Facebook ads do not work like they used to. Their costs have increased due to the fact that the competition has grown a lot, both in ads and in “organic” terms. Today there are almost 3 billion people registered on Facebook worldwide. The numbers are even more impressive: Compared to 60 million inhabitants, there are 30 million Facebook subscribers; in theory, one out of 2 Italians frequents the social network.
In practice, this percentage increases since one can only register on the platform from 13 years of age. In my newsletter that I wrote in September, I spoke about this. And if your target is over 25, Facebook remains an absolute “placement” to consider for your ads. Still, it shouldn’t be the only one: it should be included in a global promotion strategy that perhaps also takes Google.
Table of Contents
The Four Most Common Mistakes When Making Facebook Ads
Don’t Look At The Results
Unfortunately, the proper attention is not paid to the analysis of the results… also because Facebook perhaps makes too much data available to us and makes us… drown among them. Always analyze the results of your Facebook ads, but don’t waste too much time: analyze the correct data. To save time, you can delegate this work to Facebook by setting up automated rules to monitor the progress of your ads.
Don’t Do Tests
The problem is that we don’t know that 50% is an ancient axiom of the marketing world, which in the digital age is no longer true: we can perfectly know what works and what doesn’t. On Facebook, we can easily do A/B tests and understand after a few days which variant of the parameter is making us “earn more,” to put it. A while ago, I wrote a post on this topic, and although the platform has changed slightly, the position of The Facebook A/B test can still be of great help to you.
Don’t Use Facebook’s Tools For Off-Facebook Tracking
The data that Facebook makes available to you is essential and valuable, but it must be “accompanied” by what happens on your site. You will therefore need to take advantage of the following:
- The Facebook Pixel, very useful for retargeting activities;
- The Facebook Conversion API to recover “lost” data from the Pixel”;
- The UTM parameters you can use to see, for example, on Google Analytics, what people who come from a specific ad are doing on your site.
Also Read: Does Your Business Need A Facebook Group?
We Do Not Have A Planned Ad Budget
One of the big mistakes people make is not to advertise constantly as big companies do (in your opinion, big companies with their platoons of consultants would spend a lot of money on always promoting if it weren’t necessary?) because they think they save …but let’s take an example:
Periodically checking your car costs a bit, it’s true, but it allows you to avoid sudden breakdowns and, above all, having to face huge expenses to remedy it.
Here in communication, it works the same way: Allocating a monthly budget for promotion is, in fact, a monthly expense, but it allows you to “save” when you then need to launch a new product or make ads for Christmas, Black Friday, or Valentine’s Day. And above all, it is much more profitable in terms of results. But how much should this monthly spend on Facebook ads be?
Determine The Budget For Your Facebook Ads
There is no fixed expense… The budget depends on your business, cash flow, “roas” (return on ads spent, i.e., the profit you get from your investment in ads), etc.
To set a starting point, you will need to know the following:
- The cost of the product you want to sponsor
- The cost of each contact obtained from Facebook Ads
- The conversion rate for these contacts
For example… Let’s assume you want to sell a course that costs €1,000 and you want to get €20,000. One of your ads refers to a free webinar, and you’ve verified that 3% of webinar participants buy the free course… i.e.30 people for every 1,000 participants. To have 30 sales, therefore, you will need to have 1,000 contacts at €10 each: in this way, you will spend €10,000 and earn €30,000 for the pre-set “profit” of €20,000. The ads system on Facebook allows you to set an average cost per result, but while, on the one hand, you won’t run the risk of spending more than what you select, on the other, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to achieve the set result.
When The Numbers Of Your Facebook Ads Don’t Add Up
Both of the average cost per result should increase too much, or if you shouldn’t get results with the set one, you could try to:
- offer a different “hook” to attract more people
- show ads to different audiences
- try upselling techniques to get more value from acquired leads
When Instead, The Numbers Are Good
If your ads are “doing well,” don’t stop them once the result is achieved, but let them “run”!
To earn more (which you don’t mind, right) and test minor variations every time so you can have actual data for future campaigns.
Monitor The Results Of Your Facebook Ads
As mentioned, Facebook makes many results available for its ads and extricating yourself from these takes work.
The Different Levels Of Data
Facebook allows you to measure on different levels:
- Campaign: it is the most general level and tells you the overall progress of the ads strategy.
- Ad Sets: Here, we can determine how specific audiences or placements perform.
- Advertisements: on the last level, however, we can find out which creative “converted the most.”
- External data: don’t forget to check, thanks to the tracking parameters, the behavior of the people who have “landed” on your site since the advertisement … you will be able to find out if they may not buy the advertised product (or not only), but (also) another and then you can act accordingly.
Conclusion:
Ads on Facebook (and Instagram) are still effective… Only that over time, given the great competition, they have become much more expensive: in short, the times in which it was enough to invest 50 € to earn a thousand million are over… always assuming they never exist. And since you need to invest more, you need to pay much more attention to the data (not just those provided by Meta) and test, always test.
Also Read: What Are Facebook Ads And What Are They For
