62% of small businesses fail with Facebook ads: Here is how to fix it

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Facebook ads for small businesses

Everyone is using Facebook these days. There are more than 2.2 billion daily active users.

China, the largest country in the world, only contains 1.4 billion people.

The 'population' of Facebook is massive!

It is not surprising that all companies want to use it to promote their products and services.

The problem is that 62% of small businesses feel that their paid Facebook ads are failing.

Nobody wants to throw money at ads that do not work! What use is such a massive group of potential customers if it can not reach them successfully?

Fortunately, there are ways to solve this problem. You do not have to be part of that 62%!

I will show you the most common reasons why small businesses fail with Facebook ads and how to solve each problem.

But first, let's look at the big picture to better understand the problem.

The problem is not the Facebook ads

96% of all B2C marketers use social media publications as a form of content marketing. That leaves only 4% that does not!

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Not only that but of all the B2C companies that use social networks, 97% of them use Facebook!

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This means that almost everyone is using Facebook for commercial marketing.

If everyone is doing it, it should work, right?

In general, only 3% of the companies that participated in the Content Marketing Institute survey considered their content marketing approach unsuccessful.

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As I just showed you that more than 97% of them used Facebook, we must assume that they included it in these results.

And that means that Facebook content marketing is successful for most companies, in general.

But small business owners seem to be struggling with success.

Manta surveyed 4,712 small business owners regarding their use of Facebook, and their results are similar to those of Weebly.

50% of small businesses feel they do not get a positive return on Facebook's investment.

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This is important for two reasons:

The group of potential customers is so massive, that if you can not do this correctly, you are delivering a large part of the business to your competitors who achieve it.

You are paying for ads that do not provide a refund, which means you are simply wasting time and money.

Why is it that small businesses are failing in Facebook ads when larger companies do not?

What are small businesses doing wrong?

Problem # 1 - A lack of understanding of content marketing

I just showed you that the problem is small businesses and not Facebook ads.

So, what do small businesses have in common, which large companies do not have when it comes to advertising on Facebook?

Let's look at small businesses.

About a third of small businesses fail in the first two years, and half of the small businesses fail in the fifth year.

Why is the failure rate so high?

There are a variety of reasons, from lack of experience to lack of cash flow.

Of course, these reasons to fail in the business can also be valid reasons to fail in marketing.

Let's start with the lack of experience.

Too many small business owners try to wear too many hats.

The fact that you are an expert in your field, your product or your service does not mean that you know everything you need to know about running a business.

Facebook ads are not like the ads you pay to have in the local newspaper.

A basic understanding of content marketing is necessary to see success unless it is a crazy luck.

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Understanding social marketing and how it differs from traditional marketing can make a difference.

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A typical approach through the sales funnel is actually a long and winding road through different channels, devices, and messages.

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Your first job, then, is to try to recreate all this winding road within the Facebook advertising campaigns.

It must have multiple campaigns, each with different objectives, and target audiences with different levels of intention.

That means we have to look at the campaigns as a whole.

Then we must find the bottlenecks and determine how the steps just before or after them contribute to the problem.

The good news is that Facebook helps you with this from the beginning:

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Depending on your selection, your goals and advertisements must be completely different.

Is your problem low in sales?

Start with the conversion campaigns.

Make sure all the basic concepts are covered.

Create a 'tripwire' to reduce complex or expensive areas.

Focus on being simple and direct should do the trick.

Are you trying to create campaigns to promote consideration?

You need to actively involve people who are familiar with your business.

That means recapturing previous visitors.

You should use dynamic product ads to see who has seen product pages.

Concentrate on getting people to download e-books, white papers, and checklists or try to attend webinars.

Make sure you use marketing automation for all this to be transparent.

Is your priority simply to increase awareness of your brand?

Prioritize the expansion of your reach by optimizing ads for website visits and clicks.

Try to promote content that attracts the widest possible target group.

And be sure to try carousel ads to try different messages to see what is most effective.

Problem # 2 - No strategy, plan or measurement system

Of course, I realize that it is not as simple as "learning content marketing and you will be a success".

I also realize how many hats the owner of a small business has to use and how limited his time can be.

