I imagine there are some things in life you love to spend your money on where price is not the determining factor – and where there are many cheaper alternatives, but you don’t care. You want what you want, and will happily pay for it, right?
Let’s face it, if you are a fan of Apple tech like me, it doesn’t matter one jot that a Kindle Fire is 1/20th of the cost for theoretically the same thing, does it? Nope. I’m sticking with my iPhone, thank you very much.
I’d hazard a guess though, that if you knew you could spend less on Facebook ads but achieve better results, you WOULD be happy with that.
In this post, I’m going to share the spendaholics guide to Facebook advertising – otherwise known as the 7 ways that you may be not only spending more money than you need to be for your Facebook ads, but also not achieving the short and long-term results that you could.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #1: Boosting posts from your Facebook page.
There’s a button next to every post on your page that says boost. You can click on that, pay a lump sum of money, and choose to boost your post to your audience over a period of a day or a few days.
The problem with boost post is that you don’t have full control over the targeting options, placement, or budget.
That’s why you might hear people refer to boosting posts ‘Facebook advertising lite’. The options you have access to are really limited, compared to when you go to Ads Manager and choose the engagement objective.
With the engagement objective, you’ll achieve the same ultimate outcome, but with far greater control over not only the budget and the targeting, but the results, as well.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #2: Choosing the wrong objective.
If you choose the engagement objective in ads manager or boost your post from your page, you’re buying engagement. You are buying comments and likes on the post.
Problem is, most people boost posts expecting clicks to your website or sales.
If you want people to go to your website, opt-in to your lead magnet, read your blog, or buy your services, then do NOT buy likes and comments, choose the ‘traffic’ objective to buy traffic to the link you specify.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #3: Trying to sell to a cold audience
As coaches, trainers, service providers, experts selling our knowledge, our audience need to TRUST us before they’ll feel ready to explore working with us and choosing to invest.
It is their trust in us being the right person to help them get results, and the connection we have built that increases the likelihood of them investing in us.
This connection, their trust does not happen overnight. There is a period of time where your audience are checking you out from a distance, forming an opinion of you, learning, and when they have assimilated all the info they need to recognise you as the expert and could help them, they will have the confidence to buy.
So, if your Facebook ad is promoting your paid programs or packages to people who have never heard of you before, they are not likely to be ready to buy yet.
E.g. you are wasting your money advertising to ask a cold audience to buy your stuff.
That’s why Facebook audience tracking, and retargeting is so, so important. You should be tracking their interest at every step, and retargeting in accordance with where in the buying journey they are with you. Only advertise your paid offers to people who have already indicated an interest.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #4: Placing your ads in the audience network
When you set up your ads, there is a section where you choose where you want your ads to appear – in the Facebook or Instagram newsfeeds, Facebook right-hand column, etc
One of the options is audience network.
Not only is it always selected by default, when you edit placements to remove audience network, there is a warning that comes up, telling you that removing the audience network placement may reduce your results.
What a load of old baloney.
Actually, this can be tip #4.5: Ignore Facebook’ recommendations
Whenever Facebook recommend you do something or you don’t do something when it comes to advertising, ignore them, and do the opposite. Just know that following their recommendations is not in YOUR interests.
Anyway, the audience network is where your ads will appear in third-party apps and websites.
For example, don’t hate me but part of my morning routine is skimming the news in the Daily Mail app.
I’m reading a story, and as I go to scroll down the page, there is invariably an advert that is occupying half of my phone screen.
When I try to scroll down the page, I’d say at least 7 times out of 10, I click on that ad by mistake, and immediately click back to the news site again.
Come on, own up. You do an all, right?
Trouble is, the advertiser is paying for our accidental clicks, but their conversions are going to be poor because we never chose to click on the ad in the first place.
And if you have audience network selected for your ads, you can bet that there are people right now doing the same with your ads.
The other problem with audience network placement is that when someone sees your ad, they are already doing something else.
So, if your audience network placement ads are asking your audience to take an action; fill in your opt in form to download your lead magnet or buy your stuff, they’re likely not going to stop reading the article or playing the game they’re half way through to do that.
And by the time they have finished, your ad will be forgotten.
Audience network is a perfect placement for some types of ads, but it’s not for most. When if you want them to take an action place the ads where it’s easy for them to take the action – in the newsfeed or on Instagram.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #5: Not using video in your ads
Don’t panic, if you don’t like being on camera as there are alternative types of video. You can also use animated images.
The reason using video in your Facebook adverts is so powerful is because if you run an ad with an image and text, which is what most ads are, you will never be able to get directly back in front of each of the people who see your ad again.
When you run video ads, you can track your viewers, so you can retarget them again. You can get straight back in front of the person who saw your video, same audience, repeatedly for far less cost.
Many of my clients are achieving one penny views of their videos. That’s how powerful this is.
Use video in your advertising but make sure you track your audiences.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #6: Not keeping an eye on the relevance score of your ads
When you look at your ads performance report, you’ll see a relevance score – a number between one and 10.
10 is perfect, one is poor.
If your ad has a relevance score of between 8-10, you’re doing good. If your relevance score gets to 6 or 7, your ad could be heading into trouble. Below 5 and you’ve got to take a serious look at it.
Without getting too technical, your relevance score is calculated from the positive and negative actions taken when somebody sees your ad in the newsfeed.
If a good proportion of the audience who see your ad are responding positively to it, your relevance score will increase.
If people are hiding your ad or clicking the ‘this ad is not relevant to me’ or ‘I keep seeing this’ options, your score will be downgraded.
The concern for you is that if you are consistently achieving a low relevance score, Facebook are very likely to flag your account.
Spendaholics Facebook ads strategy #7: Using text in your ads images
And the final spendaholic strategy is using text in your ads images.
If you are using ‘too much’ text it will reduce the reach of your ad, which means it will get in front of fewer people, but you will pay more.
There is an unofficial stat that 20% of the image area can be text. However, my advice would be to avoid text in the images. If you need text, keep it way below the 20%. Otherwise, it will hurt the reach of your ad and you will be paying for your ad to show to fewer people than it could.
So, these are 7.5 ways you can severely limit your Facebook advertising results and find yourself spending more money than you need to. Great if you’re ‘Loadsamoney’ (remember him?! LOL) but not so great for the majority of us who prefer to have choice over where we spend our money.
Facebook Ads for Beginners and Advertising Phobics online program
If you are ready to stop pouring money away on poorly performing ads and realise it’s time to understand how to get Facebook advertising working profitably for your business, to attract a stream of new enquiries, subscribers and paying clients, then I invite you to check out my Facebook Ads for Beginners and Phobics program.
Facebook Ads for Beginners and Phobics is a four-module online program, where you can watch over my shoulder as I demonstrate every step of profitable Facebook advertising, explaining the why behind it as we go along.
You’ll come away with live ads running inside your Facebook ads account, plus a real understanding of how Facebook advertising can continue to add value to your business, increasing your short and long-term ROI.
Click here to see what is included when you purchase Facebook Ads for Beginners (and Advertising Phobics)…
Veronica Pullen
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