Due to its low cost and advanced targeting, many businesses try Facebook advertising to achieve their branding and sales goals. However, only a few really succeed because of bad practices and misconceptions. Some even discontinue using Facebook ads thinking that it does not work for them.
As experts in Facebook advertising, we feel compelled to correct these incorrect notions that hinder entrepreneurs from taking full advantage of this wonderful tool.
Just to be clear, Facebook does not always work for every type of business. For instance, companies targeting CEOs of companies or very niche types of engineers like cement engineers may not be ideal advertisers. But if your business does not belong to these types, you’ll never know unless you use Facebook ads correctly and set your incorrect notions aside.
Here are the most common conceptions of Facebook advertising and the actual truth.
1. Facebook advertising is for B2C companies only
While it’s true that B2C companies have it easier in terms of coming up with out of the box advertising executions, it should not stop B2B companies from using the platform.
With its endless users’ data, B2B companies have a ton of opportunities to get leads as long as the right tools like offers or ebooks are used to get the attention and information of the audience. Much like B2C advertising, B2B advertising’s success rests on how well you know your audience’s demographics, online behavior, and interest.
There are also numerous tools on the platform that are beneficial for B2B companies. A great example of this is the custom audience which lets you upload a list of emails to target. If you’re using Facebook B2B emails, you can get a 20% match rate since most people set up their Facebook accounts with their personal email address and not work email address.
Aside from lead generation, advertising on Facebook can help you establish a long-term relationship with your audience whether they are prospects who can be customers or customers who can be brand evangelists.
2. Boosting your posts is enough
While boosting posts on your Facebook Page is easier than using Ads Manager or the Power Editor, it doesn’t maximize what the advertising platform can truly offer.
There are many reasons boosting is inferior to the other options, but here are the most basic yet important things you could be missing out on:
- You can’t add UTM parameters that will help you analyze traffic and/or conversions of landing pages through web analytics.
- You also don’t have the option to change your bid amount and when you get charged.
- You can’t run a formal A/B split test among ad sets.
Learning how to use the Ads Manager or Power Editor may take a while, but the much improved result you can get is all worth it.
3. You can leave a great performing ad for a long time, and the results will still be the same
Have you ever experienced seeing the same ad for more than three times and felt irritated? That experience is called ad fatigue. Ad fatigue happens when an ad has a high frequency but low clicks – meaning the ad has been shown multiple times to the audience but they showed no interest.
A great performance at the start does not guarantee success until the end because of ad fatigue. Some ads experience ad fatigue after just a few days, while others take a few weeks. The bottomline is that every ad, no matter how interesting, will experience decline in clicks because of high frequency.
You have to remember that Facebook only serves your ad to a certain number of people, so it’s highly possible for one person to see your ad more than once.
When Facebook sees that there’s already an ad fatigue, they either show your ad less or charge you higher. Monitoring the clicks against frequency can help avoid ad fatigue. It is highly recommended to pause the campaign once you see that ad fatigue is about to set in.
In case you want to target the same set of people for whatever reason, you might want to consider changing your offer or the ad visual to get their attention again.
4. Targeting friends of fans can give you the same results as your original target
When Facebook launched the target friends of fans option a few years ago, many advertisers thought that this could save a lot of time and deliver the same results as targeting the fans.
However, advertisers did not get the results that they wanted because Facebook does not filter friends based on common interest. It just serves the ad to random Facebook friends of fans. This means that parents, friends living on a different country, or other friends with totally different interests will see the ad.
If you’re planning to use this feature, make sure to combine it with other interest targeting. This, however, will make your target audience smaller, especially if you don’t have a huge number of fans.
The best option is still to use the Lookalike audience feature if you want to reach more users outside of your existing fans. Facebook will serve your ad to people who are very similar to your audience in terms of location, age, interests, device, etc.
5. Conversion rate is the number of conversions over unique clicks
For advertisers trying to compute their ROI (Return on Investment), the conversion rate is one of the top metrics to check. Many advertisers compute the conversion rate using this formula:
Number of Conversions / Unique Clicks
The problem with this assumption is that not every person who clicks your ad goes to your landing page and even if they do, the landing page may not load completely. The more accurate way to compute conversion rate is to divide the conversions by the number of sessions.
Make sure that the conversion pixel is set up to monitor this.
These are just five of the many misconceptions about Facebook advertising. Now that these ideas have been corrected, it’s time for you to apply your new knowledge on your next campaigns. Download our FREE ebook for more advanced tips about Facebook advertising.