So I'll take you through several specific areas where small businesses tend to fail with Facebook ads and how to fix them quickly today.

First, as with any part of your business, the biggest mistake is not having a strategy and a plan.

There is great potential to grow your business using Facebook, but if you do not have a clear vision of how you want to use it or what the result you want to achieve, it will fail.

Facebook is just another business tool. It is used by different companies in different ways.

More than 72% of small businesses said they wanted to use Facebook to raise awareness.

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If this is your goal, then a low click rate does not measure accurately whether you succeeded or not.

Before trying anything else, find out what your goal is to use Facebook.

The main objectives for small business owners in the Mantra study were:

Awareness

Attracting new clients

Receiving phone calls from new clients

Increase website traffic

Improvement in customer retention

Once you know your goals, find out how you will measure success.

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You must establish commitment reference points to ensure that you are selecting the correct publications.

This will help you decide if a paid promotion will be worth it or not.

Keep in mind that benchmarks will vary between companies depending on their objectives.

To establish a commitment benchmark for your company, you'll want to see your current number of followers, previous engagement rates, competitors' commitment, and your overall Facebook goals.

You'll also want to determine how much value you retain a click and a conversion for your business. This will allow you to see your campaign in terms of monetary value and compare it with other advertising expenses.

A monetary value will also help to justify the time and resources you invest in Facebook ads.

The benefits of maintaining an active presence in social networks will only increase as time goes by.

Especially if you are a small company with little presence in social networks, a small effort will help you.

The best way to start is to define your objectives, be it brand awareness or conversions strictly.

Plan a content strategy around your goals and the desired brand personality.

Then, you'll want to know who you're talking to. Consider your current customer base and the type of audience you want to attract on social networks.

Developing a deep understanding of your audience will help you create more engaging content and, therefore, create more effective paid ads.

Once your content flows, you'll want to start tracking your KPIs in order to prove that your social networks are successful.

Keep in mind that the average conversion rate for Facebook ads is only 9.21%

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The report also showed that the average conversion rate is higher in the fitness industry, with 14.29%, and education, with 13.58%. It is the lowest in the technology sector, at 2.31%.

If you are waiting for Facebook Ads to provide a 50% conversion rate, of course, you will feel they are failing!

That said, Facebook produces the best return on investment of all social media platforms.

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How do you know your plan is working?

Test it. Continually.

You need to try different offers to understand what works and adjust your plan accordingly.

The problem with the recommended standard A / B tests is that most fail.

To make matters worse, it is incredibly difficult to get results if you are not making a good conversion yet.

You should not even bother with the A / B tests if you still do not have at least 1,000 conversions per month.

Any individual test must have a minimum of 250 conversions before you can believe the sample size.

Companies with the highest conversions are not even testing variables (which is what most A / B tests do).

Instead, they are trying different offers.

That could mean an electronic book but on completely different topics.

Both themes should be at the top of the funnel themes that attract a variety of people.

Both can also apply to the same segment or target group, such as the start founders.

The only way to know which one is better is to roll the dice and see.

That is why planning without verifying the results can mean failure.

Problem # 3 - You are not investing enough time.

58% of small businesses spend only one hour a week on their Facebook marketing efforts.

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Why is this a problem?

Because 3.3 million articles are shared on Facebook every minute!

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If you are only active on Facebook infrequently, your ads will never be seen among all other noises.

There is simply too much volume.

The social media examiner surveyed the social media marketing specialists and found that, on average, they post to a brand Facebook page 8 times a day.

Imagine how quickly your ads get lost in the news if you only post once a day.

According to Mantra, one hour a day is even more than what most small businesses are investing!

The same survey indicated that 58% of small business owners spend less than an hour a week marketing Facebook.

Social networks cannot be a last minute idea. You will fail if you think about it this way.

As of March 2017, almost two billion people are active monthly users of Facebook. It is likely that most of your target customers are among those billions of people.

39% of salespeople have increased their frequency of Facebook posts in the last 12 months.

If you only publish infrequently, it's likely that your potential customers do not even see your posts.

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According to the Post Planner research, 75% of the commitment you get in your publications occurs within the first 5 hours.

After that, the commitment practically disappears.

