I guess you already know that targeted advertising on Instagram and Facebook is a very powerful marketing tool that can generate leads, customers and profits for most types of businesses, especially B2C.
Today we’re talking about 5 most common mistakes that end up wasting your SMM budget on Facebook and Instagram ads:
Goals are not set for advertising campaign
There are 3 most common goals when we’re talking about Facebook and Instagram advertising:
– new subscribers
– sending a person to your website
– purchase directly from the post, call or message to our business
Often times people who are new to SMM try achieve all 3 goals at the same time, unfortunately it just doesn’t work this way. Always keep in mind that a person is going to perform just one action, especially if they are “cold” towards your brand, and people who see your ad usually are “cold”. So if you’re suggesting to perform all three actions there is a high chance that they won’t do any at all. Always remember that each campaign has to have a unique goal.
Target audience isn’t set properly
First of all you have to determine your target audience, its interests and needs. A lot of times, entrepreneurs set their target audience to “automatic” or just leave the sex, age, interests and geo fields empty when preparing their SMM campaign.
In this case your ads might still work, but you will need to increase your budget immensely and our goal is to have incredibly effective campaigns not just waste money on ads. You don’t want to waste your budget on people who won’t ever travel to your location or age group that is not interested in your services.
Low quality teaser
Simply put – low quality picture or video in your ad. You need to remember that SMM, especially Instagram ads, relies heavily on a visual component.
Don’t be afraid to spent money on teasers – advertising should always include professional banners and professional videos. You can hire freelancers/agency to make them beautiful and effective.
Lack of tests and analytics
You need to understand that Facebook and Instagram is a very smart system that learns about your potential customers over time, by improving it’s algorithm. So you need to allow it to learn, you can’t just invest $5 in an ad and call it a day. On the other hand you shouldn’t spend $10,000 on a single campaign in the beginning.
You need to perform a series of tests with different options of copy, images and videos on different audiences and analyze the results to see what works best for your business. This is the only way to get the lowest possible price for a lead.
Incorrectly written ad copy
First and foremost, there should be a clear and understandable offer for your potential customer. That is, when a person sees your advertisement, they must clearly understand what is all about. It might sound silly, but often people don’t pay too much attention to their copy and end up with text that is hard to read and understand.
Second, a call to action in the text. As a rule, it is usually done at the end. You can add two – one in the middle and another one in the end.
Moving on, the lack of spelling and punctuation errors. It is worth using software like Grammarly or online services for checking your texts or letting your friends/colleagues help you with that, so you don’t repel people away from yourself with a wrong spelling or punctuation.
Last but not least, the correspondence between the advertisement and the content in the profile or content on the website. Very often advertisers in the pursuit of cheap clicks make some unimaginable offers in advertising. Like offering something very cheap, or even free of charge, but the point is that this is not really present in the profile, nor on the website, or anywhere else. So when a person goes from an advertisement to your page, they see that they have been deceived and their trust is lost, this person will never buy from you or never sign up for your page.
