Facebook is the perfect platform to advertise to a general audience if you want to reach them. With 2.6 billion global users, there are plenty of potential customers for your business.
However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to see immediate success with advertising. You’ll need to make constant adjustments to see results and cut the ads that aren’t working.
Knowing when to cut a Facebook ad campaign or revamp it is critical to getting the most out of advertising on Facebook. Below are seven signs to look for if you’re concerned that your advertising campaign isn’t working.
1. Ads Perform Poorly for Days
It’s not a huge deal if you have an ad that doesn’t do well for a day. Depending on your audience, you may have specific days that don’t perform as well. All you need to do is wait until they are more receptive to start seeing good Facebook results again.
Where you need to start paying attention is when those poor-performing days don’t stop. You shouldn’t have bad days for several days in a row without any signs of doing better.
Regularly look at your ads to see if there are signs that ad groups are constantly not performing. If you have any, pause them to stop wasting money.
2. Costs Are Gradually Increasing
Ads that perform well should have a stable cost. You may see occasional fluctuations in price depending on the time of day, but they should stay stable over time.
But as time goes on and people become exposed to your ad more, they may start ignoring it. As that happens, your cost will increase and result in a lower profit.
Pay attention to these price increases when they happen. You don’t want your costs to grow so much that they eliminate your profit margin.
Look for small changes you can make to your ads to decrease costs. Even tiny changes can make a difference when you’re trying to optimize more expensive ads.
If you can’t find a solution, consider cancelling your Facebook ad campaigns.
3. Low Click-Through Rates
Your goal with Facebook ads is to get people to click on your links. This includes both links to your website and the like button to follow your page on Facebook.
Although you can set your campaign only to charge you per click, you don’t want to waste time and energy on campaigns that have poor results. The chances are that you can make changes to increase your click-through rate to improve your campaigns.
Monitor your average click-through rates each day to see how they perform. Look at the expected click-throughs in your industry and see if yours match up.
If they don’t, you may need to modify campaigns to make more appealing Facebook ads.
4. High Ad Frequency
Your ad frequency is the number of times your audience sees your Facebook ads in a specific period. Limiting this number is essential because you don’t want the same people to see your ads repeatedly — you want a unique audience that hasn’t learned about your ad before.
On top of that, ad blindness will set in if people see your ads too often. This results in people ignoring your content, making your ad campaign less effective.
Check your ad settings to see what your frequency is like. Ideally, set this number higher than three to ensure people don’t see your ads daily.
5. Low Engagement
Running Facebook ads is more than getting a few clicks to your website. It’s also building your presence on the platform — which means getting engagement with your posts and likes on your company profile.
Look at your competitor’s pages to see what type of engagement they get. Are they getting a lot of likes and reshares, or are a lot of people commenting on the posts?
Compare your Facebook campaigns to see how they compare. If you’re posting similar content, you should expect similar engagement when you have the same reach as them.
If you don’t, you may need to tweak your campaign and Facebook posts to get more engagement.
6. Lower Reach
You should get a lot of reach when you set up an ad campaign on social media. You can set up your ad groups to reach many people interested in what you offer.
But over time, you may notice your reach starting to decrease. You’ll see fewer people viewing your ads and taking action to visit your website.
In some cases, you could see your reach decrease by 50%. This could be because of a CPC that’s too low, bad targeting, or poor ad quality. Test these variables to see which changes increase your reach again.
7. Low Returns
Your ultimate goal will be to see a profit over time with your ad campaigns. It’s fine if this doesn’t happen initially since you need to gather data for campaign optimization.
But as time passes, you should gather enough data to start making changes. Those changes will increase your ad metrics and result in more conversions.
You should see higher conversions and more revenue over time while doing this. If you don’t, it’s a sign that your ad campaign is failing.
Keep Watch Over Your Facebook Ad Campaign
Facebook ads can add a ton of value to your business. You can gain exposure on the Facebook platform and attract likes to your page, driving traffic to your business website.
But at the same time, you’ll need to do some work to set up a Facebook ad campaign that works. Make sure to pay attention to the signs above if you want to avoid wasting cash on social media advertising campaigns that don’t work.
Of course, Facebook isn’t the only advertising platform available for a small business that wants to grow its sales. Check out the blog to learn how to take advantage of other ad platforms.
Sharon Howe is a creative person with diverse talents. She writes engaging articles for WonderWorldSpace.com, where she works as a content writer. Writing allows Sharon to inform and captivate readers. Additionally, Sharon pursues music as a hobby, which allows her to showcase her artistic abilities in another creative area.