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This means that if you do not publish regularly, you are basically history.

While there are approximately 60 million companies that use Facebook pages, only 4 million of them actively publish on their page.

An outdated business page could hurt your business more than any other business page!

Anyone who runs into your outdated page may wonder if it's still open or even a real business.

Facebook is the kind of things that should be done well or not.

Be honest with yourself about the time and resources you are willing to commit to your company's Facebook page.

I must also warn that it is possible to go too far in the other direction as well.

Post too much will overwhelm people with your messages to the point where they start to disconnect.

What is the correct frequency? Aim for 3 to 8 ad appearances per person over the life of your ad.

This can help ensure that your ads do not become white noise.

Avoid settings like this:

A frequency of 38 will not make people disconnect. It could turn potential clients into enemies!

Problem # 4 - You are not investing enough money

Returning to the Weebly survey among small business owners, 82% have spent less than $ 50 on a Facebook ad campaign and more than half did not buy Facebook ads.

Less than $ 50!

In comparison, the most successful B2C marketers spent an average of 26% of their total marketing budget on content marketing (including Facebook ads).

I can guarantee you that this was more than $ 50!

Not only that, but 37% of them plan to increase spending during the next year.

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But most of the small business owners surveyed by Weebly do not want to spend money on a paid campaign.

I get it. It can be difficult to throw money into ads when you do not know if they will work.

The good news is that you can experiment with organic publications to understand what resonates best with your audience before spending money.

See the commitment of your current publications on social networks. If you have a publication that is creating a lot of organic participation, it can be a good publication to become a paid advertisement.

You will have a better chance of success.

All ads on Facebook are basically regular publications. The only difference is that you are paying to Facebook to maximize your reach.

Only a small fraction of followers will see your usual publications.

The scope of organic publications has been decreasing as Facebook updates its algorithm.

SocialFlow FacebookOrganicReach

Periodicals also do not give you the possibility to target specific people who are more likely to click on them.

By using paid advertising, you can target people who are likely to be interested in your brand interests based on past interests and other data that Facebook has collected.

Today, trusting free organic results on Facebook will condemn you to failure.

Organic publications reach only 2% of your fans!

This means that 98% of the fans of your Facebook page may not see your posts.

That is a great loss of traffic!

Not to mention that the 2% that you are arriving are people who are already your fans!

Good luck to reach new audiences organically.

The situation is slightly better for the smaller brands, but it is still only about 6% of your fans that you will arrive with organic content.

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Let's face it, social networks for companies has changed. Now it's a payment to play sand.

If you are trying to reach a wider audience with your Facebook posts, you should use Promoted Posts and other advanced Facebook ad strategies.

Problem # 5 - You're not targeting the right audience

It's not that the small businesses contacted by Weebly did not see any return on their ads.

It is the quality of the returns that seem to be in question.

According to the comments, the owners of small businesses got clicks and I liked them, but they had problems with the sales conversions.

"Although I can get clicks or I like it, it does not always translate into more money coming through the door," says one owner.

In short, another responds: "Many impressions but almost no conversion".

"When companies do not see the results they expect, it's usually because they have not done enough testing of their ads, images and the ideal combination to reach the right audience," says Vitruvian Digital Advertising founder Kristie McDonald.

The potential audience on Facebook is massive.

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Only a small percentage of them will actually become.

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Small businesses do not ask the right questions to determine an effective target market for Facebook ads.

Have you been guilty of just defining your audience by gender, age, and income?

If you choose the simplest criteria for Facebook to meet your target audience, it will fail.

You need to use more powerful information about the unique behaviors and interests of your ideal audience.

That way, you can send your ads only to the people who most likely want what you have to offer.

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Be sure not only to combine your demographic characteristics with every interest and behavior you can imagine.

You must establish the criteria for only one or two interests and behaviors at the same time.

If you try to go too far, you will only spend a lot of money on audiences that do not convert well.

You must be specific to the laser by telling Facebook who you want to show your ads.

Make sure you're targeting personalized interests and similar audiences.

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Use a social listening tool to control updates and feeling.

This will tell you if what customers want to say matches what they are saying.

