Welcome to Episode 338 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Wrapping up February we’re going to talk one more Facebook ads episode. Full disclosure, this will not be the last episode we ever have on Facebook ads because this is literally a humongous topic. Just the last one for right now, we’re wrapping up February. I want to talk about some Facebook ads mistakes. These are the three most common and, in my opinion, the most fatal Facebook ads mistakes you can be making. I’m not saying you necessarily are making them but maybe a friend is and you want to tell them about this. We’re going to break this down.
I want to keep today really short and sweet because I want you guys to take some action on this stuff. I’m going to make this really, really quick and dirty. Are you ready? Well, maybe not dirty but quick. Let’s kick off with my biggest Facebook pet peeve. Okay, that’s a soapbox. If you know me at all you know what’s coming. Boosted posts. Yes, the boost button is easy, it’s right there. Facebook tells you all the time, “This post is doing so well you should tell more people about it. Here, here, here, hit the boost button. All the cool kids are doing it.” Just say no, just say no.
Now, the boost button can be fantastic if you have a goal in mind for that boosted post. If you have set a custom audience before and so you have somebody specific that you can send that boosted post to. However, most of you who hit the boost … Okay, let’s say this. Most people who hit the boost button are doing it because they’re afraid of the ads manager or because they don’t know what to do but somebody told them Facebook ads were a good idea. They’re sick of their reach being nothing and so they hit the button. Then they spend 10, 20, 50, 100 bucks and they don’t actually know what impact it had. Mostly because they don’t know what impact they were hoping it would have outside of people seeing it.
That can lead to frustration, wasted dollars, and deciding that Facebook ads just don’t work which is simply not true. If you’re going to use the boost button know why and know who. Why are you hitting the button is our call to action in there. Do you want people to engage in the comments? Do you want to drive traffic or something? Why are you hitting the boost button? Then know who’s going to see it. Have you built a custom audience with your email list? Do you want to send it to your page likes? Even if you’re sending it to your page likes make sure you fill out that demo information of age, gender, and location because, guess what, there are tons of people who like your Facebook page who are not actually in your target market, who are not actually in your ideal client avatar.
We don’t care if they see the post. We care if the right people see the post. Make sure that you are filling out that targeting information when you set the budget and boost the post. Do not just hit the boost button and say, “Well, I run a Facebook ads now, that’s so exciting.” No, that’s not exciting. I want you to run good Facebook ads, okay? That’s number one. Number two, and we talked about this in the last two episodes, you have no budget or you have no call to action or you have no clear idea of who you’re talking to. I’m kind of lumping this one all into one because we have kind of touched on it in the last few episodes.
Being unclear with any one part of the strategy behind your Facebook ads is going to leave you leaving money on the table. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to see you saying, “Stacey, I spent $200 on Facebook ads and nothing happened. You said that they were going to work and they don’t work.” They don’t work when you don’t know who you’re talking to, when you don’t know what you want them to do, and you don’t know how much you’re going to spend. What happens is then you go, “I’m just going to do $20 a day, that’s fine.” $400 later you’re like, “What happened?”
Set your budget, know who you want to see it. Guess what? That who you want to see it may not be everyone who likes your page, may not be everyone on your email list. It might be a look alike audience to your email list to help you grow your Facebook likes. It might be you are targeting people who have been to a sales page before and you want to say, “Hey, hey, hey. You didn’t buy that but there’s this.” It won’t necessarily be the same group for every ad. I’ll be honest with you, when we run ads we run them to several different groups with varying posts so that we can hit whoever it is we need to hit with different kinds of copy.
If you are on my email list or you like the page you’re not necessarily going to see the same ad that somebody who is not at all familiar with me, like a look alike audience is going to see. Know who it is you’re targeting with each ad set and, big picture, how that all fits together. Okay? That’s number two, you’re unclear on any one part of your strategy; budgeting, targeting, any of that. Call to actions, tell them what to do, guys, just please, just tell them what to do. Number three, you take a set it and forget it attitude to Facebook ads. Now, Facebook ads has rolled out some really cool stuff, we talked about it earlier this month with these automated rules.
If you haven’t joined us on Facebook Live this month you’ve probably not yet heard me talking about this. This is why you should check out those Facebook Lives that I’ve been doing. I will actually link in the show notes to the Facebook Live where we talked about this specific change. We also covered it inside of Hit the Mic Backstage in our training we did this month, all around what you need to know with Facebook ads right now. This is a really cool thing because it is allowing us to be a little less hands on than we have been in the past as far as obsessively watching our Facebook ads. Once you start a campaign and you have a few ad sets and you have different ads, you need to pay attention to how are these performing.
Quite often I’ll have three to five ads inside of an ad set. By the end of the first 48 hours I can turn off two of those ads because they’re just not performing as well. I run into a situation where I have five ad sets in a campaign and two ad sets are just killing me, they are just not performing at all. I can turn off those ad sets. There’s no reason for me to spend that money if they’re not performing. Don’t set it and forget it. Some of you are taking this a step further and literally never looking at it. One of the things I want you to put on your calendar whenever you start a new ad campaign is when the end date of that ad campaign is and the next day I want you to put time on your calendar and go and review that campaign.
You’re actually going to dig through the stats, the conversions, the clicks. Who saw the ad, how they engaged with it, if they did convert or not, how it increased your Facebook likes, if that’s the case. Whatever it is that’s happening I want you to review that. If one campaign did better than another campaign or one ad set performed better than another ad set. If ad B did really well for set A then pay attention to what ads are connecting with which different audiences. That’s going to help you make more educated decisions in the future.
Hands down, for me the biggest mistake we’re making in Facebook ads is not learning from them. Not paying attention to what happened during the campaign, not paying attention to what happens once we wrap the campaign so we can make better decisions in the future based on the information that is right in front of us. Okay? All right. Again, this is our last of our February series, All Around Facebook Ads. I had a great time talking ads with you. I hope this month helped. If you have more questions, and I am almost certain you do, Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to be.
Like I said, we had that brand new training this month where we talked about what you need to know about with Facebook ads right now. We just re-launched the Facebook ads trainings inside of the Facebook guide which is set inside Hit the Mic Backstage. Not only that, well we have the private community where you can get my eyes on your numbers, on your ads, on your offerings, on your opt-in pages. You can ask me, “Hey, this isn’t working and I don’t know why.” Guess what, sometimes it’s not the ad so much as it’s the landing page. We can talk through that in the private community. That is your access to me, my expertise, my opinions, all of that good stuff. We sure to join us, hitthemicbackstage.com. I will see you backstage.
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