Why aren’t my Facebook ads working?

(Long - but worth it - read)

I get inundated with emails and messages from small businesses asking “Why aren’t my Facebook ads working?”

And I get it. You’ve seen someone online or in a group or heard of a friend of a friend who has grown their business by X and their secret….. FACEBOOK ADS!!

Well, in the same way there is no such thing as overnight success, I am going to lift the lid on what they AREN’T telling you.

Here are my top 10 reasons why your ads aren’t working for your business and what you can do to change that.

1) You don't have an engaged audience

This is mega important, and people often confuse and engaged following with a big following - NOT THE SAME THING!

An engaged following is usually the opposite of a big following. ts a loyal community who support you. They listen to what you say, they like, comment on and share your posts. They buy from you, or tell their friends who go on to buy from you. They are your people.

They are not a bought audience or a fake audience that you have built through a hack you read about on the internet.

And if you have built yours that way, I would seriously consider a mass cull and rebuild.

People do get hung up on the numbers but we are seeing a real shift - particularly on Insta towards collecting a community over numbers.

As my biz-pal Leona from Indie Roller always says “yes you might ONLY have 500 people following you, but imagine speaking in front all of those people in a room - it’s a lot of people!”.

Think about that.

Build an engaged audience by posting and engaging consistently. Give more than you take and make sure you are a good member of your community - the same way you would be in a group of friends or on your street.

This is important when you come to run ads for so many reasons:

1. It tells Facebook that you are a legitimate business that is running ads for the right reasons. This means you are less likely to get account restrictions and will be promoted in the auction process.
2. It gives you a solid foundation to build your lookalike audience. If you have an engaged audience of the RIGHT people, it’s money well spent to ask Facebook to find more of those people for you. The same cannot be said with a bought or unengaged audience.
3. You already know that people love your business and want to hear from you - this is a huge consideration when we work with a client and is a red flag if they don’t have the level of engagement we would expect.

2) You don't have a solid offer

This is a tricky one but is the absolute foundation to any business or marketing activity. It can take a while, and ads can often be a great way to develop the offer as you test and see what people respond to.

A solid offer is more than just a great product - you also need to consider the following factors:

Value - this isn’t just price, but more about the value proposition. For your audience, does your product represent good value? Remember Tiffany sold a paperclip for $2,000 - their audience aren’t buying that because they need a paperclip, they are buying for status.

Service - this is SO important. I know as small businesses it can be so hard to keep on top of the constant onslaught of messages and emails. If you find this element of your business overwhelming, I would urge you get a VA to look after it. Service can be the make or break of an online brand

Ease - how easy is it to purchase? We can be so close to our own businesses and sometimes we are the ones putting barriers in place that prevent our customers buying. 

Postal experience - This is so so important. There are so many companies that do this well, some of my favourites are Bloom & Wild and Treatbox. As online businesses, there are less opportunities to impress our customers - postal experience is where we can really make up for that. An ￡80 dress shoved in a jiffy bag just won’t cut it, sorry.

3) Your website isn't traffic ready

Don’t waste your money paying to send traffic to a site that isn’t up to scratch. There are so many brilliant platforms out there now, if your site isn’t clear, easy to navigate and a nice place to spend time, you probably don’t have it quite right.

Download my FREE e-com store score sheet here - not all of them will apply to you but it’s a fully exhaustive list that we use in the agency with clients. See how you get on and start working through the changes.

I would always recommend Shopify for e-com businesses because it’s just so use friendly and easy to set up.

It’s also worth noting that even on the basic $29 a month package, you get 1 hour of free design/ tech time with them. This isn’t something they publicise but if you jump on chat with them, they will hook you up!

Other than that, it really is worth working with someone on CRO (conversion rate optimisation) and basic design, if this isn’t your thing.

Important performance metrics to record on your site:

Site load speed: should be under 3 seconds. Check Tools.pingdom.com to find out yours.

On Site Conversion rate: Ideally you’ll be sitting around a 2 - 3% - if you’re not, this can be where you speak to a CRO specialist to make some tweaks. (Fiverr is a great place to look for someone to help with this - just check their reviews!)

Keep an eye on these figures, you’d be surprised how the smallest changes can affect your conversion rate, this is why it’s important to keep a log of changes you make. (I know, ANOTHER thing to add to the list!)

