We help small business owners and independent professionals with all of their online marketing needs, and Facebook Ads are just 1 of the services we offer. If there is existing ads history, we always dig into it to see what types of ads were run, the copy and images used, the kind of results that were had, and what targeting was used.

There are a few things I see time and again in client accounts. These 3 common Facebook Ads mistakes are all easily rectified, thank goodness.

In no particular order, here are 3 common Facebook Ads mistakes and how to fix them. 

3 Common Facebook Ads Mistakes

1. 1. Choosing “All Placements (Recommended)” Facebook is a terrible liar. You don’t want to choose All Placements, and it’s far from “recommended”. There are many reasons why you don’t want to choose “All”, including the performance of each placement varies widely, the optimal image size varies wildly, and the amount of text that shows varies wildly. And while the Placements of Messenger and Instagram can be powerful and effective, they both really should be run as individual placements in ads of their own. What to do instead is to click on Edit Placements and then deselect everything but Feeds under the top Facebook section. This places your ad in the desktop and mobile News Feeds, and you’ll find that even with both of those, the majority of reach your ad gets will be on mobile.
   2. Choosing the Wrong Ad Objective Facebook knows a lot about user behavior. It knows which users tend to click “like” or leave a comment. It knows which users tend to watch videos. It knows which users enjoy clicking on links that take them to a page off Facebook. It even know which users are more likely to opt-in or complete a sale off Facebook. Each type of ad is “paired” with a certain, desired behavior, and what I see time and again is that an ad didn’t perform because the desired action did not pair up with the type of ad chosen.Most commonly, I see that an Engagement ad objective (meaning, people who are likely to click “like” or leave a comment) has been chosen for an ad that’s using a link to send people to a site off Facebook. When building your Facebook ad, Step 1 is always to choose your ad’s objective. If you are unsure, you can hover over the small “i” icon on the right side of each objective. This step is critical in matching your desired action with the type of ad you are creating.
   3. Not Reviewing your Ad’s Performance As soon as you open Ads Manager, you are viewing a dashboard. From this dashboard, you can monitor ongoing ads as well as review past ads, and analyze the data a ton of different ways. What I see most often is that people are intimidated to poke around in the dashboard.
      I suggest taking a look at 2 drop-downs: Performance and Breakdown. Here you can look at the data by factors like age, gender, and area of the country. You can also look at things like the cost by placement and device used. This is helpful because it can guide you in how to move forward with your next ad. Perhaps you thought both men and women were equally interested in your business, and that they fell in the age ranges of 25-64, but by using the Breakdown feature, you’ve learned that it’s far more men than women, and age skews younger to 25-44. Now you can adjust your targeting for your next ad, and get better ad results as a result.

Nothing discussed above negates the importance of strong copy, the right visuals and great audience targeting for good Facebook Ads campaigns. However, these 3 ad mistakes can and do have a significant impact on the ad performance even when the copy, media and targeting is on point.