Facebook ads can be a powerful tool for businesses to reach potential customers, but sometimes they don’t perform as well as expected. There are a few key reasons why Facebook ads may not be working effectively.
Your Targeting is Too Broad
One of the most common mistakes when setting up Facebook ads is having targeting that is too broad. With over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook, it’s tempting to try to reach a wide audience. However, broad targeting means you will end up showing your ads to many people who are not likely to be interested. This wastes money and leads to poor click-through and conversion rates.
Instead, you need to narrow your targeting to highly specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. Carefully define your ideal customer profile and target ads only to people matching that profile. While this decreases the potential reach of your ads, it increases relevance. Your ads will be shown to users more likely to engage.
Tips for better targeting:
- Utilize Facebook’s detailed targeting options for demographics like age, location, gender, income level, education level, etc.
- Target interests and hobbies that align with your products/services
- Use behavior targeting to reach people who have taken actions like visiting your website or viewing specific pages
- Create custom audiences from your contacts or existing customers so you can market to lookalike audiences
- Test different targeting approaches and analyze performance data to optimize over time
Your Ad Copy and Visuals are Weak
Creating effective ad creative is just as important as targeting the right audience. If your visuals, headline and ad copy are unappealing or unclear, even targeted users will simply keep scrolling past your ads.
Facebook ad copy should quickly grab attention and communicate the key customer benefits of your offer or brand. The imagery and videos used need to be eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing. Take the time to test different creative approaches, especially when first starting ads for a new product or campaign.
Tips for better ad creative:
- Use high-quality, polished images and videos that align with your brand identity
- Write short, compelling headlines that create curiosity
- Ensure ad copy is easy to scan and highlights value props
- Personalize messaging to interests of the target audiences
- Leverage emojis, humor, social proof tactics where appropriate
- Always include a clear call-to-action
Your Landing Page Experience is Poor
Driving traffic to your website is only part of the battle. If users land on your site after clicking an ad but then struggle to find what they need or quickly leave, the ads are essentially wasted spend.
Your landing pages need to deliver a seamless post-click experience. They should make it easy for visitors to convert on your desired goals, whether that’s signing up for a free trial, making a purchase or some other action.
Review your website analytics and user testing feedback to identify and resolve common problems:
Potential landing page issues:
- Page loads too slowly
- Key information is hard to find
- Confusion around how to convert or what to do next
- Too many distractions above the fold
- Untrustworthy design that doesn’t reassure visitors
Your Facebook Pixel is Not Installed Properly
The Facebook pixel is a snippet of code you install on your website that allows Facebook to track user actions. It is crucial for measuring and optimizing the performance of your Facebook ads. Without a properly implemented pixel, you are essentially flying blind.
Check that your Facebook pixel is installed on every page of your site. Use Facebook’s pixel helper browser extension to troubleshoot and confirm it is firing correctly. Ensure the pixel has been properly configured within Facebook to match your conversion events and audience structures.
Take the time to learn pixel best practices, like utilizing custom conversions and value tracking. An optimized pixel will provide the valuable conversion and attribution data needed to assess and refine your Facebook ads.
Your Ad Budget or Bid Amounts are Too Low
In order for your ads to get in front of your target audience frequently enough to make an impact, your daily ad budget and bid amounts need to be adequate. Very low budgets or bids will lead to minimal delivery and poor campaign performance.
Aim for at least $50-100 per day in spend as you start out new campaigns. Analyze the suggested bid ranges and historical costs for the detailed targeting criteria you have defined. Set bids high enough to ensure your ads can compete in the Facebook auction system at those targets. Monitor spend levels and adjust upwards if needed to increase delivery.
You Have the Wrong Campaign Objective Selected
When first setting up a Facebook ad, you need to choose an objective or goal for that campaign. The objective you select determines how Facebook will optimize and deliver your ads. Choosing the wrong objective can hinder performance.
Common objectives include:
- Traffic – get more people to your website
- Engagement – increase reactions, comments, shares
- Conversions – get more conversions on your pixel
- Catalog Sales – promote specific products
Choose objectives that directly align with your desired outcome for the campaign. If the goal is purchases or leads, do not select engagement or traffic. Take the time to test different objectives, being careful not to combine those with competing optimization aims.
Your Ad Campaign Structure Needs Refinement
How you structure your ad campaigns can impact performance as well. An oversimplified structure with just one or two campaigns prevents you from isolating and analyzing nuances between audiences and creative approaches.
On the other hand, an overly complex account structure with too many redundant and overlapping campaigns can make optimization difficult.
Aim to group ads into campaigns based on these factors:
- Audience segments
- Funnel stages
- Products/services promoted
- Ad variations and creative concepts
Also use A/B testing campaigns to simultaneously test different elements like copy, visuals, landing pages, etc. Analyze the data to determine what resonates and continue refining your structure.
You Don’t Have Conversion Tracking Properly Implemented
In order to optimize for conversions and calculate return on ad spend, you need to have solid conversion tracking in place. Without knowing specifically what actions users are taking after seeing or clicking your ads, it’s impossible to accurately assess performance.
Work with your developers to install proper Facebook pixel and analytics tracking across your website and mobile apps. Track both micro and macro conversions, from email signups to purchases and beyond. Tag key pages with custom conversions to segment funnels further.
Document your goals and conversion paths to inform campaign objectives and structure. Continually refine tracking as needed to address blindspots and surface new insights.
Your Ad Accounts Have Low Quality Scores
Facebook calculates a quality score for ad accounts based on three factors:
- Relevance – How well ads match targeted users
- Conversion value – The value you get from conversions
- Ad experience – How compelling the ad copy, imagery, etc are
Low quality scores lead to higher costs and poorer delivery for your ads. Maintain high-quality scores by:
- Closely aligning targeting and ads to intended audience interests
- Optimizing landing pages to drive conversions from ad clicks
- Creating engaging, useful ad creative
- Avoiding displays of irrelevant or low value ads
Check account, campaign, and adset quality scores frequently. Diagnose and resolve issues promptly to improve ads at both account and individual levels.
Conclusion
With some effort to optimize targeting, creative, landing pages, tracking, bidding, and overall campaign architecture, you can overcome low Facebook ad performance. Set aside time regularly to monitor data and run A/B tests on elements you think could be improved. Continual refinement of your Facebook ad campaigns will help surface the full potential of this marketing channel.