9 Facebook Ad Mistakes You’ll Want to Avoid Making

With 70% of Facebook users logging into the platform daily, this social media site is an excellent place for you to reach prospects where they spend their time. By running Facebook ads, you put your business in front of social media users most likely to purchase your products or use your services.

But if you want to see success with your ads, you need to avoid common Facebook ad mistakes that people make.

On this page, we’ll go over common Facebook ad errors, including:

1. Choosing the wrong objective
2. Failing to watch for ad fatigue
3. Focusing too much on placements
4. Failing to control your budget
5. Overoptimizing your ad targeting
6. Testing too many elements of your ads
7. Failing to track your campaigns
8. Failing to utilize different ad formats
9. Making changes too quickly

Keep reading to find out more about these mistakes and how you can fix them!

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9 common Facebook advertising mistakes you’ll want to fix

Facebook advertising errors will happen –– the critical part is identifying them and knowing how to fix them. Keep reading to learn about nine common Facebook mistakes and how you can fix them!

Facebook ad mistake #1: Choosing the wrong objective

One of the most common Facebook ad errors is choosing the wrong objective for your ad. Objectives are what you want to achieve with your ads. Your objectives should align with your overall campaign goals to ensure you’re reaching those goals.

Look at your current campaign goals and the objectives you have set. Do they align with one another? For example, if your goal is to generate leads, do your objectives push for lead generation?

If not, you’re making one of the most common Facebook ad mistakes.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

This Facebook ad mistake happens often, but it’s easily fixable.

First, look at your goals for your Facebook campaigns. What do you want to achieve? Are you trying to increase leads, revenue, sign-ups, or something similar?

Once you identify your goals, look at the objectives you set for your campaigns.

If your goal is to increase brand awareness, your objectives should be:

• Brand awareness
• Reach

Are you looking to boost engagement or increase leads? If so, your objective should be one of the following:

• Traffic
• Engagement
• App installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Messages

If you want to earn sales, your objective should be one of the following:

• Conversions
• Catalog sales
• Store visits

You’ll see better results from your Facebook ads by aligning your objectives with your goals.

Facebook ad mistake #2: Failing to watch for ad fatigue

Another one of the most common mistakes on Facebook ads is failing to watch for ad fatigue. When you spend the time crafting the perfect ad, you may think that’s all you need to do.

Even if you think you have the perfect ad to deliver to your audience, it’s not always the case. Your ad may not resonate with some members of your audience, and if they keep seeing that same ad, they’ll get tired of it.

If you never change up your ads, your audience will lose interest, and you’ll miss out on leads and revenue for your company.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

Ad fatigue is one of the most common Facebook ad mistakes, but it’s fixable. The easiest way to fix ad fatigue is to change up your ads.

Does this mean you need to create an entirely new ad? No. You can resort to making minor changes to your current ad to make it fresh for viewers.

Something as simple as changing the background color or the product photo can make an old ad feel brand new.

Making these small changes will enable you to deliver a fresh ad to your audience and boost engagement with your business.

Facebook ad mistake #3: Focusing too much on placements

Next on this list of Facebook ad mistakes is focusing too much on placements. When you run Facebook ads, you have numerous options for where your ads can appear, including:

• Facebook newsfeed
• Instagram newsfeed
• Facebook Marketplace
• Video feeds
• The right column of the Facebook homepage
• Instagram Explore
• Messenger
• Stories

With this many options, you may spend your time figuring out which placements will yield the best results.

If this situation sounds familiar, you’re making one of the most common Facebook ad mistakes.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

The easiest fix for this Facebook ad error is automatic placement for your ads. With automatic placement, Facebook places your ads in the locations that help maximize your budget. It’s a great solution if you haven’t figured out where you want to put your ads.

By using automatic placement, you spend less time worrying about where to place your ads and more time delivering better ad content.

Then, after you’ve run your ads for a while, you can see which placements generate the best results for your business. You can use that information to manually select placements for your ads and drive better results.

Facebook ad mistake #4: Failing to control your budget

With Facebook advertising, you determine how much you want to spend on your ads. You have the freedom to decide your budget amount you want to set. As a result, many businesses make the mistake of not controlling their budget.

This mistake is two-fold: The first part is neglecting to set a determined budget for your ad campaigns.

Many companies struggle to set a proper budget because there aren’t restrictions or guidelines for setting Facebook ad budgets. Your spending depends upon your goals, what you can afford, and more. Many companies either don’t invest enough or invest too much money into ads they aren’t optimizing.

The second part is that companies don’t review their bidding and adjust their budgeting. A big part of controlling your budget requires you to look at your bid amounts and how much you spend to make the proper adjustments.

These errors often happen when companies run Facebook ads, which leads to wasted budgets and unsuccessful campaigns.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

If you want better control over your budget, start by setting a realistic budget amount and sticking to it. You can research to see what people suggest for an initial investment into Facebook ads.

The next part involves monitoring your bid amounts and budget to see where you receive clicks and how much they cost. You’ll want to monitor this information to see if you can adjust your targeting to get your ads in front of more qualified leads.

