For those who understand the value of persuasion, an active, effective marketing campaign on Facebook can be a definite boost to any website’s search engine and marketing strategy. With a plethora of customizable features, it is in many ways one of the most sophisticated targeting features available on the internet. Best of all, it is remarkably affordable and allows you to make an impression on just about anyone. With all this in mind, we may be tempted to rush in and start our own campaign, only to discover that it is not working as expected. There are many reasons why this could be, but a few are usually the main culprits. We will discuss these so you can hopefully correct the situation.

Lack of Proper Targeting

With access to nearly one billion users, it may take some time to properly determine who you should be targeting with your campaign. One mistake may lead to a sample audience that is too big, while another may narrow the results down to an insignificant portion of the population. Each initial campaign should be viewed as a test, helping you ascertain which people are the best to target. If you are receiving too many clicks, narrow your parameters and experiment. Likewise, if nobody is clicking on your campaign, you may need to widen its focus.

Boring Headlines

Many may initially think that as long as someone is interested in similar subjects, they will certainly click on their ads. This isn’t true, mainly because you are most likely competing with others in the same interest categories. Your headline should be informative and capturing. Many campaigns use a “call to action” theme, encouraging their viewers to become a part of something. You will want to make sure that your language is vibrant yet understandable as well. It’s a lot to consider for just 25 characters of text, but it is perhaps the most important aspect of the campaign.

Failure to Keep Tabs on Data

How much have you been evaluating the data that Facebook campaigns offer? Do you know by how much your exposure has grown over the past week or month? What is the average age of the person clicking on your advertisements? The answers to these questions should be common knowledge to you. By knowing all of these answers, you can quickly decide whether or not your audience is in sync with your target market (Tip: running a Twitter campaign simultaneously? Use Pingler’s Twitter Links Finder to find all links to your website that are displayed on Twitter).

No Variation

When you launch an ad campaign, you should be using multiple instances of an ad – with minute changes – to determine which version is the most captivating. Facebook Ads offers the ability to split a campaign into multiple variations, so there is no excuse not to be doing this. Try using varying captions, images and headlines in each to determine what plays the best and who responds the best to each type of ad. You may find that one variation does remarkably better than the rest, but you’ll never know if you are not employing this tactic.