Facebook Ads are an incredibly popular online advertising platform, and for good reason. When you see the dashboard, you will notice how detailed you can become when developing a campaign. It allows you to narrow down who sees your ad, when they see it, how long the campaign will run, and more.

However, with all these options, it is easy to make some mistakes along the way. So we have compiled a list of three common Facebook Ad mistakes, so that you can avoid making them. Keep reading!

Mistake #1: Boosting

Boosting is when you put money into a regular post so that it shows up on your audience’s News Feed the same way an ad would. Boosting is a technique that many small businesses use - but not because it’s effective with creating conversions.

Think of boosts like the lottery. It seems like a very quick and simple way to make a lot of money, but in actuality the possibility of you winning is slim. This means that you are losing money to a strategy that might not result in anything major. So if boosts are the lottery, Facebook Ads are a steady work plan. It seems longer to do and more complicated, but it leads to results.

Small businesses like to avoid Facebook Ads because the dashboard is so complex, but this is because it is designed to help you succeed - and success is different for every business. While boosting will only allow you to push a single post (that might not resonate with your target audience), Facebook Ads allows you to do split-testing to see which titles, which descriptions, which images, and which videos encourage the most likes, shares, page views, and link clicks.

Other disadvantages of boosting is the limited targeting. What does this mean? That you can only target the posts to your followers, the friends of your followers, and a very broad demographic of people.

And the final reason why you should avoid boosting: because it doesn’t create conversions. Boosting’s marketing options don’t extend further than getting engagement, which can be either in likes, comments, and shares - none of which is terrible, but is it your marketing goal?

Mistake #2: Not Having Clear Objectives

Before you create your campaign, you need to think about what you want to come from it. Facebook Ads take the objectives you choose seriously, and work to bring the results that you’re searching for - so you don’t want to choose an objective that you actually don’t need.

Right now, you might be thinking: that’s easy, I need sales.

But the buyer’s journey isn’t that simple. If you want more clarification on this, we encourage you to read our blog about the brand cycle, and how changes a regular audience member into a loyal customer. Click the button below to start reading!

Now that you’re caught up about the brand cycle, here is how Facebook Ads helps you to successfully push people down the funnel:

Facebook Ad Objectives That Help You Build Awareness

Awareness objectives will help you to increase interest in you and your business.

• Brand Awareness

• Reach

Facebook Ad Objectives That Help You Increase Consideration

Consideration objectives will help you to increase how many people are thinking about making a purchase from your business.

• Traffic

• Engagement

• App Installs

• Video Views

• Lead Generation

• Messages

Facebook Ad Objectives That Help You Increase Conversions

Conversion objectives will help you to increase how many purchases are made from your business.

• Conversions

• Catalog Sales

• Store Traffic

Mistake #3: Not Running Long Enough Campaigns

How long you run campaigns is tricky, because you don’t want to run a campaign so short that Facebook doesn’t have enough time to optimize your ads and bring you your desired results - but you also don’t want to run a campaign so long that people grow tired and irritated every time they see your ad.

So we recommend running your campaigns as long as 7-21 days.

And if you want a more specific timeline, here is our advice: listen to your data. Because everything you need to know is already being given to you. Want advice that’s more specific? Here are a few tips:

• Pay special attention to ad frequency. This data shows on average how often people are seeing your ad - which is also an indication of how close they are to being annoyed about seeing it. So if the number is getting too high, you’re probably running the campaign for too long.

• Learn from your previous campaigns! How long did you run your most successful campaign?

• Just let the Facebook Ads platform do its thing. The first few days it will be testing for you, seeing what is working and what isn’t working. If you cut the campaign too short, you will be stopping Facebook from providing you with the results you’ve been searching for.

Need More Guidance?

We have a Facebook Ads course coming up! Our courses are always exciting for us because they provide us with a way to give advice and tips that work for us and will work for you, too. Check out our courses and enroll in our Facebook Ads class now! Click the button below.