Top 10 Reasons Your Facebook Ads Aren’t Converting
Facebook Advertising or Meta Advertising is a great way to scale your business and should be a part of your marketing plan. Unfortunately, a lot of people have tried to use Facebook Advertising to grow their businesses, but often see little to no results. The reason for this isn’t because Meta Advertising doesn’t work, but rather they are making a few small mistakes that cause poor performance. In this post, you’ll learn the top 10 reasons your Facebook Ads aren’t converting.
1. Targeting isn’t set up correctly on your Facebook Ad campaigns
When it comes to advertising your business targeting the right people is essential. One common mistake a lot of small business owners make is thinking that “everyone” needs their product and marketing it that way. The reality is that when you market to everyone you are really marketing to no one.
This is why having the correct targeting for your Meta Ad campaigns is so essential. Without the right targeting, the people seeing your ads are less likely to click or convert. This means you could end up spending a lot of money on Facebook Advertising that never returns a profit.
There are several levels of targeting you want to consider and some key audiences you want to build to be successful in running Facebook ads. If you aren’t using these targeting options it’s likely why your Facebook Ads aren’t converting.
The first level is interest-based targeting and lookalike audiences. People who have interests similar to your ideal customer or those who match the behavior of your ideal customers. Lookalike audiences should be based on activities like visiting your website, engaging with your content, joining your email list and those who are already buying from you.
The next levels are used for retargeting and are based on activities throughout your buying journey. We’ll cover these levels later in the post. Start with some research on your ideal customers and their interests and begin your targeting there.
2. Ad Copy Doesn’t Have The Right Message
The next reason your Facebook Advertising isn’t converting is that your ad copy doesn’t have the right message. A typical issue that causes your Facebook ads not to convert is that your ad copy messaging is only focused on your offer’s features.
The features of your products or services are great, but they are not the main reason people will buy. Most people are going to buy from you because the benefits of your products are solving some kind of issue your ideal customers have.
The good news is that writing effective ad copy for Facebook Ads doesn’t have to be complicated. There are 3 simple steps you can follow to write better converting Facebook Ads.
- Call out some kind of problem or issue that your ideal customer is dealing with.
- Showcase how your offer has benefits that your ideal customer wants, which is a solution to that problem addressed in step one.
- Include a call to action that drives people to the goal of your ad. (Clicking the button, visiting your website, watching a video, etc.)
Watch the video below for a more detailed breakdown of this 3 Step Facebook Advertising Strategy.
3. Ad Creatives Aren’t Attention-Grabbing
Another reason your Facebook ads aren’t converting is that your ad creatives aren’t attention-grabbing. What this means is that your ad images or videos aren’t resonating with your ideal customers or target market.
There are several reasons for this. One could be that your ads are targeting the wrong people and the ads themselves are not the type of ads that your targets are interested in. For example, if you are targeting a younger audience they may interact more with short videos compared to a longer text ad.
Your ads also may not fit the platform and really stand out as an ad. For example, if you are using generic stock photos in your ads they may perform much worse than a picture using your real employees or clients using your product.
You may also simply need to change the type of ad creative to be more engaging. If you are just using images, try video, if you are using video and it’s not performing an image or carousel ad may perform better.
You’ll want to test several creative options to see what performs best with your target audience to see which converts best.
4. Choosing The Wrong Objective For Your Facebook Ad Campaign
This is one of the most common mistakes that business owners make when they run Facebook ads. In most cases, you want to choose the objective that best suits the goal you have for your Facebook ad campaign.
Another thing to consider is what stage of the buyer’s journey is your target audience in for your ad. For example, if you are trying to build a warm audience that doesn’t yet know you, you probably would choose an objective that fits that goal.
In this case, you would likely choose something like video views on a value-based video, or traffic to a blog post, or an engagement ad on a post that builds trust and credibility for your business. If your target market is the next level of the buyer’s journey you may direct them to a lead magnet or a webinar registration, or potentially a sales page.
With these scenarios, you likely should choose an objective focused on conversions. It probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense to run an engagement ad on a post if your hope was for someone to buy a product linked from that post. If you want someone to opt-in on a lead magnet page, a traffic ad probably isn’t the best option, but a conversion ad optimized for the “lead” event would be.
Now, this doesn’t mean you won’t ever choose an objective like traffic, or engagement when you are trying to sell a product. However, you don’t want to choose the wrong objective that isn’t your real goal of the ad.
5. Your Offer Doesn’t Solve The Problems Your Ideal Customers Are Worried About
Your Facebook ads will only convert as well as the offers you are promoting. If your back-end offer doesn’t effectively solve the problems your ideal customers are dealing with they likely won’t buy.
This means that you need to do some initial research to determine everything you can about your customers. Stop selling only the features of your products and focus on the benefits that your ideal customers receive.
Often we’ll see people who get very passionate about a course they create or a new product they launched but it doesn’t really solve the needs of their ideal customers. For example, maybe you sell a pest control service and you keep talking about how convenient your monthly treatments are. That may be true, but your ideal customers are actually more concerned with having peace of mind of a pest-free home vs the convenience of treatments.
Make sure your offer is selling what your ideal customers actually want and the beneftis or it won’t matter how well your Facebook ads are structured.
