3 Mistakes Business Owners Make With Facebook Ads

Written by Harry Ramsay
Written by Harry Ramsay

We’ve seen many business owners who run & manage Facebook Ads by themselves…

… and whenever they’re running their own ads, they make some common mistakes which cost them dearly in ad spend & returns.

If you’re a business owner managing Facebook ad campaigns by yourself, and are experiencing these issues:

  • You’re spending too much with no leads and sales or very few leads and sales
  • Your costs keep going up as you try to scale your campaigns

Check if you are making the following mistakes below…

1. Not Knowing Your Target KPI:

The most common mistake that we’ve seen business owners make with Facebook Ads is that they do not know what their target KPI is.

By target KPI – we mean the amount that they’re willing to spend to generate a sale or lead.

This is important – regardless of whether:

– you’re running ads to generate sales for your yoga mats at an ECommerce store,

– are running an automated webinar campaign to produce leads for your webinar

– or are trying to get walk-ins to your local physical store.

You need to know whether you’re willing to pay $5 per lead or $20 per sale or a $100 per sale.

Suppose you generated 100 leads, and you made 1 sale from those leads & that 1 sale brings you $1000 in revenue, that means you can pay up to $10 per lead.

If you factor in the profit you want to generate on the front-end, that number might come down.

So if you want a 2:1 return on your initial sale, that means you can pay up to $5 per lead to generate a sale at a CPA of $500 (from 100 leads) thereby ensuring a 2:1 profit (for $1000 revenue).

Similarly, if you sold yoga mats at $40, and the profit on your order was $15, you can afford to pay up to $15 per sale (although you want it lower to make your numbers work).

So you need to clearly know how much revenue/profit you stand to make from your sale/interaction with your customer, and how much you can invest in ad spend to acquire that customer.

Having this information allows you to test and play around with different settings in your ad campaigns to find the best elements that will get you leads/sales within the cost you want.

2. They Don’t Split Audiences Out

The natural thing that most marketers do when they launch their ads for the first time is that they group a bunch of audiences/interests together to see what works.

Example:

A yoga store owner would start out by targeting interests like:

Health Magazine

Ashtanga Yoga

Shivananda Yoga

Another Yoga Store

Etc

The problem with doing that is that you don’t really know how each of these audiences will work on their own.

We’ve seen many cases where splitting out audiences individually and going narrow has helped us find ‘Golden’ interests that produce sales consistently everyday…

… while helping us eliminate interests that NEVER produce sales.

You’ll never find this out until you test it.

So if you’ve been grouping your audiences out, and trying to see what converts & scaling them up, I highly recommend testing individual audiences.

Going back to the yoga example…

You might want to put one ad set targeting Ashtanga Yoga

Another ad set targeting your competitor’s yoga store

Another one targeting a Yoga guru

And so on.

Split them out, and allow each of these audiences on their own to get ad spend equivalent to your target KPI.

So if it’s $15 – then allow the ad set to run until it hits $15 in spend. If it produces a sale, allow it to run and figure out how to dial it down further.

If it doesn’t, kill it and try running another ad to that audience.

If you REALLY want to scale your campaigns to the point where you can generate 100s and 1000s of leads & sales a day, you really need to test and find as many winning audiences as possible…

… and this is the secret to that.

3. Not Using Custom Audiences Well Enough

As soon as you start receiving visitors to your website, you need to start retargeting them and delivering your ads so you can influence them to take action.

The problem right now is we live in a highly distracted world.

People usually skim through sites they visit, get distracted & don’t return again. They completely forget about it.

… And this is where retargeting comes in handy.

It is important even if you don’t have a website or aren’t sending people to your website with your ads.

You need to hit them with a message/offer again.

So as soon as you start your campaign, make sure that you’re building custom audiences of the following people:

  • People who’re visiting your website
  • People who’re visiting your cart page
  • People who’re buying from you
  • People who’re opting in as a lead

And these custom audiences on your Facebook:

  • People who engage with your post/ad
  • People who view a % of your video
  • People who save your ads

All of these audiences are REALLY relevant, and can really help you get the maximum out of your Facebook Ad spend.

These are 3 of the most common mistakes we’ve seen business owners make… and I sympathize with them.

Most business owners don’t really go in with a strategy in place when they launch a Facebook Ads campaign.

They go into it hoping and praying they’ll get a few leads & sales here and there.

To succeed with Facebook, and to make big profits from your business, you need an underlying strategy behind your marketing and it’s VERY important when it comes to Paid Advertising.

… whether it is Facebook, YouTube, Google or whatever network you’re dealing with.

Without a solid strategy in place, it can be really hard & daunting to make your Facebook Ads profitable.

… which is why we would like to offer you an exclusive 1 – 1 session for you where we go over your Facebook Ad Campaigns in detail, your business model & how you can successfully use Facebook to generate leads & sales profitably & consistently…

If you would like to learn more about our 1 – 1 strategy session, click on the link below:

Tell Me More About Your Strategy Session