Facebook is still the best social media platform to engage and get the right audience if you are running a business.
In today’s digital age, many brands have started to place more focus on advertising their products or services with Facebook marketing instead of traditional advertising platforms such as television, radio, newspapers, etc.
According to a study by Hootsuite, there are now 2,740 million active users on Facebook. Facebook Advertising has become the number 1 channel to reach out to the majority types of audience.
That’s why if you plan or are already in the field, make sure you do not make the common mistakes on your Facebook marketing campaigns.
Today, I am pleased to share with you my experience combined with some advice from different digital marketing experts.
1. Facebook Page Quality
Low Page Quality is one of the reasons why your ads have been disapproved or do not perform well on Facebook Marketing. Many Advertisers/ Marketers/ Business Owners have no idea what to do with the ad settings and ad assets when their ads are disapproved.
Most of the time, the reason is that they do not work on organic reach (normal facebook posting without using boost or paid ads).
Posting an excessive number of posts does not necessarily increase engagement with your followers. Worse, it can stop your followers from following your page.
Moreover, if you keep spamming your followers, you may end up getting a poor Facebook rating (which can only be reversed after some time).
Solutions to Avoid Low Page Quality
- Avoid frequent posting or spamming on your Facebook Page
- Avoid posting misleading or easily misinterpreted content
- Use Original content or give credit if you use others’ content
- Create posts that offer valuable information
- Check your Facebook Page Quality periodically.
In short, your social media marketing team must be proficient in advertising-related policies and keeping with overall Facebook community guidelines. Always do a fact check before creating a post when you are doing content sharing.
Create more valuable posts such as product tips, business tips, knowledge etc. Facebook users tend to engage better with posts that guide them or provide value to them instead of posts that always ask them to buy.
2. Facebook Ad Quality
Facebook Ads Quality is determined by ad relevance to target audience, information accuracy, image quality, text-to-image ratio and more.
Facebook and Instagram will consider a range of factors before they approve your ads. Low ad quality will affect your campaigns.
The outcome? Your campaigns might not perform well, or worse, be forced to stop.
By the day Facebook Marketing is getting more sophisticated and becoming a lot better at assessing if an ad is baiting, or if an advertiser is trying to force its users to do something they may not be interested.
Most mistakes made by advertisers are the use of poor image quality, targeting the audience the wrong way, incorrect or misleading ad content which can lead to a low performing campaign.
Solutions to improve Facebook Ad Quality
- Use correct information to reach your target audience
- Find out the right target audience that is right for the goal of your campaign
- Follow the recommended image and video aspect ratio for each different placement
Best practices for image ads
- Use the recommended aspect ratio for each placement
- Use high-resolution images
- Showcase your products, services or brand
- Avoid having too much text on the image
- Focus on your message
- Preview your ads
*Source: Facebook for Business Help Center.
For more information, visit this topic: Best practices for images ads
If your ad is declined, find out why here Facebook Ad Quality Score guidelines.
3. Incorrect Ad Format and/or Goal
There are various ads types and campaign goal options offered by Facebook. Mismatching them to run your ads campaigns will create a poor user experience and lead to disappointing campaign results.
The most common mistakes made by beginner advertisers are using boost posts. Well, boosted posts don’t bring more engagement, leads and traffic to your Facebook Page.
In the worst-case scenario, Facebook might misinterpret your effort as trying to game the system by suspending your ads and possibly your account.
Solutions to reduce incorrect selecting Ad Format and/or Goal
- Get an expert / digital marketing agency to help you on kickstarting your marketing campaigns
- Understand your campaign goal and plan well with the right ad format
- A/B testing on your campaigns to identify the best ad format to reach your audience
Always plan well and do A/B testing before investing more in advertising.
If you are still new in Facebook advertising, get an expert or digital marketing agency to kickstart your campaigns. Learn from them how you can effectively manage Facebook ads campaigns.