6. Your Facebook ads aren’t bringing people through the whole customer journey
One common mistake people make when running Facebook ads is that they only run ads for the sale. Running ads that sell your product directly and see some success. However, if you only advertise the bottom of your funnel you risk leaving sales on the table.
A better strategy is to run Facebook ads throughout the entire customer journey and move people down your sales funnel. It would be best if you started with awareness ad campaigns with an educational and value-based focus.
For example, if you were in the fitness niche it could be a short value on something like 3 highly effective workouts you can do with zero equipment. In this case you can run these value-based ads as a video views campaign targeting your ideal audience. The ad may or may not include a call-to-action to get some free offer or it could just be strictly value-based.
When you target your ideal customers they will likely be very interested in this type of content. Plus, the cost per view from this audience should be very low.
Either way, you can then take this ever-growing audience and remarket your lead magnet ads and even your sales ads. The conversion rate will often be higher because this is a warm audience that knows, likes, and trusts you.
7. Your landing page isn’t optimized for conversions
Another reason that your Facebook ads aren’t converting is that your landing page isn’t optimized for conversions. Often we’ll see people set up a landing page for sales, a webinar, or a lead magnet, and once it’s built never update it again.
They might have a 10% conversion rate or a 20% conversion rate and whatever it is never test new formats to try and improve results. There are a variety of things that can impact the conversion rate of a landing page.
You might have too much text as an example or the messaging doesn’t resonate with your ideal customers and offer. Perhaps you don’t have any social proof or testimonials on the landing page and adding those could improve conversions.
You could be asking for too many form fields and people aren’t willing to give you all the information you are asking for. The page speed can be another factor that could reduce conversion rates as well.
The reasons your conversion rates could be lower can vary, but you won’t have a chance of improving those conversion rates if you don’t ever test different versions of a landing page. Make sure a conversion rate optimization strategy is a part of your plan to avoid low-converting Facebook ads.
8. Your tracking isn’t working
If you installed your Facebook pixel on your website that is only the beginning. You want to also set up tracking events for each event your ads are focused on.
For example, you want the basic page view event on all pages of your website which is the default. From there you want to specify additional events based on the page the event pixel is placed on.
On your thank you page after someone opts into your lead magnet you should include the lead event. If someone registers for a webinar you should include the complete registration event on the thank you page.
Some other events to include are an initiate checkout, add to cart, and purchase event. These track some of the most valuable actions that your website visitors take. You can also include the value of these events to get a better idea of your return on ad spend (ROAS).
If you aren’t tracking these events you will have a very difficult time optimizing your ads and Facebook also will have a hard time optimizing your ads. When you set an objective like conversions if conversions aren’t properly tracked Facebook can’t fully optimize those ads. This means you’ll likely pay a lot more per conversion than you should or you might not see conversions at all.
9. You aren’t optimizing your ads
As briefly mentioned above, another reason your Facebook ads aren’t converting is that you aren’t optimizing your ads as they run. Most people have the wrong idea about paid advertising and have a “set-it-and-forget-it” mindset.
Sure, you could take that approach and you may see some results, but you definitely won’t maximize your results with that approach. Instead, you need to regularly manage and update your ads to get the best performance.
There are some key metrics you want to pay attention to in order to optimize your Facebook ads. Obviously, the number of conversions and the cost per conversion is important, however, those are just the beginning.
Other metrics that can be an indicator of successful ads are things like the cost per click and click-through rate. Try and shoot for a cost per click of around $1.00 or less and a click-through rate above 1%.
The CPC or CTR may be worse than those numbers and it could be OK. If the ads are making sales that cover the costs it is fine, but you should still strive to improve. Adjustments should be made in your targeting, ad copy, or ad creatives if your CPC and CTR are outside of those ranges.
Also, understand that optimization takes time. You need your ads to run long enough and to spend enough money to gather enough data to make informed decisions. Too often people turn off their ads too soon before even giving them a chance to optimize and succeed.
10. Your sales process on the back end needs work
Finally, you want to make sure that you have a solid sales process and follow-up strategy on the back end. Too many times we see people generate many leads for their business and claim that the leads are bad.
The reality is that in most cases the leads aren’t bad the sales process and follow-up with the leads are bad. You need to consider several aspects of your sales process that could be hurting your conversion rates.
How soon do you follow up with your leads from Facebook ads? Is your offer priced too high? Do you just deliver your lead magnet and hope the leads take the next step or do you actually lead them into the next step?
How many times are you following up with your new leads? Are you using remarketing ads to target those who didn’t buy with a different offer or ads with social proof?
If your answers to the above questions seem like you aren’t following up or selling effectively that could be a major reason your Facebook ads aren’t converting.
Conclusion
Overall when you implement the right strategies with your Facebook ads you can almost always guarantee results. If you avoid making the most common mistakes we covered above the likelihood your Facebook ads will convert goes significantly up!
Make sure that your targeting and messaging are on point and are reaching the right people. The imagery of your ads needs to be compelling and needs to fit naturally with the platform.
Your landing pages and ads need to be optimized for conversions. You need to effectively track results to troubleshoot your ads and you need a solid sales process on the back end when leads come in.
If you follow those steps you’ll see a massive improvement in the results of your Facebook advertising!
