How To Maximise Your Facebook Ads
In the realm of social media, despite the fast-paced rise of TikTok and the shifting shape of X, it is Facebook that still reigns king. With 3.07 billion users worldwide, the app remains an important platform for businesses that want to get their brand out there and reach their target audience directly.
For this, Facebook provides an advertising campaign function. This involves paying for one (or more) posts to appear on the Facebook and Instagram feeds of your chosen target audience.
These ads hold the potential to drive immediate results, but they don’t always. As much as they can boost brand awareness and sales, common mistakes and silly slip-ups can easily hold Facebook ads back.
Below, we’ll run through the basic blunders to avoid, and offer some top tips from the team at Absolute.
Facebook advertising mistakes cost your business money, so let’s get them right.
Common Mistakes
Incorrect audience targeting
If your seemingly-perfect ad didn’t get many impressions, it’s most likely because you’re not reaching the right people. When a post isn’t relevant to the audience who see it on their socials, it doesn’t create the engagement that you’d expect to see.
Often, Facebook ads are targeted at audiences which are far too broad. By aiming the post at a wider range of people, you simply reduce the number of people that it reaches to whom it will be relevant before your ad budget runs out.
So, the best thing to do is to restrict your audience. You can exclude by interest, including those people who are already converted to your brand, as there’s no need to show the people who already like your brand the same ad again and again. You can also exclude by demographics, like age or gender.
It’s important to remember that when narrowing your target audience, even a small demographic choice, like age range, can make a big difference in the success of your ad. So, be focussed when it comes to choosing who you’d like your ad to target.
Unclear copy
The average user scrolls at a speed of two screens per second, so if your copy is long and unclear, it’s unlikely to leave an impression on your audience.
The best Facebook ad copy is short enough to be read at a skim. Think of your Facebook ad as a drive-by billboard, for example. If your audience can’t grasp your ad’s key message at a glance, then the copy needs to be more concise. Keep it short and sweet.
It’s also important to think about the content of your short ad copy. The content needs to match your chosen audience, in terms of both the customer journey and the language.
Firstly, think about how far along your target audience is in their customer journey, and then decide how much of your brand or product you need to explain in the ad.
Secondly, the language used in your ad needs to feel familiar and comfortable for your chosen audience. Make your ad feel relevant to your audience through your choice of words.
With a concise and audience-focused copy, you’re well on your way to improving your ad impressions.
Repetitive visuals
Although it’s important to keep the visual element of your Facebook ads in line with your brand’s colours and fonts, sometimes this can lure you into the trap of producing Facebook ads which all look very similar.
Repeatedly posting ads which look alike often causes ad fatigue in online audiences, which means that the audience becomes bored after seeing an ad, or several similar ones, too many times. This can even encourage some customers to develop a negative mental association with the brand being promoted, reducing engagement.
To avoid this, why not try switching up your ad graphics? You can keep your visuals consistent with your branding whilst also creating relevant and engaging visual content.
Although the idea of producing fresh visuals might seem forcibly creative, there are some great online tools to help you generate new graphics. A website like Canva, for example, is sure to help you introduce some innovative designs.
And if you’re stuck between two visuals – and you’ve got a little extra funding – you could even run an A/B test, to see which graphics gain the most traction with your audience. To do so, simply run two visual variations of the same ad simultaneously, and see which one gets better results. This will provide you with key insights into which image combinations and formats drive the most engagement.
Copywriting Tips
To top it all off, we’ve got some insider insight from our team of copywriting experts, here at Absolute.
Top Tip 1: Make sure that your ad copy is succinct
While we’ve already discussed being concise, our team explicitly noted that, currently, the best-performing ads seem to have a headline under 50 characters and a main body text of 150 characters.
So, get character counting!
Top Tip 2: Go beyond a product description
In your copy, make sure to do more than just describe your brand/product or list its features. To captivate your audience, you need to highlight to your customers the main benefits of your product or service. What does your audience get out of engaging with your ad?
Top Tip 3: Call to action
When writing your copy, it’s important to ask yourself: what do you want your audience to do? To click through to your website, to fill in a form, or to get in touch via WhatsApp? It’s essential to think about the action outcome you want your ad to provide before you commit to a spend.
Invaluable Insights
So, if you are looking to better engage with your existing and potential customers through Facebook ads, make sure to avoid these common errors and note down our writing tips.
Facebook advertising has the potential to provide you with invaluable insight into your target audience’s likes and dislikes and to boost your engagement with them.
Just make sure to save yourself some time and money along the way!
For help in reaching your all-important marketing goals, contact Absolute PR & Marketing on: 01392 680740 or email: info@absoluteprandmarketing.com