“Why aren’t my ads working???”
“I’m not getting any clicks.”
“I’m not getting any conversions.”
“I’m not getting any impressions.”
Sound familiar at all? This is basically what my inbox looks like.
And who can blame you? You took a GINORMOUS leap and actually spent money trying to get your business in front of new people.
Everyone around you (*cough* myself included) was all like “YES! Facebook ads are perfect for your biz! You’re gonna get so many new customers/clients/leads/likes on your page. Do it. For sure.”
So you took the plunge, and now you’re cursing me a little because you have no idea what happened. You’re not even sure the problem is you – maybe Facebook ads are just a scam! All you know is that you took a risk, got nothing in terms of results, and now Facebook is charging your credit card. Fuuuuuuuck.
Deep breath. Aaaaaaaand exhale. Now we’re gonna figure out what exactly happened with your campaign.
Let’s take a look at the different reasons your ads might not have hit it out of the park, and their “symptoms,” a.k.a. the less-than-awesome results you can see immediately:
SYMPTOM #1: Your ads don’t get many clicks, and yet your budget gets completely eaten up.
What’s the deal, yo? Why does this even happen?
There are a number of reasons why people might not be clicking: you may be targeting the wrong audience, and/or it could be a case of ad copy that’s uninteresting, confusing or scammy, or boring, weird or unclear ad images.
A lot of the way Facebook charges you is tied up with the click-through rate. If your click-through rate is low, you end up spending more for clicks. That may be why your budget got eaten up quickly even though you didn’t get many clicks.
How do I know if this is where things went wrong:
Check out your ads’ click-through rate in the Ad Manager:
WHAT TO DO NEXT:
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Take a good hard look at your ad copy. Is it super clear about the benefit I’m going to get if I click on your ad? Is there any mention of a product or program of yours that I won’t understand if I’m not already familiar with your business? If so, get rid of it. When in doubt, keep things simple and straightforward.
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Consider your images. If you haven’t already, go back and redo your ad image using a photo of yourself! Even a good-quality selfie will work. People are always more likely to take the action you want them to if they feel like there’s a real person they can get to know behind the business.
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Recheck your ad’s target audience. If there’s anyone in there, anyone at all, who doesn’t need the thing you’re promoting, filter them out.
SYMPTOM #2: Your ads get clicks, but you don’t get any conversions over on your website.
What the heck? Why does this happen?
1. People clicked on your ad but not on your link. Remember: your end goal should (usually) be to drive traffic over to your site. So it’s really important to have a very clear call-to-action in your ad copy so that people are directed to click on your link.
2. People clicked through to your website but didn’t convert. Your goals in Google Analytics can tell you what the conversion rate on your landing page is. There are a few reasons why people may not be converting, but usually it comes down to attracting the wrong people (i.e. your ad’s target audience) or the landing page itself.
How do I know which of these two is my problem?
By digging into Facebook’s advertising reports. Check out this image again:
When you select Performance and Clicks, you’ll automatically load 2 columns (in addition to several others): Clicks (All) and Clicks (Link). You will always have more clicks in general than the clicks on your website; people might be checking out your page, clicking the “See More” link if you have long text, or maybe even clicking the Like or Share buttons.
But if you have TONS of clicks on your ad, but not so many on the link that takes them to your site, then something might be wrong.
WHAT TO DO NEXT:
If you got clicks on your ad but not on the link to your site:
Rework the ads. Make sure the copy in compelling and that there’s a really clear call-to-action so that people know that they’re going to be freakin’ dazzled once they click over to your site.
If your ad got clicks to your website but no conversions:
You need to find out where the disconnect is between the traffic and the conversions. What’s the average conversion rate of this landing page? When people find it organically, do they tend to convert at a higher rate? If they do, then your problem is your target audience.
If you check out Google Analytics and see that your conversion rate for this landing page is generally pretty low, then you’ll want to rework the landing page.
(What’s a good conversion rate? I aim for landing pages to convert at a rate of 30% minimum, especially if I’m paying for the traffic. People like Leadpages a lot, but it’s about a lot more than just the template. Here are my tips on writing a great landing page headline and bullet points.)
There you have it, a round-up of the most common problems with Facebook ads that didn’t quite kick ass: confusing copy, overly broad targeting and/or landing pages that don’t convert.
