Facebook Marketing: What To Avoid In 2019

Facebook marketing used to be simple. It really did.

Budgets were easier to manage, and at one point it was possible to build a brand on Facebook by simply using organic reach. That’s right, you didn’t really have to spend money back in the day, unbelievable as that may seem now.

In 2019, the stakes are higher, and the opportunities to waste money are many in number. Marketers have to work a lot harder to get the most out of their budgets too. So basically, if you’re doing any of the following, you need to change your game.

Look for results right now

This is a huge mistake. No matter how amazing and clever your Facebook ad campaign is, you cannot guarantee immediate results. You could spend weeks planning a new campaign around a new product, only to find that it doesn’t immediately bring in a ton of money when it launches. This happens. And it happens a lot.

Some key points are worth raising here. The first point concerns monitoring. With every ad campaign, make sure you are on top of the data that will show you how the campaign is doing. That means monitoring those metrics very carefully. If you don’t know how your ad is performing, you can’t learn from it and improve.

The next point requires that you are very patient with Facebook ad campaigns. Every ad (unless it is diabolically awful) should make some money. However, if you don’t give the ad time to settle in and develop some momentum, you are wasting money and time.

Ignore your audience

It’s vital that you spend a good chunk of time researching your audience. Brands that know their audience inside out will succeed. That’s just the way it goes.

This takes time and money, but if you don’t carry out extensive research first, and then follow up that research as your ad starts to make money, you’re still shooting in the dark. Once the sales are steady, find out more about your audience. While it’s easy to ignore them at the start of a campaign, it’s going to hurt as the campaign grows.

In other words, start to understand what makes your audience tick, then keep learning. The more you dig down with your research, the better your ads.

Write poor copy

While social media is becoming increasingly visual, the humble word still counts for a lot. Some key aspects need to be ingrained into your brand’s thinking. For starters, create copy that uses the right keywords. Having done your research into your audience, you should know which keywords are the best for them.

Then make sure that your copy is thoroughly checked through so that you know it’s capable of making a sale. If the copy isn’t direct, concise, and engaging, the ad will do nothing.

Having a large net

You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t finetune your ads so that they are targeted correctly. You can’t sell to everyone with one ad campaign, and it makes perfect sense to target your ads to very specific groups. This is especially true now that Facebook has become so huge and is changing at a fantastic rate.

The most important thing you can do with your ads is target them to smaller groups. You can segment your audience easily. Once you have done this, it’s worth setting up ad campaigns to target these segments of people.

Highly targeted ads are much more likely to bring in better results. Your brand needs to remember that while targeted means a smaller reach, it also means a more effective reach.

Poor budgeting

While Facebook is an incredibly powerful way to build an audience and build profits, it is also important that a brand recognises that budgets have to be carefully managed. It’s easy to fall into a situation that involves a company spending a lot of money that doesn’t achieve anything.

Start sensibly, with advertising that is based upon the very best decisions you can make. Test, test, and test again. You won’t make hundreds of sales with every advert, but the more you test the process, the better your chances of staying within budget, while making a profit.

If you would like to be able to monitor your metrics more closely, take a look at Locowise. Our platform allows you to see everything you need to see about your audience and your engagement on Facebook. And it’s free for a week.