ou hit the publish button, the ad goes live, and then somebody in the team picks up on a silly mistake. Suddenly, everyone is in panic mode and you waste resources trying to pull the ad. In serious cases, this has the potential to harm the reputation of the whole company. With this in mind, it’s important to understand the common mistakes in ad campaigns and how to check for them before publishing. In this guide, you’ll find a detailed list to help prevent future mistakes on Google and Facebook.
After spending time perfecting an ad, the last thing you want to do is send it out with the wrong campaign objective. These days, the objective you choose depends on the platform you’re using and the goals of the campaign. On Facebook, you can choose from several different objectives including:
The objective you choose should align with your marketing goals. Although it seems a small mistake, selecting the wrong objective can hinder campaign performance.
While some marketers will simply click on the wrong objectives, others don’t have a full understanding of what the objectives provide. For new brands, you may want to boost product awareness. This is great, but do you choose the Traffic or Reach objective? Though essentially the same, Traffic is designed to send people to your website while Reach is all about getting in front of as many relevant people as possible. The more you understand the objectives, the easier you can identify the one you need for each campaign.
As a consumer, you don’t want to see the same commercial appearing on the TV over and over again, right? Well, it’s the same for your audience on social media and search. If you don’t refresh the creatives on your campaign, your audience may grow to dislike the ad or ignore it completely which can lead to ad fatigue.
There are many things you can do to keep ad creatives fresh:
In truth, you don’t need to overhaul the whole ad and produce something entirely new. Instead, make small changes to prevent ad fatigue.
With Google, Facebook, or any other advertising platform, targeting is often the difference between success and failure. Although you might be tired of hearing it, even the best ad won’t perform if it’s shown to the wrong people.
Before choosing targeting definitions, understand that both Facebook and Google have extensive options for refining your campaign. When selecting targeting criteria, think about the interests of your target audience and select keywords that will bring in the best conversions at the cheapest cost. If your audience or targeting definitions are too broad or inaccurate, you’ll end up paying for ads that get delivered to people with limited interest in the business.
Facebook even has tools like lookalike audiences and custom audiences that can help you tailor your audience to reach the most relevant people.
While on the topic of targeting, you also need to consider whether or not the ad you’ve produced is relevant to the audience. Often, we get carried away during the ad creation stage and lose sight of what the audience wants and needs. Before publishing any ad, think about a potential recipient and how they will react.
We have two tips for people with this concern:
While the former will help to identify the general interest in your campaigns, the latter will help to learn exactly what the customer needs right now.
Online advertising revolves around keywords. With Google, for example, you will come across three types of keywords: exact match, phrase match, and broad match.
With this option, the only way for your ad to display is if somebody in your chosen audience types the exact phrase you have selected. Despite a higher conversion than phrase and broad match ads, exact matches have much lower traffic.
This time, the search doesn’t need to be exact, but the ordering should remain the same. For example, a campaign with ‘best camping stove’ will still deliver to somebody who searches ‘where to find the best camping stove’. Although other words are present, they are still in the same order as your phrase match.
Lastly, this option allows your ad to show when your chosen words are used in any order. Of course, this means the opposite of an exact match in that you’ll have lots of traffic but lower conversion. Why? Because you’re more likely to appear in irrelevant searches.
Before launching your campaign, double check that you’ve selected the right keywords for your goals. Are you looking for high traffic or high quality conversions?
We can’t forget that some campaign objectives will push consumers towards a specific landing page. If this landing page is cluttered, slow, or has broken links, one of two things will happen:
If your landing page experience fails to deliver what was originally promised in the ad, Facebook might consider it clickbait. Ultimately, you don’t want your brand to be linked with clickbait because it can negatively impact your image and reputation.
Remember, Facebook wants to keep all ads clean and positive for the recipients. Therefore, we recommend checking your ads for third-party infringement, misleading content, inappropriate or offensive content, or even content that encourages unethical or illegal behavior.
All of these content restrictions are available in Facebook’s advertising policies.
Over the years, countless businesses have overspent on ad campaigns. Especially when a lack of experience is an issue, they set bidding settings without really understanding them. With this in mind, it’s definitely an area to double-check before hitting the publish button.
Quite often, the key to success is trial and error. If your aim is to boost traffic to the website, many people are hesitant at first and will set limits of $10. This is fine, but you need to be willing to experiment. For example, double this amount or even triple it to see how it impacts results. As you continuously review the analytics and adjust, you should eventually find the perfect bidding amount for the campaign.
If you’re not comfortable using custom bid settings, feel free to use the platforms’ automated bidding systems.
As well as these eight large checks, there are a lot of smaller things you should check before publishing an ad. You should ask the following:
