7 Terrible Mistakes You’re Making With Facebook Ads.

Facebook ads are useful for almost all types of businesses. There are great options to target your dream customers.

Everyone around us is using this social networking site. Facebook alone has 3 billion active users per month, and if we talk about FB, IG, WhatsApp, and Messenger then the estimated average number of monthly users on these platforms is 7 billion.

You can target people who want to buy your products or services based on their demographics, interests, and behavior.

Since I am running a digital marketing agency in Gurgaon, I have consulted many SMBs who were facing some burning problems like lead quality or conversion rate is not up to the mark, etc.

In my audit, I found 7 big mistakes people were making with their Facebook ads.

1. Audience targeting

Audience targeting is critical to making your campaign successful. When it comes to targeting an audience everyone is going to target demographics, interests, and behavior. How can you make a difference?

On the above-mentioned targeting options, you can match your competitors’ levels but if you want to get better conversions you have to think out-of-the-box.

We have the option to narrow targeting where you can include or exclude audiences that may match certain criteria.

Let’s say I want to target people who are looking to grow their business online.

Then check the image below, how I narrowed down the audience to filter for the most relevant audience.

This not only helps you to spend your budget on the right audience but also helps in getting quality leads and high conversions.

Know your audience deeply so that you can attract your dream customers.

2. Customer’s Journey

Facebook is a social media platform where people come to connect with their friends and family. They are not using it to buy stuff.

So you have to make a ladder for smooth conversion.

Most people approach cold audiences to buy their products. You may get some sales but it will not help in scaling.

To take your business to the level it deserves, you have to come up with a value ladder.

A value ladder is a customer journey where you map the path from acquisition to conversion for your potential customers.

Most people say I’m already getting a sale. I don’t need any ladder.

You definitely need it, Let me show you.

Let’s say your AOV (Average Order Value) is 2000. You started ads and got CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) at 800.

You may be happy with the results, but as you expand your campaign, your cost-per-acquisition increases like 1200 > 1500 > 1800 and then 2000.

At some point, your CPA will match with your AOV, and here you are going to stop the campaign.

This is where I found most people making mistakes.

Your first focus was conversion, but conversion comes at last in Value Ladder.

If you have a value ladder you can create some gated content or low ticket offers where you give your audience that amount of value so they can come into your funnel. 

Your CPA will be low and once you get the lead you can educate them about your products or services so that they can trust you and make transactions.

Remember this formula

Content + Trust = Transaction $$$

A value ladder is mostly used for service-based businesses or digital products.

Sometimes people ask me what should I do if I am running an e-commerce store or have high ticket products like real estate or something that ranges above 5-10 Lakh.

See if I talk about eCommerce or any other marketplace, they get orders again and again.

Let’s say if you are running an eCommerce store and your AOV is 1000 then you may even spend more than your AOV to acquire a new customer because you know that you can be profitable in the long run. When that customer will buy again and again from you.

So companies like Amazon, Myntra, Zomato, Uber, OYO, etc.

Can easily spend more than their AOV as they can get repeated orders from the same customer and this can be profitable in the long run.

That’s why every business needs a customer journey to scale online regardless of any size.

3. Campaign structure

Campaign structure plays a major role in reducing your cost per result.

This is the structure you should follow when setting up your Facebook campaign.

There is no perfect way to launch your ads and get crazy results. 

There is always a possibility that your ads could be better but you just can’t see it until you test multiple ads.

The more ads you test, the better idea you’ll get about which copy or which image is performing well.

This will help you get good results as well as save you money on underperforming ads.

4. Campaign optimization

Campaign optimization is another essential practice that most people avoid. 

If you are not optimizing your campaign regularly then you are wasting your money.

To optimize campaign data, you need to analyze how your campaign is performing and what exactly needs to be optimized

You can analyze the data in Facebook Ads Manager.

Under breakdown in ads manager, you can see by time, by delivery & by action, you can check the data based on these 3 terms.

Let’s say, Here I select the delivery and then region.

Now you can see which location is getting me results and where my budget is wasted. I can remove the location that may be consuming my budget. I can check the rest of the data the same way.

There are many indicators that can help you know how your ads are performing and which ads are giving you results. You can turn off underperforming ads and increase the ones that perform well.

5. Retargeting 

Chasing a new audience every time will not give you good results.

You need to retarget a group of people who have taken a certain action on your website.

Like people who have visited your page but haven’t submitted the opt-in form.

People who have added to the cart but haven’t checked out.

People who have started check out but haven’t ordered.

Depending on the nature of your business, you can create multiple custom segments to retarget your audience who have interacted with you in any way.

You need to have Facebook Pixel installed on your website. This will help you to track all the audience who have visited your website or taken any action.

Retargeting helps you to get your visitors back to your website. You can give some more discounts, and offers or you can show some social proof it will help them to make a quick decision.

6. Customer LTV

When you play the long-term game you always win.

The Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the real power of the Digital Marketing Industry.

I have many clients who have been associated with me for more than 5 years.

How much would I have spent to get those customers? barely 500-2000 CPA?

But I have generated more than 100X over the long period.

This is the power of customer lifetime value (LTV). Here you calculate the total income from a customer over a life cycle.

You really have to help them so that they can count on you, even though I have discontinued some of my clients, they hired someone else, and still, they seek my help for any major concerns.

The more intimate relationships you establish with your customers, the better profits you will make.

7. Conversion strategy

Most of the time people have trouble converting their leads into paying customers.

Not everyone is ready to buy instantly, but you can convert even a reluctant audience into loyal customers if you have the right strategy.

Focus on adding value and they will eventually buy from you.

Your content strategy is going to play a major role, as is how you educate or engage your audience during the conversion journey.

Your marketing message should match the temperature of your traffic.

Automate your lead nurturing and then segment the audience based on their behavior such as open rate, clicks, replies, etc. The more deeply you know your audience, the better marketing messages you can plan to get them to buy.

If you follow the steps mentioned above, you will start seeing the difference. You can book a Discovery call with me if you feel you need a professional consultation with me to help you plan a custom growth strategy for your business and understand the real impediments to your growth. You can go ahead and book your free consultation call.