Common Facebook Ad Mistakes to Avoid

Facebook is an ever-evolving platform, and with every change you have to reexamine the way you advertise. Even with their recent algorithm changes, Facebook advertising still creates significant benefits for your real estate business by placing your ads in front of consumers.

In order to make the most of your advertising opportunities, you should avoid making these common mistakes before you start spending ad dollars.

1. Assuming It's Just About the Likes

In the dawn of social media, it was all about how many likes/followers you had. However, you need to remember you're paying to reach Facebook users. Instead of just trying to gain followers, why not use your advertising dollars to generate leads? It is true that Facebook's organic reach is on the decline, but there are still techniques you can use to engage with followers and grow your engagement organically.

Facebook has different objectives you can choose from when you create ads. You want your objective to match the goal of your ad's message. As a Realtor, you might want to keep your objectives to one of the following: traffic (drive consumers to your website or landing page), lead generation (automatically collect lead information from audiences engaging with your ad), or conversion (get people to take valuable actions, like filling out lead forms, on your website).

2. Forgetting to Target Different Audiences

As Facebook continuously becomes a "pay-to-play" world, targeting the same audience for every ad can be a waste of advertising dollars. Imagine how many times you see the same ad on Facebook and get annoyed or learn to tune it out because you have no interest (or already took action) on the ad.

Now, as the advertiser, you need to ad just your ad's target audience for every post you create. This will ensure different users see it, thus allowing a different set of potential consumers to engage with it so you can reach your ad's goal.

3. Rushing to Judgment

Probably one of Facebook's most advanced tools, the Ads Manager keeps you updated with live analytics on all of your current and past ads/campaigns. Constantly checking your ad's analytics is a great habit to create as you become acquainted with Facebook advertising. However, it could also be the reason why your ads aren't reaching the entirety of your target audience.

If you see your ad is not performing to your expectations, you may be tempted to edit your ad's image, headline, or text in hopes of attaining better results. However, it takes an average of 24 to 48 hours for Facebook to optimize your changes. So if you check your ad's insights within that time range, you might not see the changes you hoped for; be patient.

4. Too Much, Too Fast

Another norm in advertising is A/B testing. This is where you try out multiple versions of the same ad to see which one performs best. But a huge mistake many make is not leaving a guide to measure from.

When testing out several ads, you might feel the need to make changes to one ad due to low performance compared to the other. The changes you make to the ad should be limited to only one change at a time, and remember to give Facebook sufficient time to make the changes. This will ensure that you know which of the changes made the difference in the ad's performance.

5. You're Not Studying the Metrics

It is easy to get caught up in your daily routine and forget to go back and review the status of your ads. Reviewing your ad's success or failure is a great way to see where you got it right or might've gotten it wrong.

Documenting and analyzing your ad's metrics helps you find connections you wouldn't otherwise notice – connections you can use to your advantage so you don't fall into a cycle void of results and to ensure you identify and use the ad aspects that performed well in past ads in future ads.

6. Uncommitted to the Relationship

Just like in a relationship, you will make mistakes and sometimes fail, but you need to adjust and learn as you go. You will have to do your homework--keep an eye out for upcoming changes to the platform and realign your strategy according to these changes.

To view the original article, visit the Homes.com blog.