5 Reasons Your Facebook Ads Might Not Convert and How to Fix it

Here below are 5 possible reasons your Facebook ads might not convert and how you can fix them as soon as possible to achieve the desired results:

1. Poor Targeting

One of the reasons your Facebook Ads might not convert is probably because you’re not targeting the right people. Facebook Ads offer the advantage of placing your product/services in front of a large audience of interested buyers: but what use is all that if you aren’t even maximizing their specific targeting options?

Imagine you are a doctor and an ad for engine spare parts shows up, would you buy it? Most likely not.

Now, let’s go back to your own ad, if they are poorly targeted, they will be shown to people who don’t give a hoot about your offer, even if you have a great one, which will lead to poor conversions.

FIX
You want to focus on a specific set of people that are truly interested in you. These are people who have common characteristics and demographics as your ideal target audience.

To make it easier, you want to first take out time to create a buyer persona. This is a fictional avatar of your ideal audience based on their traits, characteristics, and demographics. Refer to the beginning of the eBook that talks about how to create one.

When creating a buyer persona for your business, you want to consider their age and gender, location, what interests them, their language, and hobbies. Once set up, you will be able to target with a purpose when setting up your Facebook Ads.

E.g. If I sell clothes, I would target people within the specific age range of my current customers and also target people who are interested in cloth and online shopping (this is called flex targeting).

Also, you can use the AUDIENCE INSIGHTS TOOL by Facebook to research your ideal customer and find detailed information about them. It helps you learn information such as demographics, purchase habits, locations, and more about your target audience.
With this tool, you can insert characteristics of your audience, and get some insights into their activities online, the pages they follow, and posts they are most likely to like. This will guide you in your ad creation process.

2. Wrong Offer for the Right Audience

This one is a little tricky because it is the most common culprit. Let’s say you got your targeting right but your offer isn’t, obviously, no one would buy what you are selling.

One major thing that influences your offer is your price. If you are selling something expensive (especially digital products) and you try to sell it to people who don’t know you, the chances of you making a sale are extremely low.

FIX
Create a sales funnel strategy that walks people through a sequence of not knowing you to knowing you, trusting you, and finally, buying from you. You can for example create a free resource your target audience will be interested in, promote that in exchange for their contact details, and from there build a relationship with them through emails or messages till you begin to introduce them to your products and services.

For people who sell eCommerce products, make sure your pricing is competitive in relation to your competitors or people would flock to your competitors instead of you.

3. Not Retargeting Your Audience

Did you know that up to 98% of the people who see your ad the first time would not buy your product? Think about it. Is it everything you buy online that you paid for immediately after you saw it? Nope! In the same way you should not expect people to immediately whip out their wallets the second they see your ad. That is why you need retargeting!

FIX
You need to “pursue” people who checked out your product to give them a second, third, 4th, and even 5th chance to buy your product.

If you are not running retargeting ads, you are leaving so much money on the table especially for ecommerce websites.

Want to know how to set it up for yourself? Click here to get the step by step process.

By retargeting people who once interacted with your ads, you can:

• Show targeted ads to those who bounced
• Upsell and cross-sell new items to past customers
• Provide more information for visitors to learn more or complete a purchase.

If you are going to retarget a specific Facebook audience, you have to consider your goals and the specific actions you are trying to drive with your ads. This will help you in crafting the right message and offer that will reel them in.

Here are different ways you can use retargeted ads:
Reduce cart abandonment: Cart abandonment is a major issue experienced by many marketers. People click on your offer, add your product to their cart then what happens? They change their mind or even get distracted and fail to complete their purchase.

Now, the fact that they added your product to their cart means they are already interested in your offer, right? So, retargeting helps you give them that extra push they need. You can either offer them more information or provide an incentive that they can’t resist.

Offer special incentives to draw them in: So, you have people who have interacted with your brand in one way or another. Maybe they submitted their email address for a free eBook you had on offer or signed up for a free webinar. You can now retarget them with incentives such as limited-time offers or discounts.

Note: You need to have a website and get pixel installed on it before you can start retargeting your audience. Your pixel is what helps you track people who have been to your page and what actions they took.

4. Not Choosing the Right Campaign Objective

Every Facebook ad starts with having an objective. Your objective is your ‘why’ for running the ad and is what helps Facebook know how to optimize an ad campaign.

Here is how it works: when you select a campaign objective, Facebook will show your ads to the people most likely to perform the action you specified.

For example, if you need people to download an app and you select the ‘app install’ option, Facebook will show that ad to people who are more likely to do so from past experiences.

Facebook has made it easier by having up to 11 different campaign objectives in 3 categories, based on the customer’s journey.

When you want to run ads. Ask yourself this – What is my objective? Do I want people to perform a specific action like buying a product? Subscribing to my email list? Etc. Or am I trying to generate traffic to my blog post? Am I trying to increase video views? Am I trying to initiate conversations with my customers before closing the sale?

All these questions would help you decide what objective to go for. To see a breakdown of what each objective means, you can visit Facebook’s pretty detailed explanation here.

5. Lack of Testimonials or Social Proof

You have your ad set up with a great design, brilliant copy, and perfect budget but wait- there’s one more thing you are leaving out. There are no testimonials or social proof on your landing page or social media page.

Your customers’ testimonials have the power to drive more sales as it is effective in building trust in the hearts of your audience. If you are not including testimonials and social proof in your ads, you are missing out on one of the most effective psychological methods of driving sales.

People don’t go to Facebook to buy or shop for products. They are usually focused on interacting and connecting with their friends and family but by displaying recommendations from real-life people, you are not just selling to them outrightly.

With testimonials, you already have people who like your product.
So, by figuring out their most loved feature about your product, you can use that info to create more targeted ads that better fit your audience.

FIX
Include testimonials in your ad copy and image: A great way to include testimonials in your ad is by using them in your ad copy and image. You want to keep it short and to the point.

Use site and product reviews to reach first-time visitors: You can also use website and product reviews when you are trying to gain more links and traffic to your website. This works well with first-time users and can be effective in motivating them to take the desired action.

Focus on user’s experience: Displaying testimonials in your Facebook ads should be focused on your user’s experience. For example, a testimonial that talks about how much they loved gifting your product to their loved one will be more effective than how fast it arrived.

Add Testimonials to your landing pages/social media pages: This is a no-brainer. No matter how amazing your copywriting is, if you don’t have testimonials on your page, it would be hard for people to trust you enough to buy whatever you are selling.