5 Facebook Ad Mistakes You Should Avoid Doing

Here are some of the most common Facebook ad mistakes dropshippers are making which you should definitely avoid doing. Some of these can be really deadly to your campaigns so make sure to read the whole article.

Hope you like this article and let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

 

 

1. Turning Off Your Facebook Ad Campaigns Way Too Early

One of the biggest mistakes out there is turning off your campaigns way too early, and without really giving Facebook a chance to optimize or reading the data. In most cases, dropshipping beginners turn off their ads based on a hunch which isn’t the correct way to do things.

Dropshipping is a game of trial and error and it will take you time till you can get a product to sell and bring you a steady profit. The key is to first analyze the data reported back from Facebook, locate the problems, fix them, and to give it another chance before you finally decide to turn off you campaigns.

So before turning off your ads, here’s a few tips that may bring you your first profitable campaign:

1. The problem isn’t always with your ads – Even the perfect ad won’t help you make sales if your store isn’t optimized or if there’s some bug preventing you from getting sales. Don’t even think about sending traffic into a half-baked!
2. Always try again if you’re making sales – Congratulations, You’re doing better than most dropshippers out there! The majority of dropshippers don’t even get to the point of making sales, so if you’re getting some but still losing money, it just means you’re on the right path. Optimize your ads, locate the issues, and try again.
3. Give Facebook some time – It takes Facebook some time to understand and find the relevant people for your business, so please be patient… I had so many campaigns that started off slow and really inconsistent, but eventually turned into great campaigns!
4. Try multiple creatives – Increase your chances of getting sales by testing different creatives. You can never know which video your customers will like more and sometimes a simple photo ad can outperform a high quality video ad. Test at least 2 creatives and let Facebook decide which one performs better.
5. It could just be a bad day – Facebook, like any other platform out there, has sometimes issues and this can be the reason you’re getting zero results. Ask in various dropshipping groups to see if anyone else is having issues and try again if you believe your ads didn’t reach the right audience. Unfortunately, Facebook won’t refund you any of the money you have already spent ?

For much more detailed tips and real analysis, make sure to read my Getting Traffic But No Sales article.

 

2. Keeping Detailed Targeting Expansion On

Facebook LOVES to push their newest updates to us the advertisers. It can be a new ad placement that they have just released, or a new ad type, etc… They’ll push it hard on us to try it and it’s always followed with a lot of sugar coating.

They will use words like “improve performance”, “get more conversions”, everything to convince us to try it and spend more money. Here’s how they explain this detailed targeting expansion when clicking on the small “i” icon:

When you know how to target and what interests to use, you don’t really need any help with reaching the right audience. This option is there to simply expand your targeting without any guarantees to hit the right audience. So if you’re selling cat products, you may reach dog only owners which will be a waste of money.

How I see it, this option is only good to try when you’re actually scaling big and looking for some luck to find new audiences you haven’t reached yet. If you’re testing products, please keep this options OFF.

And how aggressive Facebook can be? Go on and duplicate an existing ad set with detailed targeting expansion turned off and the new one will ALWAYS have this option turned on. A duplicated ad set should have the exact same settings as the original one, but the detailed targeting option is always turned on.

It could be an honest mistake, but I believe this is intentional so make sure to turn this option off on all your duplicated ad sets.

 

3. Increasing/Decreasing Your Budget To Improve Campaign Performance

Editing your campaign/ad set budget can sometimes help you get better results, but in most cases this isn’t the right way to do things. If your campaigns are inconsistent, or you’re looking to scale up a bit, then consider adding more ad sets/campaigns instead of editing your existing ones.

I usually refrain from touching my ad set or campaign(if I run CBO) budgets because Facebook goes back into the Learning phase which can ruin your results. Instead, you can always duplicate the originals and this way you don’t have to worry about your ads tanking.

Important:

Every ad account is different and there are people out there that get wonderful results just by editing their original ad sets so they don’t need to duplicate anything. In my experience, editing a working ad set/campaign just made things worse and that is also the case with most of the dropshippers I know.

Feel free to test it out on your ad account but I strongly advise against it if you have good working campaigns that bring steady results.

Pro tip:

When scaling, I almost always duplicate my original ad sets with some tiny change in them. For example:

If I’m running an ad to women aged 35~65+ who like cats, one of my duplicates can be the same women but this time I’m only target android users. Or the same women who like cats but the age group is only 55+.

And I always check my ad reports to see who (gender, age, placement, etc.) performs the best and work my way based on that.

 

4. Displaying Your Ads On All Placements

It isn’t wrong choosing automatic placements for your ads and letting Facebook decide which one works best, especially if you’re running some kind of special ad and think you’re not sure what works best. But with experience and after running your ads for some time, you should know what placements work and remove the bad ones.

Ads aren’t cheap and with the constant rise of ad costs, we should always look for ways to save our money by optimizing our ads. One of the optimizations is to keep only what works best and stopping everything else.

In my main niche which I have been selling to for more than a year now, I already know that stories don’t really work and Instagram ads in general aren’t proving to be useful. So for each new campaign I launch, I choose only Facebook feed.

Lately, Facebook marketplace has been bringing some decent results so I do add sometimes marketplace placement but only after getting results with my main Facebook feed placement campaigns.

Just a quick example of how I work with with my main niche ads and you should try and follow the same path. Feel free to test different placements and kill the ones that don’t work. Don’t let Facebook waste a single cent on something that’s not going to bring you any result.

 

5. Targeting Only The USA

The world is a big place with billions of people looking to buy stuff so don’t just stick to the USA when selling online… Go and target different countries and there’s a good chance you will even get better results!

A good amount of dropshippers from the Ecomhunt community aren’t even targeting the US and instead sell in different countries. Some sell exclusively in their own with amazing results, and some have a list of a few European countries which perform well for them.

USA people are great buyers and you should always try selling them stuff but don’t forget about other countries out there. If USA doesn’t work for you, there are 4 more English speaking countries you can try and target.

If you know another language, let’s say French, then consider making an ad for the French people. It’s a big advantage to know another language as it allows you to target non-english speakers and get the sales other have missed.

We have German speaking dropshippers that sell only in Germany and Austria with great success so just find your angle and start selling!

 

To Sum It Up:

Avoid doing these Facebook ad mistakes and set up your campaigns on the right path to success.

Good luck!

 

Struggling to find good products to sell? Not sure who’s your target audience? Tired of losing money on products you were sure were “winners”?

Then Ecomhunt is what you need! Find hot winning products that are added daily, spy on their ads & stores and import them into your store in 1 click and Start Selling Today!

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