I have heard this a lot when asking people what they have tried when marketing their café.
In many cases when I have looked into this in more detail there have been four common reasons why these ads have not worked.
- The offer was weak and there was no call to action.
- The “Ad” was actually just a boosted post and not an ad.
- The ad was not set up properly in Facebook.
- The ad did not run for long enough for the Facebook algorithm to kick in.
If you have run ads before and you didn’t get the results that you wanted then check through the list above and ask yourself if one of the points could have been the reason.
Setting up an ad properly takes a bit of time but like most things you get back what you put in.
I am constantly trying different things to improve results and I wanted to share a couple of changes that I have made recently that have worked really well.
Edit Placements
I have got better results by editing the placements instead of just leaving them set to automatic. For ads that have a link to click I have got better results by running just inside Facebook (deselecting Instagram).
In most cases I am running the ads just in feeds and I am turning off all of the other options.
Run the Ad on either Mobile or Desktop
I ran an experiment with the same ad on mobile and desktop to see what kind of results I got. On the first week I ran the ad just on desktop and on week two I ran it just on mobile.
I found that the results from the mobile ad were way better than the desktop (there was almost no comparison they were so much better). Since then I have always deselected the desktop option and run all of my ads solely on mobile now.
Try this experiment for yourself and see which works better for you ad, if there is not much in it you could leave this set as it is but if your results are similar to what I found then you may be wasting ad spend by delivering to desktop.
Run the ad for a reasonable time.
It takes the Facebook at least 7 days to work out who is most likely to respond and react to your advert. If you run the ad for less than a week then you are not giving it enough time to optimise for the best results.
With an end date the algorithm will work hard to deliver strong results for you before the ad finishes, you don’t tend to get such good results with an open ended ad or no end date.
The logic behind this is that ultimately Facebook want your ads to be successful, as you get towards the end date if you are getting a good response Facebook assume that you will consider extending the ad.
I generally let the ad expire and if it has worked well then I will re run it with a new start/end date.
When set up properly Facebook ads can be cost effective and deliver really good results, try a few different variations and find a format that works for your customers.
Think about it like you would creating a new menu item, the first couple of attempts may not be 100% right but with a bit of adjustment and experimentation you could find a winner.
I hope this helps, feel free to share your experiences and results with Facebook ads in the comments below.
