Facebook advertising is a great way to get in touch with your audience. If the internet is a virtual world, social media is where most people live. It’s where they get their news, interact with the people they know, look for brands to purchase from, and now, with upcoming or already-implemented tools, can actually make those purchases.
You probably already understand how important it is to advertise through Facebook’s brand tools. At the very least, all of your competitors are doing it. It is billed as being one of the cheapest ways to get in touch with your target audience, and because users offer up so much information about themselves freely to the social media, it’s a great way to find people that would actually be interested in your brand.
However, many brands find that no matter how much money they dump into their Facebook advertisements, they don’t see conversions anywhere near as high as what they see with their other advertising methods. Many people give up on Facebook advertising altogether, simply because they are not performing well.
If your Facebook ads are not performing well, you are missing out on hundreds, possibly thousands of customers that you might have been able to connect with. If you are getting clicks but you are not seeing conversions, there are a range of different possibilities as to why. Here are some of the most common reasons your Facebook ads aren’t converting:
They are not properly targeted.
When you made your Facebook account, you provided a wealth of information about yourself to Facebook. It knows your age, where you went to school, where you grew up, what jobs you’ve worked, what television shows you like, where you eat, etc., etc. It knows more about your habits than your closest friends probably do. This information, about the people you could be advertising to, is at your fingertips, and yet, many people ignore it or completely misuse it. If you’re putting ads in front of people who only might care about your business, you are wasting your money. Instead of only targeting based on general demographic information, try targeting your ads based on life events.
Use a third party verification system.
Why bother? Because you need to know where the clicks and likes you are receiving are coming from. Sure, Facebook gives you the tools to track that information, but they do not give you the tools to verify whether or not the information they are showing you is accurate. How do you verify where your traffic is coming from? There are lots of different services, including Google Analytics, WordPress plugins, and Salesforce drivers and forms that will help you understands the nature of your traffic.
Your format is not working.
There are more than a few different types of ads you can use on Facebook, and not all of them are going to work for your brand. An ad that presents one thing and then, once clicked on, delivers something totally different is going to be deceptive and people are not going to want to buy from you. If your ads are not converting, it’s time to try one of Facebook’s other advertising format.
The landing pages and the ad are dissonant.
When someone clicks on your ad, the landing page that they are taken to should properly represent what was offered in the ad. Specifically, it should use the same image and have the same copy. The user creates an expectation when they click on an advertisement and the landing page should fulfill that expectation. It should be cohesive, both in tone and appearance, with your advertisements. When your landing page doesn’t meet these basic requirements, you are going to see a steep drop off in conversions. Your landing page takes a long time to load. How quickly your website loads in general is integral to how successful that website is. This is just as important when it comes to your landing page. The slower your page loads, the more people you are going to see bounce from that page. If it takes more than few seconds, most people are just going to click away. You might see a high click-through rate, but you will see an abysmal conversions rate, simply because your page takes a little bit too long to load. Some good ways to decrease the load time of your pages include decreasing the number of images on the page and the sizes of those image files.
The landing page requires the user to fill out a huge number for form fields.
When was the last time you enjoyed filling out a form? Probably never. If someone clicks through your Facebook ad to your landing page and discovers that they have to fill out twenty (or even just ten) fields in order to get the offer they were promised, they are going to just click away. Your goal should be to make converting as easy as possible. In some situations, it might not be the fault of your ad, but the landing page that is delivered when people click on that ad.
Facebook ads are a great way to reach out to your audience, but they are not always effective, especially if they are not being properly targeted and designed specifically for that audience you are trying to reach.
Facebook advertising is a great way to get in touch with your audience. If the internet is a virtual world, social media is where most people live. It’s where they get their news, interact with the people they know, look for brands to purchase from, and now, with upcoming or already-implemented tools, can actually make those purchases.
You probably already understand how important it is to advertise through Facebook’s brand tools. At the very least, all of your competitors are doing it. It is billed as being one of the cheapest ways to get in touch with your target audience, and because users offer up so much information about themselves freely to the social media, it’s a great way to find people that would actually be interested in your brand.
However, many brands find that no matter how much money they dump into their Facebook advertisements, they don’t see conversions anywhere near as high as what they see with their other advertising methods. Many people give up on Facebook advertising altogether, simply because they are not performing well.
If your Facebook ads are not performing well, you are missing out on hundreds, possibly thousands of customers that you might have been able to connect with. If you are getting clicks but you are not seeing conversions, there are a range of different possibilities as to why. Here are some of the most common reasons your Facebook ads aren’t converting:
They are not properly targeted.
When you made your Facebook account, you provided a wealth of information about yourself to Facebook. It knows your age, where you went to school, where you grew up, what jobs you’ve worked, what television shows you like, where you eat, etc., etc. It knows more about your habits than your closest friends probably do. This information, about the people you could be advertising to, is at your fingertips, and yet, many people ignore it or completely misuse it. If you’re putting ads in front of people who only might care about your business, you are wasting your money. Instead of only targeting based on general demographic information, try targeting your ads based on life events.
Use a third party verification system.
Why bother? Because you need to know where the clicks and likes you are receiving are coming from. Sure, Facebook gives you the tools to track that information, but they do not give you the tools to verify whether or not the information they are showing you is accurate. How do you verify where your traffic is coming from? There are lots of different services, including Google Analytics, WordPress plugins, and Salesforce drivers and forms that will help you understands the nature of your traffic.
Your format is not working.
There are more than a few different types of ads you can use on Facebook, and not all of them are going to work for your brand. An ad that presents one thing and then, once clicked on, delivers something totally different is going to be deceptive and people are not going to want to buy from you. If your ads are not converting, it’s time to try one of Facebook’s other advertising format.
The landing pages and the ad are dissonant.
When someone clicks on your ad, the landing page that they are taken to should properly represent what was offered in the ad. Specifically, it should use the same image and have the same copy. The user creates an expectation when they click on an advertisement and the landing page should fulfill that expectation. It should be cohesive, both in tone and appearance, with your advertisements. When your landing page doesn’t meet these basic requirements, you are going to see a steep drop off in conversions. Your landing page takes a long time to load. How quickly your website loads in general is integral to how successful that website is. This is just as important when it comes to your landing page. The slower your page loads, the more people you are going to see bounce from that page. If it takes more than few seconds, most people are just going to click away. You might see a high click-through rate, but you will see an abysmal conversions rate, simply because your page takes a little bit too long to load. Some good ways to decrease the load time of your pages include decreasing the number of images on the page and the sizes of those image files.
The landing page requires the user to fill out a huge number for form fields.
When was the last time you enjoyed filling out a form? Probably never. If someone clicks through your Facebook ad to your landing page and discovers that they have to fill out twenty (or even just ten) fields in order to get the offer they were promised, they are going to just click away. Your goal should be to make converting as easy as possible. In some situations, it might not be the fault of your ad, but the landing page that is delivered when people click on that ad.
Facebook ads are a great way to reach out to your audience, but they are not always effective, especially if they are not being properly targeted and designed specifically for that audience you are trying to reach.
Published on September 22, 2016
About the Author: Chris Williams
