Top 3 Facebook and Instagram Ad Mistakes You're Probably Making

By Lauren Razzano, CEO + Founder

I recently was working on some Facebook Ads for a client that they had attempted to start themselves. Going over two of the ads they ran on their own, I realized some common themes for why they make not have been as effective as they could be.

Here are my top three things I see advertisers doing that could cause less-than-ideal results:

Not using enough audiences (Saved, Custom or Lookalike)

Facebook Custom Audiences are one of the most essential tools for successful Facebook advertising campaigns. Most accounts aren’t utilizing Custom Audiences, and many of those who do are not being used effectively or are set up incorrectly. This is detrimental to the success of your ads.

Too many interests listed in the ad set

Don't load up all the interests of your target audience in one ad. Back in 2015, this was the perfect way to do it, but with the competition on Facebook and Instagram these days, it’s best to hone interests down further than 20-40+ different interests and categories. By including all of these interests in one audience or ad set, it becomes very challenging to see what interests are working and which ones aren’t.

Only using one piece of creative

On top of everything above, I see accounts that only have one version of the copy, with one image and one headline. If you're doing all these mistakes then yes, this is probably why you haven’t seen results yet. If you're limited on budget and can only test one ad set at a time, you can always split test two different headlines. After all, that is the first thing that people see in their feed.