Sometimes, what they tell you is the most important thing to them, in reality, it is not the most important thing.

You can use social listening to divide the market by interest instead of typical demographic data.

Listening also allows a better personalization of the content of the announcement.

This is really valuable since 71% of consumers prefer personalized ads.

Whether you rely on organic and paid advertising, the personalization of your brand is what sets you apart in the long term.

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Once you know who you are trying to reach, you can work on the type of content that will resonate with each segment.

Be sure to use your value proposition to establish your product or offer apart from the competition.

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Remember that the value proposal must be expressed and marketed differently for the audiences at each stage of the funnel.

Use your ads to get the right message to the right audience instead of trying to destroy everyone with just one message.

How do you know that you successfully hit the right audience with the right message?

Facebook has a relevance score that will tell you.

The better it is to direct the right ad message to the right audience, the better your click rate will be and the lower your cost per click will be.

Facebook ads relevance score vs CPC

AdEspresso decided to try this measure. They discovered that when they published exactly the same ad, but with a better orientation, they obtained a score of relevance much better.

Not only that, it decreased its cost per click and gained four times more clicks compared to the misplaced ad.

You can find this metric if you go to one of your ad campaigns, go to a specific ad set and then look in the lower right corner.

The scoring system is from one to ten, one of them is the worst and then the best.

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Problem # 6 - Stop trying to go for the cold sale

These are some of the comments of one of the respondents who told Weebly that Facebook ads do not work:

Seldom have we got sales through Facebook. We believe that 'Friends' on Facebook would prefer to interact before being sold. Trying to sell through Facebook is like walking in a party and distributing business cards that try to sell your products to friends who prefer to socialize than deal with a sales attempt.

It seems to me that this person was trying to sell hard in a cold hearing.

Socializing is the new way to sell.

If you only plan to boost cold sales on social networks, you should also forget about Facebook. At least that's what Emily Pope, a small business marketing expert at Fundera, thinks.

A good Facebook page strategy consists of a healthy combination of content to feel good, the information your customers need to know and a little publicity. If you're not set up for that or if you want to focus only on difficult sales numbers, you'll lose time on a Facebook page.

In other words, you want to focus on benefiting and giving content to your consumers before asking them for something, especially a sale.

To make the most of Facebook, interact with your online community in a positive way.

How can you fix it?

Remember the sales funnel.

You need to build the relationship from the beginning in the funnel.

My guess is that the owner of this business is not used to persuading customers through the funnel.

If you are only used to selling to people once they enter your store, you are used to the hard sales strategy that works in people ready to buy.

This means that you are missing out on huge sales opportunities, even outside of Facebook!

In social networks, you need to build trust before you can drive a sale.

This is not something I can do with the occasional monthly publication (see problem # 3).

A quick way to avoid it is to build a working relationship with influential people in your market.

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Facebook works extremely well for retargeting.

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This is one of the best values of Facebook ads.

Why?

This audience is four times more likely to become!

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One reason for this is that these customers are already familiar with your brand and your product.

It is no longer a cold sale.

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No one is on Facebook looking to make a purchase.

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Refer to problem # 1. You will need to create multiple advertising campaigns, one for each stage of the sales funnel.

Otherwise, you will not be able to compete with all the reasons why you logged into Facebook.

Stop trying to jump directly into the sales field!

Problem # 7 - Understand that Facebook is a business

Some of the small business owners surveyed said they do not believe in the promise that paid publications will reach a wider audience.

Small business owners seem to start distrusting Facebook from the beginning of an advertising campaign, even before there has been time to see results.

When the ad order was placed, most of the small business owners contacted by Weebly kept saying, "Show me people, where are the people? No people!

You need to remember that Facebook is a business.

While it may seem like a free place to hang out and socialize, it is not.

You should treat your relationship with Facebook in the same way you would with any business association.

You will only get a return if you invest in it.

For example, linking a pixel from Facebook to your e-commerce site can have huge benefits for you.

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Facebook also loves this because it provides them with tons of audience data.

If you see Facebook as something more than a business, I bet it's too uncomfortable to link all of your site's data to them.

But as a company, if you do not provide benefits in some way (be it information or money), then you have no incentive to help you succeed.

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