8 Common Facebook Lead Generation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Facebook is offering one of the most complex and robust advertising platforms for marketers and businesses of all types and sizes. No matter what products you’re selling and what audiences you’re targeting, Facebook marketing can help you take your business to the next level.

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Of course, taking your business to new heights doesn’t come easy. Knowledge, expertise, and experience are factors that’ll influence your lead generation performance, so the more you practice the better outcomes you’ll get.

When it comes to developing and optimizing a Facebook ad campaign, most marketers are committing simple to serious mistakes that are undoubtedly decreasing the ROI (return on investment) of the campaign.

In today’s post, I’m sharing 8 common Facebook lead generation mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

1.    Skipping or Neglecting the Audience Research Process

What ad do you think will perform better?

A great ad which is placed in front of the wrong audience? Or an average ad which is placed in front of the right audience?

I’m willing to bet that the second option is the most profitable, mostly because the audience selection comes always first. You cannot sell something that is not needed, so refining your advertising reach is always critical.

Before you start any Facebook ad campaign, you’ll need to be almost certain that the audience you’re targeting is willing to perform an action or take their money out of their pockets and purchase your products.

Targeting interests is a great way to refine your audience selection. Get into your customer’s shoes and ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s my audience searching for on Google?
• What is the biggest struggle or need of my ideal customer?
• What pages does my target audience “like” on Facebook?
• What apps do they use and what games do they play?
• What kind of blogs does my audience read?
• What brands are they already familiar with?

You should keep asking different questions until you gain an enhanced understanding of your target audience’s interests, mindset, and behavior. The more details you have the less money you’ll spend on refining your audience selection.

2.    The Lack of Patience

Paid advertising is not a quick race but rather a long marathon. You can’t expect results overnight, especially if your ad spend is low. Many marketers start rolling ads only to close them after two hours of mediocre results. Spending $5 on a campaign is not enough to get the necessary insights.

Before you start a campaign, decide exactly how much you’re going to spend. If you’re selling a product at the price of 0 and the production/acquisition cost is , you have left to spend on your Facebook advertising campaign in order to get a customer. Of course, the less the better, but before you even begin, ensure that your ad budget is even larger in the beginning.

Do your best to let your ads roll without pausing or canceling them for optimization purposes. When you reach around 1000 people, you should have just enough data and insights to establish a proper conclusion concerning your customer acquisition cost.

3.    The Audience Targeting is Too Broad

The most common mistake with Facebook paid advertising involves the targeting of an audience that is too broad. Even if you believe that every person might be a potential buyer, spending your ad budget on the wrong people is a critical mistake that will never allow you to run profitable campaigns.

Why?

Because reaching a broad audience is just like throwing money away. Generally, 500k to 1.5 million people is a proper audience size for e-commerce businesses. If the resulted approximation is too broad or too small, add some interests that your audience might be familiar with.

4.    Not Considering All the Available Insights

Facebook Ad Manager is a very complex advertising platform that can get you immediately confused. Measuring your performance is tricky because there are lots of options that don’t come by default. Simply put, Facebook Ad Manager doesn’t show all the relevant data that might be useful to your campaign.

To solve this common “mistake”, you’ll need to customize and personalize your Ad Manager columns to get access to all the information you need.

Consider adding the following columns to receive additional data and insights:

• CPC (cost per click)
• CTR (click through rate)
• Frequency (how many times people see your ads)
• Website purchases (how many purchases your ads bring)
• Reach (the number of unique ad viewers)
• Relevance score (a metric that tells how relevant your ad is to your targeted audience)
• CPM (the cost per 1000 impressions)
• Cost per Result (the cost of reaching your end result)
• Budget (the amount of money you pay daily or in total)

5.    Failing to Isolate Your Results and Insights

How do marketers fail to get palpable insights and feedback even after they spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads?

They fail to isolate their ad variables and results!

If you want to fully understand what’s working and what’s not, you’ll need to test one variable at a time. You should separately test the Advert Set, the copy, the ad design, and then the interests.

Always try to isolate a single variable because it provides you with enough insights and knowledge that’ll help you optimize the next variable. Your ad manager account allows you to test and change your ads based on:

• Ad: The creative, the format, the links.
• Advert Set: The schedule, the placement, and the audience you’re targeting.
• Campaign: The objective you choose (purchases, contact, add to cart, etc.)

6.    Not Reaping the Full Benefits of Your Ad Spend

Regardless of your ad’s objective, the simple fact that your ad is running allows you to collect important feedback that you’ll be able to leverage later in your future campaigns.

So, for example, marketers who target sales are frequently ignoring the benefits of their ad spend. Here’s the additional value you can receive from an ad that “has failed” to get you enough buyers:

• Collect the emails of the people who have visited your website by clicking your ad.
• Engage directly with the individuals who left comments on your ads.
• Everyone who visited your site can be retargeted as “warm prospects” in the future.
• Collect more comments, shares, and likes on your posts to improve your ad’s social proof. Run it again, and people will take into consideration all the present engagement.
• Invite the traffic who has engaged with your ads to like your Facebook page.

7.    Failing to Optimize Your Advertisement for Clicks and Attention

A great understanding of your target audience is essential, but it’s not enough. Optimizing your Facebook ads for clicks and attention is also key to a high-performing campaign. Here are some tips and tricks on how to improve your ad creative:

• If you have a suited audience, use emojis to add originality and personality in your ad copy.
• Your copy, video, or images should have a focal point that grabs the eye.
• Try different ad formats without changing the Advert Set. This goes especially for videos, as Facebook is well-known for prioritizing this particular format.
• Collect social proof data (shares, comments, and likes) every time you run ads.
• Start a Facebook Shop to offer additional clickthrough opportunities that feature product tags and links.

Another important aspect you need to consider is the copy of your Facebook ad. If writing and editing isn’t your forte, I’d suggest you outsource professional help or take advantage of professional tools such as:

• Grammarly
• ProWritingAid
• Bestessaytips
• Proofreading AssignmentGeek Service
• Edugeeksclub
• Australian Writings
• Brill Assignment

8.    Using Facebook Ads to Sell Directly Rather than to Connect

If you use Google PPC, you’re always knowing for sure that your target audience has a specific intent. For example, if you promote Christmas gifts through Google ads, everyone who searches for that term will present a strong purchasing intent. However, if you run the same ad on Facebook, you’ll find that very few people are actually triggered by your ad.

Here’s the problem: people use social media networks to relax, lose time, and entertain themselves. They use it in order to avoid responsibilities and to avoid making decisions.

So, instead of intrusively promoting your products on Facebook, make sure that you introduce your brand, your content, and your value proposition properly. Aim to connect with your audience while trying to bring them to your site where you can collect their emails. Proceed with the product promotion only after your prospects know who you are and what you can offer.

Takeaways

Facebook marketing is tricky because you basically have infinite options to promote your content and products. By committing the previously mentioned mistakes, you may easily become disappointed by the ROI of your ad spending.

You may even become overwhelmed and drop Facebook advertising for good, and that would be a shame. Continue practicing, keep testing, failing, and optimizing, and you’ll eventually find profitable campaigns that’ll skyrocket your traffic and sales performance.

Author Bio: Scott Mathews is a professional content writer at digital marketing, SEO and SMM. Scott`s biggest passion is blogging and travelling. He regularly takes part in different conferences and contributes his posts to different websites. Contact him on Facebook and Twitter.

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