4. Being Reported for Spam
Facebook allows users to report others if the content is found to break the rules.
Even if your Facebook marketing ads might be entirely good-willed, there is still a chance someone may feel not comfortable with your content and report you for spam.
There may also be cases where your competitors (or someone who feels strongly against your course) report you for spam just to sabotage your business or campaign.
Solutions to avoid being reported as spam ads/posts:
- Complete the full details under ‘About Section’ on Facebook Business Page
- Block users who have a high potential for malicious play (if you know it)
- Request Facebook Team to review the ads or posts again if someone reports it
Certainly, it is not always possible to prevent someone from reporting your ads (some might just report it without any solid reason). Thus, it is best to follow the guideline set by Facebook when running ads or posting.
5. Restricted or Prohibited Topics
Your ads may have been disapproved due to restricted or prohibited topics. Some say chances are low that Facebook prohibits or restricts any advertising products or services.
Undoubtedly, most violations occurred due to coincidental circumstances or unforeseen nuances.
If you advertise on Facebook and receive a notification like this, then it will definitely affect your ads campaigns.
Things / Contents not allowed on Facebook:
- Nudity or other sexually suggestive content.
- Hate speech, credible threats or direct attacks on an individual or group.
- Content that contains self-harm or excessive violence.
- Fake or impostor profiles
- Spam
*Retrieved from Facebook Help Center. For more information, you visit this page.
Solutions to Avoid Restricted or Prohibited Topics:
1. Always review your contents with Facebook Community Standards
*Tip: Don’t try to challenge or exploit the grey area of Facebook Advertising.
6. Copyright & Trademark
Many advertisers/ marketers do grab the content from third-party sources to use in their marketing materials or campaigns.
The best practice is to have documented permissions when using any materials which do not belong to you.
Facebook is rather concerned with copyrights and trademarks for business accounts and ads. Remember to always quote the original author and get permission before using the content.
Rest assured, any popular imagery, audio, or video contents will be identified. If you own the trademark, you will still be required to prove that your advertiser profile has been allowed to use it.
Solutions to proper use of Copyright & Trademark materials
- Check out Facebook’s Intellectual Property FAQs on how to use any copyright or trademarked materials
- Get advice from a professional Digital Marketer or Digital Marketing Agency
7. Landing Page Quality
If your campaign’s goal is to drive traffic or get conversions to your website or landing page, then you may need to be more concerned with your landing page quality.
From a technical viewpoint, Facebook (and also other Ads Platform) will assess the landing page relevance to the ad, your Facebook profile page and general UX pitfalls (broken links, pop-ups, excessive downloads, loading speed, etc), aka customer experience on your landing page.
A high bounce rate on your landing page will also impact the Facebook algorithm’s target and waste your advertising budget.
The reason for a high bounce rate? Customers may have found irrelevance or misleading elements between your ads content and landing page content.
Solutions to increase landing page quality
- Use website health tools to analyse (such as GTMetrix, Exabytes Website Health Checker)
- Optimise your landing page content
*Note: Improving your landing page content will increase user experience, reduce bounce rates and increase Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) score to rank up in Google. - Improve the UI and UX Design on your landing pages
- Use Facebook’s Sharing Debugger to see how Facebook perceives your contents and fix any issues with the flag tool.
*Note: Facebook’s Sharing Debugger is recommended for web developers
Facebook Marketing
This sharing might sound rather elementary for some professional Advertisers/ Marketers/ Business Owners, but I hope it can serve as a beginner’s guide for newcomers to avoid the mistakes in Facebook Marketing and Advertising.
Bear in mind that the most important thing in Social Media Marketing is Engagement with the audience. When you are able to get your audience to engage with you, it means they are developing trust for your brand and are curious to find out more about your business and your products.
If you are faced with any difficulties in managing your Facebook Ads Campaigns (or you are simply new in Facebook Marketing), feel free to get in touch with our specialists who will be more than happy to assist.
Ciao!
