Why Your Facebook Ads Suck (and how to fix)

Most businesses looking to market their product or service today will have at least considered Facebook ads. 

Many will have tried to use them (post boost to reach local people, anyone?) and most of those people will have failed, miserably.

But don’t throw your Facebook page out just yet.  This advice will both save, and hopefully make you, a lot of money.

What is the goal of any marketing campaign?

To make SALES.

So what do we want to do when marketing on social media?

Make freakin’ SALES of course!

This is all pretty obvious and totally true.

OK, so now you’re probably thinking, what’s with the blog title?  If we’re marketing on social media to make sales then why isn’t everything about sales?

It’s not all about you, you selfish so and so.

The first mistake most people make when trying to market their business is making it all about them and their sales.  Most business owners start ‘marketing’ on social media by posting about why they are great, sharing links to buy now pages, offers and more buy now pages.

Often they will then create Facebook ads that link to their buy page and target their ideal buying demographic (age, interests, spending habits etc).  Genius, right?  Well, no.  It’s usually a massive waste of money.

So let’s just rewind a bit.. Social media marketing is about making sales but setting up ads to sell stuff is a waste of money.  Sounds like the talk of a mad man right?

Perhaps, but stick with me and I can assure I will teach you a lesson that could potentially save you thousands of pounds and hours of wasted effort when you market your business on social media, specifically when using Facebook ads.

Your audience are looking for valuable content and cat videos, stop asking them to buy stuff!

The problem with social media is that people using it are not generally in a ‘buying frame of mind’.  More often than not they are just looking at the latest pictures from the festival last week or more importantly looking at dogs riding around on skateboards (oh, just me then?).

Don’t become a social media cold caller, they are annoying as hell.

So what’s a ‘buying frame of mind’ then?  It’s just the frame of mind someone is in when they want to buy something (durr).

Someone searching on Google for ‘where to find a plumber urgently in London’ is very much in a buying frame of mind.

In fact no doubt if you search that on Google you will see many ads for Plumbing companies who pay a lot of money to be viewed by people that search this term and many others.

That is where Google and social media ads like Facebook or LinkedIn differ.  With Google Pay Per Click (PPC) ads you can target people by intent rather than by a specific demographic.

Because a Google PPC ad allows us to target people specifically searching to buy thins we can (and have to be) much more aggressive in our approach.  This is great for quick sales but can also be extremely expensive because of the volume of competition for most buying related searches.

Social media is designed to enhance and grow relationships, how about we use it for that?

Whilst PPC ad are great for quick sales, it is not always so good at achieving customer retention and relationship building in the same way as social media.

Social media allows brands to connect with their audiences on multiple emotional levels.  By sharing useful tips, interesting videos, running competitions, putting out flash offers or chipping in on current affairs you can reach your audience on a much deeper level than that possible with PPC or any marketing strategy.

But why is this important? Why do we care about sharing a load of content and making relationships with people when there are sales to make a cheques to write?

Because because you want raving fans, not customers.

These raving Apple fans annoy me at times, but they don’t annoy Apple’s bank balance.

Raving fans will always be open to your new products and services, they will tell EVERYONE about your brand and why it rocks.  They will be your best sales team by a long, long way.

Thankfully social media is an incredible tool for growing an army of loyal fans.  It’s also fairly easy to get started in building an army of fans.

But the catch is you can not just start throwing buy now ads into every corner of Facebook.

Start by thinking about your audience and what they want to see or experience and share it with them.  Direct them to useful content on your website like blog posts that solve their problems, share relatable content, ask questions an talk to them through your page or through social media group pages.

If you are going to use ads, make sure you focus on engagement metrics such as post shares, comments, post clicks etc to see how interested people are in your brand.  Competitions like ‘caption this photo to win X’ are a great way to increase engagement and build a fan base.

Once you have started engaging people you will likely start seeing traffic increase to your website naturally as people start to trust and be interested in your brand. 

Unlike most advertising methods, where people are funnelled to a page or point of sale, then either buy or leave, this traffic has the potential to hang around and be built upon over time, creating exponential growth.

Only ask people to buy once you know they are your fans!

Well, it’s about time you improved your engagement then.

As you start to build up a an engaged audience you can then start offering your products and services to the most engaged people in that audience. These will be the superstars that will be extremely likely to buy from you.

It is possible to target ads on Facebook only to people that have already engage with your brand in various ways, like visiting your website X amount of times, like your page, comment on your page (this is known as retargeting, we will be cover more on this in a future post).

These are the sort of groups you want to target sales at.  If your ad budget for sales ads is targeted at a group of loyal fans, with the right approach and creatives, the conversion rate will be sky high, making the ads cheap and most of all SUPER EFFECTIVE.

So if you want a quick and dirty solution to make quick sales and get out fast and never see the customer again (sorry fake perfume salesmen), social media is probably not for you.

But put in the effort, build relationships, treat people well, and be happy to help or give them what they need, much like in life, they will start to trust and respect you.  Once you build respect and create true fans of your brand, your sales will make themselves, your marketing costs will remain low, and your business will thrive.

What tactics do you use to create loyal raving fans? What brands are you a fan of any why? Tell us in the comments!

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