Top Facebook Ad Creative Mistakes

(Don't run ads before reading this)

Author

Andy at Growth Catalyst Club
April 25, 2024

Top Facebook Ad Creative Mistakes

Happy Friday! Today we’ll dive deep into the most common mistakes people make when it comes to running Facebook ads and creating ad creatives…

This issue is just scratching the surface as there are way more than 6 mistakes but I’ll let my mind flow and spit out just 6 for you today…

Let’s get started!

#1 Lack of clarity of what they get

If you see an ad that promises you something ambiguous and you have no idea what you’re getting, why would you ever click on it?

Yes. Maybe you’re curious to learn but if you see an ambiguous ad that makes you curious… And then you land on a page seeing the end result different from what you expected or it’s not fully clear what it is from the FIRST HEADLINE above the fold...

You will bounce!!!

Same with your customers…

#2 Thinking the problem is in the ads

So as you can see, it’s not only about the ads, it’s about the journey…

When we onboard our clients at Adsora, we analyze their whole funnel from the ad to the customer…

And what we often find is small and even mid-sized companies have no advertising problem, they have a landing page problem, or worse, an overarching marketing strategy problem.

And to make sure we can deliver, we have to often do more…

So before judging your ad agency, or media buyer, make sure your landing page is aligned with ads and whatever you offer next is aligned with the whole customer experience.

#3 Judging the ad results too early

When you first launch your ads on Facebook…

Meta will scan your ads and deliver them to the audience that is most likely to respond.

The algo can be wrong here but it’s pretty good at doing its job…

Especially when you give it some time…

But most people will make adjustments on the second day!

And that’s a mistake unless something is very wrong…

A lot of people get emotional about spending money on ads, and I get it because I spend my own money on ads every day… and I know how nerve-wracking it can be…

And to avoid this, just set a budget you’re willing to invest into the learnings for the next 7-14 days…

And once you launch ads, give it at least 4 to 7 or sometimes even 14 days without touching anything…

And only then you can judge if your ad is a creative performance…

#4 Looking at the wrong metrics

You see a lot of marketing gurus talk about CTR or Hook Rate being very important metric when it comes to Facebook ads.

And they are not wrong, it is important but not in the way you think.

Whenever I tested for correlation to profitability the only important metric that really correlated was cost per initiated checkout.

CTR and Hook rate are great metrics to look at…

But only when you’re hyper-optimizing a creative without changing the structural part of it…

Recently I launched an ad that had 33% CTR… It was funny but it didn’t work the way I wanted… So I’ll take the 1% CTR all day as long as it gives me the most profits or the lowest CAC at the highest volume.

CTR can be misleading to look in isolation because of the way Facebook ads work…

With google ads it’s a different story and CTR is very important.

But with Facebook ads, it can be very tricky…

And the reason why Facebook doesn’t optimize for CTR…

So it can show your ads to a broader/cheaper audience that is not as relevant but it’d get you the most conversions for the lowest cost!

But your CTR will be lower… And who cares?

#5 Not qualifying for the right audience

One thing you might see in ads is they don’t mention the audience they are serving…

So for example someone can say “This app helps you write without mistakes using AI checker” which is fine and it’s kinda for everyone…

But if you dug a bit deeper and said “This app helps copywriters write compelling stories faster without grammar mistakes or ruining the flow so they can get more clients and make more sales with their copy”…

This is so much more powerful because when you know who you speak to exactly, it would resonate with them much better and they would pay you more and convert better too…

So the choice is yours…

#6 Copying creatives from big brands

If you've been subscribed for enough time to Growth Catalyst Club, you know we rarely show you ad examples of big and proven brands...

Only if there’s something to learn…

And the reason for that is these big brands would often have a few million dollars as an ad budget that must be spent no matter what…

And so they only care about long-term returns, the budget spent today can be classified as “Research and Development”…

So that’s one reason not to copy them because you can copy ads that don’t work!

There are two more reasons:

The ads might “work” for the wrong reasons.

What big brands typically have is the “Brand” working for them… and they have a lot of different marketing channels working for them to “build their brand”.

So their marketing team might run ads because they are “working” on the surface but really they aren’t giving any incremental lift…

The last reason is they might be willing to spend a gazillion dollars to acquire one customer because they are in the “growth at all cost” stage and they think they can monetize the customer later on.

So these are the reasons why it’s dangerous to copy ads or marketing strategies from big brands when you are a small brand.

Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll answer them in one of the next newsletter issues.

Growth Catalyst Club

Reply

or to participate.