As a small business owner you've probably considered Facebook as a tool for getting more customers. You got all excited, set up what you thought was a great advert, got a few clicks, and yet... no one purchased your product or service! 

So you, shrug your shoulders, say 'Facebook ads don't work for me' and go back to Google Adwords, the local newspaper, or your advertising platform of choice. But are you missing a trick? Did you miss some of the fundamental ways that ads work? Before you turn your back on Facebook Ads completely, take a look  at our top 3 reasons why Facebook ads don't work. 

Your Facebook Ads Won't Work Well If You Don't Define Your Target Audience. 

This is something we see time and again here at The Small Biz Expert. You see an audience of 2 million and think - great! I'll go for that, without taking the time to define who your product is targeting. The actual point of Facebook ads is that they work so well as you can precision target an audience that will meet your exact requirements (in most cases). 

I will walk through an example with you. Let's say you sell car insurance that is tailored to high net worth individuals who drive supercars - extreme, but hey someone does! 

If you were the marketing manager of that company and were looking to run an offline advert which of the following would you try? 

Put an advert in a teenagers fashion magazine?

Stick a poster in the local shop in a low affluence area? 

Put an advert in a magazine targeted at high net worth individuals with a focus on cars, travel and business. 

Try either of the first two and you're unlikely to see any conversions! So why do the same with Facebook ads! You are PAYING to put an advert in front of the wrong audience unless you target your campaign. 

So, how should you target your Facebook adverts for this mythical insurer? 

Well let's start on the basis that you definitely need to target high net worth individuals. 

Facebook lets you target based on demographics and behaviours, so make use of this feature. 

Cool, I now know that I'm targeting both high affluence and very high affluence audiences. However, there are two things I also need to consider. Firstly - do they own a car! There are few options here - you can choose car owners, likely to buy a car, number of cars in household. But the key is to ensure that you are narrowing down your audience (not expanding it) so choose narrow audience, and for our example, I will go with luxury car owner. 

Lastly, I want to know if they are actually in the market right now for new car insurance - so let's add that too. 

I think we have created a pretty good audience for our fictitious campaign - and maybe you did the same too - but... shock... it's still not converting! What else could it be? 

Your Facebook Advert Didn't Have The Right Message

Advertising can be pretty subjective - however, there are some big no no's when it comes to Facebook ads. 

Firstly, go for a title that does what is say - and make the best use of imagery. You may love your logo - but if it doesn't really reflect what you do, you aren't going to drive clicks (and therefore conversions. Do we think the ad below is going to work for our premium brand? 

Probably not! Do think about the message that your advert is sending, and also the format. 

But you cry - I made a cracking advert - everyone loved it - my audience was super targeted, and yet... zilch. So on to our final Facebook ads mistake.

Your Advert Is Not Converting As You are Not Using Appropriate Landing Pages

This doesn't actually just apply to Facebook adverts, it's an issue we see across the spectrum! I often speak to clients who say 'Oh I'm not interested in landing pages'. Well, if you have more than one product or service, to some degree you probably do have some landing pages already. So what do we mean by a landing page? 

Say our supercar insurer also offers bog standard home insurance, mobile phone insurance for  Nokia 8210s (remember them!) and pet insurance for hamsters. The chances are that the home page will be about general insurance, with specific pages for the other types. It may not have obvious calls to action or be written with our HNW in mind. 

So you have two options - use your product page as a landing page (our supercar insurance page), or better yet, create a specific landing page which is tailored to your advert. If you have an offer, send people straight to it! Looking to get more sign-ups to grow your database - make sure you're using a page with an easy to access contact form! 

The key to successful Facebook ads is the planning, and like any advertising campaign, starting with your target audience and building everything around that. If you don't follow these steps, you may as well throw your hard earned marketing budget out of the window. 

As always, if you need help with your Facebook ads, get in touch with us to find out how we can help you create high converting campaigns.