Mistake #1 – No Campaign Strategy
Some advertisers dive into launching their campaigns right away without a plan or strategy and it’s like they throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and hope that something sticks. You should avoid this mistake.
And what do I mean by strategy? I mean for example, having kind of a sales funnel wherein you’re sending people from your ads to some kind of a free guide or video content that you’re then going to retarget all those people who clicked your ads and visited your landing page.
Too often, advertisers just make a generic ad and land people on their homepage and hopes that people will know from there what they have to do or buy their products or services.
This is why having a strategy is important, you’re going to guide people and walk them through your sales process.
Here’s an example:
So this is my landing page for the Google Gotcha Guide, I advertise this on Facebook & Google Ads (through YouTube). When people lands on this page, they will be able to download a free guide wherein I show them Google Ads’ sneaky settings. And if they want to learn more about advertising, they can upgrade to my membership via Teach Traffic.
See? That’s my strategy, that’s my sales funnel process. I warm people up first, give them something of a value and then sell them my membership. Of course, it’s different for every niche.
Mistake #2 – Not Installing Facebook Pixel
This might be the biggest mistake you will ever make as an advertiser. For those who are not aware what Facebook Pixel is, It is a code that you install on every page of your website and it will help your Facebook Ads enormously.
So what does Facebook Pixel do for your ads?
- It will enable you to track if you’re getting leads from your ads
- Helps you improve your ads through the process of look-a-like audiences
- You’re going to be able to do retargeting/remarketing
That was just a few of many examples why you should install Facebook Pixel on your website if you’re running Facebook ads.
If you don’t know how to find your Facebook Pixel, watch our YouTube guide.
Once you have it installed, how do you know or check if it’s installed correctly?
You can install Facebook Pixel Helper, it’s a Chrome extension that will tell you if you have Facebook Pixel installed in your website.
As you see above, it tells you that a Facebook Pixel was detected on the page. So be sure to install this and avoid this big mistake!
Mistake #3 – Not Setting Up Conversion Tracking
Just like Facebook Pixel, Conversion tracking is important as well. Conversion tracking is the method by which you’re going to determine whether your ads are working or not.
Facebook will let you know as well if you have already done this.
As you can see above, Facebook was able to tell me how many leads I got from my ad leads in the Results Column and also the cost per reach of my ad sets. With these data I can decide which ad sets to pause or boost based on performance and cost. This is all possible because of conversion tracking. And setting up different forms of conversion tracking is also recommended.
Mistake #4 – Not Setting Up Remarketing/Retargeting
If you’re not familiar with remarketing/retargeting, essentially if someone visits your website and leave without doing the action you want them to do (for example purchase). Then you can target that user again by the fact that user has been in your website in the previous days or weeks.
This is highly recommended not only in Facebook Ads but also in Google Ads. And it’s a common practice for experienced advertisers to set this up on their campaigns.
If you want to learn more about Retargeting, you can visit our 14-Day Retargeting Challenge where I will walk you through the step-by-step process in setting up your Retargeting Campaign on Facebook ads, Google Ads, and even on YouTube.
Mistake #5 – No Ad Account Structure
What do I mean by structure? What I mean is that by not segmenting audiences clearly by ad sets and throwing bunch of different ads all in one ad set and just hope for the best.
You need to have a good structure.
And by good structure, look at the screenshot above. In this campaign, I’ve separated my ad sets based on interest groups. As you can see, they are segmented clearly by interest (adwords) and location (USA). I did not put it all together in one ad set because that can get really confusing and messy.
Having a good structure will also tell you which ones are working or not, so you can assess where to put your marketing efforts. You can structure your ads not only by interest groups, but you can also do image vs. videos so you can see which are more effective.
Mistake #6 – Using Automatic Placements
Automatic placements is the default setting when you’re running Facebook Ads.
You should do Manual Placements because choosing Automatic placements means your ads will show in all eligible places in Facebook. Which means you will spend A LOT. Usually we just use Facebook News Feed, Instagram Feed and sometimes Story Ads.
The only time we use Automatic Placements is on retargeting campaigns. But often, we use manual placements for our ads.
Mistake #7 – Choosing Broad Audiences
What do I mean by this? What I mean is that choosing target interest groups that have an audience size of lets say 50 million or a 100 million. And personally it’s not targeted enough.
We are a fan of larger sized audiences, but personally we target around 1 million to 2 million mark interest targeting size. Beyond that size, we’re not going to target it because like I’ve mentioned, it’s not targeted enough.
There you have it! The Facebook Ad mistakes you should avoid. Hopefully it helps you a lot in your current or even future campaigns.