Additionally, consider swapping your budget type. Facebook offers two options: Daily and lifetime. If you’re using a lifetime budget and want your ads to run longer, consider using the daily budget to extend your investment longer.

Facebook ad mistake #5: Overoptimizing your ad targeting

One of the best features of Facebook advertising is audience targeting. Facebook enables you to segment and refine your audience to reach more qualified leads interested in what you offer. As a result, one of the most common mistakes on Facebook ads that companies make is over-segmentation.

Many companies will refine their audience and make it so small that their ads barely reach anyone. Their ads don’t drive the desired results, and they feel they’ve wasted their ad spend on ads that didn’t produce results.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

The easiest way to fix this Facebook ad mistake is to ease up on the segmentation. You don’t need to segment your audience so far that your audience groups are extremely specific. You’ll want to have a balance between being specific and generic.

Avoid being too generic by targeting a group like “Females, ages 22-34.” Make sure you use specific demographics, but don’t go overboard.

Creating a target audience like “Females, ages 22-34 who are single and have a household income above $50,000” is specific enough to refine your audience but not so specific that it alienates valuable members of your audience.

Facebook ad mistake #6: Failing to monitor your campaigns

One of companies’ biggest Facebook ad mistakes is failing to track their campaigns. Many companies believe that the hard work is done once they launch their ads, and they can let the campaign ride out.

The problem is that taking that approach leads to wasted ad spend. If you don’t track how your campaigns perform, you’ll miss seeing opportunities that help you improve your ads. As a result, you miss out on leads and revenue for your company.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

There’s a simple solution to this Facebook advertising error: Start tracking your campaigns. You can see where your ads succeed and fall short by monitoring your campaigns.

So, what Facebook metrics should you track to determine your campaigns’ success? The metrics you track depend upon your goals, but some standard metrics to monitor include:

• Frequency (How often your ad appears)
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Return on ad spend (ROAS)

Tracking these metrics will help you get a clearer picture of how your ads perform and what you need to do to improve.

Facebook ad mistake #7: Testing too many elements of your ads

Next on this list of Facebook advertising errors relates to ad testing. When you track your ad campaigns, you’ll find you need to adjust to improve your ads. So, to be efficient, you make all the adjustments at once and test it to see how it performs.

The only problem is that this approach doesn’t let you know what impact each change had on your ad. If your ad starts performing better, you won’t know which change helped improve the performance.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

The solution to this common Facebook ad mistake is to test one change at a time. Make your tweaks one at a time and test them to see how they impact your ad performance. You will have a clearer picture of what makes a positive change versus a negative change.

Facebook ad mistake #8: Failing to use different ad formats

One of the most common mistakes on this list of Facebook ad errors is failing to use multiple ad formats. One of the benefits of Facebook is that it offers numerous ad types for you to run.

You can use any of the following formats:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Right column ads
• Dynamic product ads
• Slideshow ads
• Collection ads
• Instant Experiences

Despite all these options, many companies stick to only one or two formats. As a result, these companies miss out on opportunities to create better and more engaging ad experiences that lead to increased sales and revenue.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

If you’re making this mistake on your Facebook ads, the solution is simple: Try different ad formats. Experimenting with ad formats is a great way for you to discover which formats bolster the best results.

Keep in mind that your ad format should fit what you’re advertising. Don’t try to create an intricate and engaging Instant Experience if it doesn’t match what you’re advertising. Your ads should always fit what you’re promoting.

Let’s say you’re selling your new luxury SUV. You could create a photo ad and showcase the new car, but an even better ad would be making an Instant Experience. With the Instant Experience, your audience receives an immersive experience where they can see every detail and feature of the car.

By trying different ad formats, you’ll help create more engaging ads that drive better results for your business.

Facebook ad mistake #9: Making changes too quickly

As we mentioned earlier, monitoring and testing your ads is critical to driving successful ad campaigns. Along with that, one of the most common Facebook ad errors is making changes too quickly.

You don’t want to make changes too quickly after monitoring your campaigns, as the results may not reflect the success of your campaign. Your campaigns need time to reach prospects so that you can see the true impact of them.

How to fix this Facebook ad error

The fix for this common Facebook ad mistake is simple: Just wait! Give your campaigns time to reach prospects and deliver data back to you so that you can make more informed decisions about your campaign.

How long you should wait to start making changes depends upon the scope and duration of your campaign. You might wait a week or two before making adjustments if you’re running a long-term campaign that’s a month or two long.

You might wait a day or two before adjusting for shorter campaigns that may only be a week long.

You want to give your campaigns enough time to run, so you can get valuable data that helps you make informed decisions about your marketing.

Need help fixing these Facebook ad mistakes?

If you read this list of Facebook ad errors and think you’re making some of them, don’t fret! We have a team of over 500 Facebook experts that can help you fix these mistakes and improve your ads!

As a Meta Business Partner, we know how to craft ad campaigns that help you grow your business. In the past five years, we’ve driven over $6 billion in revenue and over 24 million in leads.

If you’re ready to make error-free advertising campaigns, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our Facebook advertising services!