7 Facebook Ad Strategies to Avoid in 2020

Facebook Ads is one of, if not the, most powerful way to drive traffic and build brands in 2018. 

Whether you’re selling tickets to an event, driving traffic to your new video, promoting your E-Commerce business, or all of the above, Facebook has a place for you with their ads.

Unfortunately, Facebook’s Ad platform has a bit of a learning curve, and a lot of beginners (and experts) sometimes find that no matter what they try to adjust or change, they’re just not seeing the results and conversions they wanted with their campaign.

This doesn’t have to be the case.

By paying close attention to your ads, and learning the trends and tools that will give you the best results, you’ll be crushing your FB ads goals in no time.

1. Your Audience Not Defined Enough

When you’re dealing with Facebook Ads, specific is always better.

Instead of targeting just location and adding a few interests, stop to think about who your ideal customer is. 

This allows you to expand your reach and add many interests that could apply, purchase behavior, age, education level, professions, and the list goes on and on.

The more specific you get, the more quality clicks you’ll get.

2. Not Using Facebook Pixels

Being able to track and report are key components to any marketing strategy, and this is exactly what Facebook pixels does so well. 

What is a Pixel exactly?

A Facebook pixel is a method to track interactions that are happening with your Ad even beyond Facebook to your website. This can be incredibly helpful for a few reasons.

1. Track conversions on your website or event page that can be attributed to your ad. One of the biggest unknowns in online advertising, especially when tied to a direct product or service is wondering where sales are actually coming from. Pixels will tell you the behavior of users on your website after they’ve come through from your ad, giving you accurate conversion data.
2. Optimize your ad for conversions. When installed, Pixels provide a great way to measure the effectiveness of your ad, mainly, what’s working and what isn’t working so you can adjust it accordingly.
3. Re-market to the people who visit your website. If you have a Facebook pixel installed on your website, even when site visitors come from somewhere other than an ad, the information your Pixel collects can help tremendously for re-marketing campaigns when you do decide to run ads.

Not sure where to start?

Check out Facebook’s guide on creating and installing your first pixel.

3. Your Creative Needs Work

The creative of your ad is (typically) the very first thing that potential customers will look at when your ad pops up on their screen. That’s why it’s imperative that it grabs the users attention and entices them to learn more.

Here’s a few questions to ask yourself about the creative you currently have running:

Can you tell who the ad is for just by looking at the creative?

Was time and effort spent creating it, or was it just thrown together?

Would you click on it?

If the answer to these three questions were no, it’s time to dive back in and create new creative sets, where you can say yes to all three.

4. You’re Not Utilizing Video

Studies show that 71% of consumers on Facebook prefer videos over static images on their news feed. If you’re not tapping in to videos for your ad creative, then you’re missing out on thousands of free impressions.

Videos in 2020 are virtually ingrained in the creator experience when they go to discover and buy new products or services.

By having a clean, clear and enticing video creative to accompany your copy, gives your ad that much more of a chance of being successful in converting. Don’t know where to start? Look through your competitors ad’s and see what works well.

Do consumers like seeing videos of the product itself? People using it? A full on demonstration? 

These are the questions you should be asking yourself when determining what to put into your video creative. While the quality is important, it is not necessary to have a full production team. Sometimes, simple works the best, and there are dozens of free tools available online to help you get a kick start into video ads.

5. Text Copy That Converts

Your text copy needs to be three things every-time:

Clear, Intriguing, Relevant 

Save your customers time by listing all the important information (including price) about your product, service or event in the text copy. 

Now that you have their attention, give them a reason to click on your ad! Offer a discount, limited time offer, or some other method of exclusivity to generate more demand.

Know your audience. It’s important to write text copy in a way that your target audience will relate to and respond. If your target audience uses emojis, then use 😀’s. 

6. No Call To Action

An ad is not complete without a call to action.

What do you want your potential customers to do after they see your ad?

Immediately buy your product? Learn more about your service? Sign up for an event? 

Whatever the end goal is, it’s crucial for conversions to make it easy for your customers to get to the next step of your sales process or funnel.

7. Always Be Testing!

Facebook Ads are a game of testing, experimenting, finding out what works, then finding out how to make it better.

It’s an ever evolving platform, therefore, your ads should be ever evolving.

Test out new copy, try out new creatives, experiment with audiences from different countries.

Without learning what works and what doesn’t, you’ll never be able to optimize your ads to their maximum potential. 

Conclusion

If you’ve been struggling with Facebook ads, it’s okay.

Everyone from beginners to veteran ad buyers have problems with their campaigns at one point or another. 

There’s no such thing as a right answer when it comes to Facebook, which is why it’s so 

important to always be testing.

But as a recap to the recipe for better ads: Keep the customer in mind, keep your copy and creative simple yet attractive, and always have a call to action.