We are currently running FB Ads and we are gaining new fans. However, the fans are not quality and are not relevant to our business. We have tried to narrow our target audience (approx. 10-15K people) and then we receive no clicks or fans. When we expand the audience (approx. anywhere from 100K-400K) we get garbage.
What gives??? Thanks in advance for your insight…
PB
Hey PB,
Thanks for checking out the blog. Let me get a little more info to see if I can help. What’s the end goal of your ads, to drive them to your site or to get fans? And by garbage, what do you mean? What is it about them that tells you they aren’t your ideal customers? Knowing that will help me figure out how to improve your targeting.
Without knowing anything else about your campaigns, I would recommend you focus on testing out different ad copy and images. You want to make sure you’re language really speaks to the people you’re hoping will click/convert.
Neither symptom applies to me. I’ve been doing Facebook advertising for about 4 years now, and always had success until about 4-5 months ago. I know Facebook changed their algorithm, but I’m still puzzled. Here’s my issue: our ads are highly targeted (parents age 35-55 in our market, with household income of 50K+) but not too narrow relative to our market area. I know our content and creative is good, but that’s actually irrelevant in this case. The symptom: our campaigns run a pretty beefy budget, we monitor and maintain our CPC and CPM rates pretty closely (and play around with them to experiment), yet no matter what, our ads only get a few hundred impressions over a one week period, with well under 0.75% CTR. We typically end up spending under 5% of our lifetime max budget. Note that the only time this has not been the case is with boosted posts, which we continue to have some success with; but boosted posts aren’t always appropriate. Facebook won’t respond to my inquiry. Can you shed any insight?
I still think Fb ads are a scam. I have yet to see them work for me and I go research and follow all the steps. It pisses me off. I’m quite frustrated.
I see you commented 3 months ago – still having the same problems?
I hve started and Fb campaign. Its active and approved but zero reach and app installs. Since Last 7days. What is the issue.?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7df719c55fc497935344656cf41e684afc43ef313bc4659dad353e423f986cae.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/77631384a286a43c8bc44ff8ecbc81b03958d39d55755d371a86e942c66716f2.jpg Hi Claire, your site is a godsent.
I believe my case to be a useful scenario for your coaching work.
I started FB advertising for my local business a week ago, on Thursday July 7th 2016. I designed my creative according to the set standards and guidelines and launched my campaign with two pilot experiments with a budget of $5 and $10 accordingly. After reviewing my data, I narrowed my audience to females 18-44, over two cities with a 25 mile radius each and a schedule of 3pm – 12am.
The next day, Friday the 8th, I was surprised at the results of my second experiment, with a huge spike in reach and engagements, even though I only had less that 300 Likes to my site. The best outcome however, was that 22 people actually contacted us directly, which was our main goal. As you can see from my images, the budget was at 10 dollars for each campaign, only lasting 7hrs each.
That night, after playing around with the data, I decided to narrow my audience to Females 18-34 and used those parameters for Saturday July 9th’s campaigns, which would only last 1 hour each.
Those two experiments and the pilot, got me 50,000+ reach and 2,500+ engagements. But the best yet, is that 44 people contacted us directly and many became clients.
We decided not to push any more ads until Tuesday the 12th, and even then we saw a slight growth in our follower bases and even more direct messages turning into clients.
Sadly, our streak was crushed. Each and every ad we launched on Tuesday July 12th stalled to nothing or near nothing. Facebook wasn’t spending any of our budget and our social clout became decimated. I tried tweaking everything and devoured the help forums to no avail.
On Wednesday the 13th, a FB message announced a malfunction with our scheduled post and we discovered a glitch after manually posting it. The boost button was blurred out, with a dropdown message telling us that “Cannot use draft posts in ads”. The situation hasn’t changed.
We are still slumped with our budgets at a minimal spend…no reach, no engagements, no messages from interested clients and, most frustrating of all, no answers.
I attach the screenshots. If you see no ads on the 12th, it’s because we tried deleting them to see if that would fix the problem.
I hope you find this useful our case useful and would love to read your feedback.
Thank yo.
– Oskar
hi, i am a photographer in Georgia and i just moved here 3 months ago. i am trying to spread the word out giving specials and minis and although i’ve had a few impressions website clicks i’ve set up pixel on my website i still get no actual client or sale. I do not know what to do if i am doing something wrong. What else can i do my budget keeps getting eaten up and i make no profit!! HELP
Thanks in advance. Dianelis