7 common Facebook ad mistakes

We don’t need to tell you how powerful Facebook’s advertising solutions are. With a huge user base of nearly 2.5 billion, whatever audience you want to reach probably has a presence on the network. And with its advanced targeting and wide choice of ad formats, you have lots of flexibility in how and to whom you advertise, no matter your industry.

But all of that choice can also make things tricky. It can be easy to make mistakes that can cut into your budget or decrease the effectiveness of your ads.

To help you out, we talked with a couple of our resident experts, Karine Seck and Monesh Raut. Here is their advice on how to avoid some of the major Facebook advertising pitfalls, here are some common mistakes advertisers make on Facebook, and what you can do to avoid them!

1. NOT THINKING MOBILE-FIRST

98% of all active Facebook users are accessing the network via a mobile device. This means that it’s absolutely essential for advertisers to take a mobile-first approach. Your creatives should be designed with mobile in mind, and then adapted for other devices, and not the other way around.

2. HAVING UNCLEAR MESSAGING

People usually spend no more than 5 seconds looking at an ad, which doesn’t leave room for messaging that isn’t clear and to the point. For this reason, you should prioritize copy that is short, succinct, and clearly communicates your message.

When it comes to video, focus on grabbing attention in the first few seconds. Catching peoples’ attention quickly is more important than having a branded intro. You want to get your main message in front of your audience before they click or scroll away.

3. NOT ADAPTING YOUR CREATIVES FOR THE NETWORK & FORMAT

Advertisers have a lot of choices when it comes to networks today, which offers great opportunity. But one of the challenges of having so many available networks is making sure your ads are just right for each one. When your ad creatives aren’t adapted for Facebook, user engagement can suffer and it can negatively impact your ad delivery. You should also make sure your creatives work for the format you’re using. For example, stories ads are vertical and full-screen, and your creatives should be designed accordingly.

4. NOT ADAPTING YOUR CONTENT TO THE FUNNEL LEVEL

Using the same content strategy for each level of your conversion funnel is a mistake. Each level of the funnel represents a step in the customer journey, and your ad content should take that into account. Campaigns at the top of your funnel should focus on awareness and considerations, while lower-funnel campaigns targeting more qualified audiences should work to drive conversions.

5. NOT TESTING DIFFERENT CREATIVES

It’s hard to know exactly what will resonate with your audience without testing out some different things. It’s important to try different concepts and formats to see what performs best. Maybe images or videos with people work better than without. Or maybe your audience responds well to illustration. Building on the concepts and creatives that work will help improve performance over time.

6. FAILING TO TAKE A STORYTELLING APPROACH

When the attention span of social media users is so short, how can you successfully engage with them? Creating a compelling story with your ads can help grab the attention of your audience and keep them watching.

7. CHANGING CAMPAIGN CONTENT TOO OFTEN

It’s important to refresh the content of your campaigns on a regular basis to avoid ad fatigue and maintain performance. But you shouldn’t change your content too often, either. First, producing creatives comes with a cost, and creating more content than necessary can be expensive. Second, if you change your content too frequently, you won’t have enough data to see results that are statistically significant enough to understand your campaign performances and make informed decisions about your future campaigns.

Learn more about creatives on Facebook & beyond

Lots of the things that can go wrong with your Facebook ads—or that can help you see success—come down to your ad creatives.

To learn more about creative in advertising, on Facebook and across other networks, download the e-book we wrote on the subject! Our complete guide covers how creativity impacts performance, how to build a great creatives strategy, creative formats across networks along with best practices, and much more.