When it comes to Facebook Advertising, it can be easy to make mistakes if you don’t know what you are doing especially as a startup. Here at The Good Marketer, we’ve seen a lot of mistakes in our time, but there are a select few that stand out more so than the rest.

These are:

• Frequency Overkill
• Not using custom/lookalike audiences
• Randomly targeting people not related to your target audience

The thing is, you can actually just about “get-away” with slight mistakes that they don’t adversely affect your ads, but those 3 above can bring the house down!

When you’re a startup, you want to minimise the number of mistakes beforehand as it could be the tipping point for your business if you slip up.

How many businesses do you reckon could have been saved by the owners just learning from other business owners past mistakes?

As Warren Buffett said:

“It’s good to learn from mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.”

We want to cover these 3 points separately, in-depth and without confusion, so you never have to experience any crucial Facebook ad mistakes.

Frequency Overkill

There’s a generally accepted guideline by the digital marketing community that once someone has seen your ad 3 times and not converted, they’re probably not worth spending an extra penny on.

How many times does it take for you to get the message that the customer is not interested?

Sure there’s the exception who may need to see your ad 4+ times but on the whole, once your Facebook ad has hit a frequency of 3, it’s time to knock it off and create a new ad variation.

What does the new ad variation need to include?

• A more enticing headline that piques the curiosity of your reader
• Detailed copy that covers the who/what/when/how
• Increasing the range of your audience targeting
• New images/video

It doesn’t need to be much but it needs to be noticeable so that people don’t feel that they are being marketed to with the exact same ad as last time because you risk peeing them off!

You don’t want to annoy your customers if you’re in the beginning stages of starting your business because you put yourself on the back foot before you’ve even made a profit if you do.

Not Using Custom/Lookalike Audiences

You have two great targeting options on Facebook that you can use to make your ad campaign successful:

• Custom Audience
• Lookalike Audience

If you not using one or both then your ad account is not being maximised to its fullest.

You wouldn’t not use your first-class ticket and sit in economy, would you?

Custom and lookalike audiences are your first-class ticket to the big leagues of high ROI and lower ad spend costs.

You may not have the data in the beginning if you’re a startup to use these two audiences but once you get your site and ads up and running, you should begin to think of ways in which you can use the data you have collected and begin to maximise it!

Randomly Targeting People Not Related To Your Audience

There is nothing worse than when we take over an account and notice the past agency or the business owner has wasted ad spend on people who have no use for your product or service.

What a waste!

This happens in probably 50% of the cases we see and the trend is not going to stop.

If you’re reading this though, you can prevent this from happening just by following this point here:

“The people you want to target are those people who have already expressed an interest in your product/service or people you have identified from your market research that could be possible customers.”

It can be particularly hard for startups who are unsure who their target audience is but there really isn’t an excuse nowadays to at least get a good idea of who your audience is.

For example, do your market research by using tools such as audience insights, Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Bio – The Good Marketer is a Marketing Agency in London which drives more traffic, generates conversions and increases sales for Small-To-Medium Sized Businesses.