or headline that is working for them, they just stop the A/B Test. There is always room for improvement.
Even if you have found the most productive headline or the image, you should never stop conducting the A/B Test. This is so because if you stop conducting the A/B Test, you are stopping all the opportunities that could have made your ads even better.
Final Thoughts
It is true that as Facebook has a plethora of features, targeting options and what not. And so, it becomes quite a challenging platform for a lot of advertisers and marketers. But you should certainly not lose hope and do not even think of giving up. If you have a strong understanding of the basics, you can easily turn the negative factors upside down.
These were the top 10 reasons that were resulting in the failure of your Facebook Campaigns. Hopefully, this post gives you valuable insights and important to detect the reasons that were making your Facebook Campaigns fail and find a proper and effective solution to reverse their action.
Originally published at adstriangle.com on October 13, 2017.
