3 Deadly Sins of Facebook Advertising Maybe it's not Facebook. Maybe it's you.
By Josh Denning Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The story is an all-too-familiar one: A business owner reads several success stories for Facebook Advertising and decides to try herself.
After all, how hard is it, really?
She reads everything she can and does everything she's supposed to. She writes a compelling headline, chooses an image, writes persuasive copy, but, when she launches her campaign - crickets.
Failing to recoup her ad costs, she gives up on Facebook Advertising, altogether, when really, it wasn't the strategy that was at fault; it was her execution.
Maybe you've been there yourself. Maybe you, too, have experimented with Facebook Advertising but failed to achieve the results you were expecting and have written it off as a waste of time and money.
If so, you're not the only one. The truth is, anyone can succeed with Facebook Advertising, provided you don't succumb to the following three sins.
Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding
1. You don't have an optimized landing page or lead magnet.
Website visitors' attention spans are shorter than ever.
Today, you only have 15 seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your site. Are you making every second count? If not, it's costing you big.
According to the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, if you paid a dollar for a click, and you lose your prospects in the first 15 seconds, you just paid $240 per hour to fail to engage the people, who clicked on your ads.
Can you afford such a costly mistake?
The fact is it's not enough to drive traffic to a homepage, or, god-forbid, a contact page and expect results. That might have worked five years ago, but today, you need to deliver value. To really maximize your advertising efforts, you need to funnel visitors to a landing page with a lead magnet - a resource that demonstrates your skills, knowledge and expertise, and solves a problem for your target market.
When you build trust through gestures of goodwill, it's a lot easier to ask for the sale.
Related: 10 Quick Steps to Creating a Facebook Ad Campaign
2. You're not A/B split testing.
While it's easy to assume we know best when it comes to what our customers want, we don't.
Test your assumptions. We can guess all we like, but only when we have real data from rigorous testing can we make rational decisions about what to focus on next. As James Clear writes, "the things we measure are the things we improve."
Testing is everything when it comes to Facebook Advertising, so be sure to be rigorous. Test your headline. Test your image. Test your copy. Everything. And not just once, either.
With enough testing, you'll know exactly what's working, what isn't and what could be improved. This is an ongoing process and one that shouldn't be neglected during your campaign. Granted, creating multiple variations of Facebook ads requires a lot of work, but when you're getting more clicks and better prospects, you'll be grateful you invested the time.
Related: 5 Tips on Creating a Killer Facebook Ad Campaign
3. You don't have a compelling value proposition.
If your headline doesn't convey why the reader should click through or tell them the benefit they'll gain from doing it, it doesn't matter how valuable your product or service is, they're not going to take action.
With only 25 characters to display, there's no room for ambiguity. Be specific.
- What are you promising to deliver?
- What makes you different from your competitor?
- Why should the reader care?
The value proposition isn't just limited to the headline; it's communicated throughout the entire customer journey. From clicking through on your ad to opting in on your site or purchasing your product or service, you want your customer to know coming to your site was the right decision and that you have their best interest at heart. Maximize every opportunity to do this, and you'll put yourself miles ahead of your competition.
Related: Facebook Can Climb More Than 20 Percent on Ad Growth
When it comes to Facebook Advertising, your biggest challenge as a business owner isn't your competitor -- it's you. You have a choice: you can commit these deadly sins and run your campaign into the ground before it's even had a chance to succeed. Or, you can resist them; generate more traffic; close more leads; and enjoy more predictable profit than you ever thought possible.
The choice is yours. Which will you choose?
