Common Facebook DIY Mistakes

Advertising on Facebook requires knowledge, experience, and time to get it right. If you are running your own business and your own Facebook advertising campaigns, you probably aren’t looking to waste time and money on advertising mistakes. So here is a list of a few common mistakes to avoid so you can spend less time and money on your advertising and focus on running your business.

Targeting the wrong audience – The ability to target ads to a specific audience is the #1 reason to advertise on Facebook and as a business owner, you know your customers best. When setting up your campaign, make sure to use location, demographic, interest, and behavior targeting while making sure it isn’t too specific or too broad. Too specific? Try expanding your location, age or removing an interest or behavior. Too broad? Try exclude audiences.

Not implementing the Facebook Pixel on your website – Having this pixel on your website allows you make sure that your ads are shown to the right people, build new audiences, track conversions and events, have access to additional advertising tools, optimize for your goal and retarget customers based on actions they took on your website.

Impatience – We all want immediate results but it takes data for the algorithm to optimize. The more data the algorithm has, the better. So wait at least until you have reached 1,000 people before you interpret the results and make any changes.
Misinterpreting results – reach vs. impression, results, vs. actions, link clicks vs. unique link clicks. It can be confusing so make sure that you know what each metric means before using it to make changes to your campaign.

Not utilizing tools and that Facebook offers – In the planning phase? Try Audience Insights, Campaign Planner and the Creative Hub tools. Looking to optimize? Use Facebook Analytics to dive deeper into the interactions customers had with your business or the Audience Tool to create custom or lookalike audiences to target.

Unaware of or don’t understand Facebook changes and new features. There are several algorithm updates each year and new features and tools are offered. It is important to keep up to date on these changes and additions to get the most out of your advertising campaigns. One simple way to stay up to date is to set your notification for marketing updates to All Notifications in Business Settings. Subscribing to a Facebook marketing newsletter or podcast helps with understanding and implementation.

There are a lot of elements that go in to creating a successful Facebook campaign and it requires a lot of time, knowledge and experience. It is simple to create a business manager account and launch a campaign but it is more challenging to understand the algorithm, target the right audience, and understand and utilize the options and tools to take full advantage of Facebook advertising. You can do it yourself to save money, but hiring a Facebook Certified Buying Professional will ensure that you avoid these common mistakes, have maximum campaign impact and save you time.