It can happen – and sometimes it does! – that advertising campaigns on Facebook that seem theoretically perfect are not successful , that they do not perform as they should or that they even generate counterproductive results . On a daily basis, marketers study and test new ways for their social campaigns by changing parameters and analyzing prospects and results and yet, despite the utmost attention paid to every single step, unexpected negative situations can sometimes occur .
But why does this happen? We have compiled what we believe to be the four main factors that cause a Facebook advertising campaign to fail .
Reason 1: Facebook campaigns have not been properly tested
The absence or inattention in carrying out the correct test campaigns is the first and predominant reason for the possible failure of a social media marketing campaign . If, in fact, launching a Facebook Ads campaign is a relatively simple activity, thanks to a creation process that is by its nature rather intuitive , it is on the other hand equally true that the risk of failure rises without the necessary preliminary tests that evaluate the accuracy of the strategy, the message, the targeting . These are the steps in creating a Facebook campaign that take the most time, and therefore require the most attention.
The solution is therefore to always carry out the necessary tests before launching the actual campaign. In this sense, the Facebook Ads platform is very useful, because it has an internal option called Split Test that allows the analysis of a series of variability: from creativity to delivery optimization, from audience to positioning.
Reason 2: The message does not identify the correct values
The second reason that can lead to the failure of a Facebook campaign concerns the imprecision or inaccuracy of the textual message, graphic or even both .
In practice, this means that the value proposition expressed in the copy or in the visual of the campaign is unable to communicate with the target audience. Alternatively, it may happen that copy and visual are not absolutely consistent with each other, and therefore generate nothing but confusion in the public overall .
How to do? Simple: make sure that you have fully and thoroughly understood the value proposition that you need to express through the campaign.
Reason 3: audience too limited
While it is true that “opening” a campaign to an indiscriminate audience means ” shooting in the heap “, with little consideration for the correct target, even circumscribing the target audience too much could generate the failure of a Facebook Ads campaign.
As is known, the platform offers an extraordinary level of detail in the audience targeting phase, but it will be up to the marketer to evaluate how much and when the adequate level of audience identification has been achieved.
Therefore, if it is correct to say that the more specific a user is, the more effective the campaign will be , the excess of specificity can reduce the public of interest to a niche so small and detailed as to significantly reduce the chances of success of any campaign.
Our advice: less than one million users are too limited. Better to focus on a target that is, except for due consideration, between 5 and 10 million users .
Reason 4: Too much focus on short-term results
Facebook Ads should never be construed solely as a direct-response marketing channel . Although users actually see the campaign, click on the Call To Action and are put in the position to convert, companies will always have to study medium and long-term strategies in order not to find themselves managing the consequences of an unfortunate Facebook campaign.
We know that Facebook is, by far, the social network that people choose to socialize , rather than to shop. We must therefore never think that the first intent of users, when they see an advertising campaign, is to buy something . On the contrary, most of them will take it as an opportunity to learn more about the organization and its product or service proposition , and it may take some time before a user is “warm” (ie convinced) enough to proceed. ‘purchase.
This is why it is essential to design Facebook campaigns that are not designed solely and exclusively to convert but, first of all, to get to know and be known by your target audience .