Why Aren’t My Facebook Ads Working?

If you’re wondering, why aren’t my Facebook ads working?, this is the post for you.

Facebook ads can feel like the biggest marketing mystery. You hear success stories from DIYers who cracked the code and are making tens of thousands of dollars a month selling on Facebook.

You think, hey, I should try that! And you throw a few bucks at Facebook ads. And…

It happens all the time. If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation, here are 6 reasons your Facebook ads might not be producing the results you’d hoped for.

1. You’re not using the Facebook pixel

You should never, ever, ever run a single Facebook ad campaign without first having the Facebook pixel installed.

The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that’s placed on your website. When a visitor comes to your site, the pixel pings Facebook to let the platform know. It acts as a tracker of sorts, allowing you to sync up what the user sees on Facebook with the actions they take on your website.

Ever see an ad on Facebook for a product you just searched? Yep, that’s the Facebook pixel in action.

If you don’t have it installed, you’re showing users your ads completely at random, without any regard for whether they’ve been to your site before or not (remember, that’s the difference between a warm lead and a cold one—two very different audience types!).

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2. You’re not creating ads to match your sales funnel

Speaking of audience types, your Facebook ads might not be working if you’re not creating diverse ad sets with the buyer’s journey in mind.

If you show a cold lead—someone who’s never heard of you and never been to your website—an ad that says Buy Now!, the chances are very slim that they’re actually going to buy from you. They don’t know you yet!

Instead, it makes much more sense to show a Buy Now! ad to someone who’s visited multiple pages of your website and maybe even put an item or two in their shopping cart (again, this type of selective targeting is made possible by the Facebook pixel).

So what about people who have never heard of you? You must create different ads that speak to this audience segment and introduce them to your brand, without expecting a sale.

For instance, when targeting new leads, you might serve an ad offering them a free download or showing them an explainer video—content that gets them familiar with your brand.

After someone has interacted with one of those top-of-funnel ads, you might next show them an ad directing them to a product landing page.

Finally, after they’ve interacted many times with your brand, that’s the appropriate time to show a Buy Now ad.

If you’re not structuring your ad campaigns and targeting criteria in this way, your campaigns are almost sure to fail.

3. Your audience targeting is off

Facebook targeting is a funny thing. On the surface, it seems like this amaaaazing feature that allows you to handpick the perfect person to show your ads to. And in many ways, it is.

But as we’ve seen the Facebook Ad platform evolve, it’s become clear that targeting is not so cut and dry as checking a few boxes for the demographics you want.

In my experience, most Facebook Ad users go wrong because they cast too wide of a net when selecting an audience.

Let’s say you’re selling a professional grade camera lens. You might think that targeting people who list their profession as ‘photographer’ or one of their interests as ‘photography’ would work great. But it’s not that easy. What you’ll find is that such high-level targeting criteria cast the net far too wide.

Instead, you’ll almost always need to zoom in (pun completely unintended but very appropriate) further.

Is the most likely audience to buy your camera lens male or female? In what age range? Do they live in a city, a suburb or a rural area? What’s their income level?

While in reality you might sell lenses to people across all of these demographics, Facebook ads work best when you hone in on the single best audience segment that’s most likely to buy from you.

Once you’ve mastered an ad that converts well for, say, professional photographers who are men between the ages of 25 and 35 living in urban areas (a totally random example, but you get the idea), then you can branch out and perfect a different ad that targets a different segment of your audience. It’s all about showing the right message to the right person.

The Hello Fresh ad above is a great example of audience targeting. While many people across diverse demographics probably use their service, they’re obviously showing me an ad meant for women in my age and demographic range. As a result, I’m more compelled to click on it than if I were to see a Hello Fresh ad with a 55-year-old retired man as the spokesperson.

The better you zero in on your audience segments and create ads that speak directly to them, the better results you’ll see.

4. Your budget is too small

This depends on what you’re hoping to achieve with your Facebook ads, also known as your objective.

If you’re simply hoping to boost one of your page posts and get it seen by more people (AKA a boosted post), then anywhere from $5 to $50 total budget is a good amount to spend and will get you results.

However, if you’re hoping to use Facebook ads as a significant sales channel, bringing in lots of leads and purchases, then this budget is way too small. Instead, you should be spending $5-50 per day at a minimum. Many brands spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars per day on Facebook ads (this is why, when comparing results, you always need to ask what budget is being used. It makes a huge difference).

For my marketing clients, I recommend they set aside 10% of their overall marketing budget to allocate to Facebook ads—that’s generally a good starting point.

5. Your CTA isn’t clear

It doesn’t matter whether you’re creating a top-of-funnel ad to introduce new people to your brand, a bottom-of-funnel ad to make a sale, or something in between, your ad needs to have a clear and direct call to action.

This is a concise statement, usually no more than a few words, that tells the viewer exactly what action you want them to take after viewing the ad.

This is not your value proposition (although that’s great to talk about in the ad, too). This is not the benefits of your product. It’s a direct order, like one of the following:

Click now to enroll
Register for the free webinar
Shop the sale before it’s gone
Claim your 50% off coupon

You wouldn’t believe how many ads I see that tell me all about the benefits of the product, but don’t tell me what to do next.

The AptDeco ad above does a really nice job not only telling me what the service is, but exactly what they want me to do next.

Don’t make the viewer guess. Give them a strong, clear call to action to get the best Facebook ad results.

6. You’re not using appropriate landing pages

Question for ya: when people click on your Facebook ad, where are you sending them? If it’s to your home page, you’ve got a problem. Even if you’re sending them to an inner site page, like your Services page, you might have a problem.

Facebook Ads work best when used in conjunction with dedicated landing pages that have been set up specifically with that ad in mind. Meaning, if a user clicks on one of your Facebook ads, they should be taken to a landing page whose theme, design and messaging matches the Facebook ad they just saw, rather than sending them to your generic site home page. It’s about consistency.

Now, this takes some work and may not be feasible for smaller brands. But for best results, you should at least be sending Facebook ad traffic to a specific page of your site, like a product page or a blog post, rather than a generic home, about or services page.