4) You don't have a developed marketing eco-system

This is a real problem in small business where we have created our business from nothing - cobbling the pieces together as we go.

A wise man once told me that a bar stool needs 3 legs to stand up, and marketing is the same. You need a number of marketing channels to build a sustainable business. Here are the ones we look at with our clients:

Social Media - An obvious one, but so many of us are confused about the point of social media. Define your business objectives and create a content plan around them.

Content Marketing - This covers a lot of things but is basically the broad term for the information you are putting ‘out there’ about your business. This could be a blog, videos, podcasts or articles. Ignore at your peril!

Email Marketing - Absolutely no question that email marketing is one of the most important (FREE!) tools a small business can use in their marketing mix. With it accounting for a whopping 20% of revenue when used effectively - you’d be crazy not to have this set up.

Influencer Marketing - This get a bad rap, but done right is SO DAMN EFFECTIVE! We look for micro influencers (around the 10k mark) with a highly engaged audience. Make sure your terms are clear and fair on both parties. 

Paid Social - Facebook ads, Insta ads, Pinterest ads - think of these as the jet pack on all of your other activity. DO NOT RELY ON THEM IN ISOLATION! I see this a lot and it is not how you build a sustainable business.

PR - this isn’t something we do in the agency, but is a vital part of any business marketing. I’m not talking about a feature in Vogue or the sidebar of shame on the Daily Fail, but good, third party recommendation of your business. If you haven’t read it yet, I HIGHLY recommend Lucy Wern’s book ‘Hype Yourself”. This is essentially a plan for any business to be their own cheerleader in an effective, planned way.

5) Your quality score is low

You probably don’t know about this (it’s your prize for making it this far!) but you have a quality score on Facebook! This is basically a mark of how good/ trustworthy they deem you to be.

Before you get offended, this is how it’s worked out - when someone buys from your ad, Facebook will pop up with a little survey asking for feedback on shipping speed, products quality and customer service.

This is set to 4 weeks after the purchase is made as standard, so gives your customer time to receive and use the product.

This score is important because Facebook want honest, trustworthy and reliable companies to advertise with them and want to get rid of the scams and fake companies that are set up and use ads in an unscrupulous way. 

If you get a low score, you will be seriously penalised in the auction process and could even get your account shut down. 

Check yours here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/customer_feedback

(You will only have one if you have been running ads for a while!)

6) You don’t have a full funnel in place

If you have all of the above in place and your ads still aren’t working, it’s probably your funnel strategy… no, no don’t fall asleep!! I promise you it’s not as boring as it sounds.

A funnel is just a marketing term for your customer journey and can be used in a variety of contexts. What I am talking about is your Facebook ads funnel, so taking your customer from never hearing from you, right through to purchase.

If you don’t have a full funnel in place, you are probably missing a trick and wasting money. Without an understanding of who you are speaking to at which stage of the journey, you are probably speaking in the wrong language and using confusing creative or call to action.

For example, if you are speaking to a cold audience (one that has ever heard of you before and you are interrupting valuable scroll and cat meme time in their feed) as if they are an existing customer, that could be confusing at best and annoying at worst.

Think of your funnel like going on a date - you wouldn’t meet them in a bar and ask them to marry you (confession - I basically did this). You would (should) woo them a bit, tell them about who you are and why you are so amazing.

This is the same with ads - we go for the kill much further down the funnel.

7) You don’t know who you are selling to.

Everything stems from this.

Understand who you are selling to means you can create the product for them, speak to them in their language, relate to them about things they care about and find more of them using the things you already know about them!

Seriously, if you don’t have a piece of paper above your desk with a picture of your customer, their name and everything about them to refer to when you are creating copy - do it now!

When we take on a new client, this is part of our research phase and we look at the following areas to understand more about their audience. This then informs copy, creative and our targeting options for ads. 

Are they male or female?

What is their name?

How old are they?

Where do they live?

What is their occupation?

How do they spend their weekends?

Who are they friends with?

What do they do for fun?

Where do they shop? Food/ clothes/ homewares/ beauty

What magazines do they read?

What tv do they watch?

What celebs/ influencers do they follow?

Do they have family?

What is important to them?

This list can go on forever and the more granular you can get, the better your content will land with them - you want them to feel like you are in their head and GET them!

8) You aren’t focusing building LTV

If you are using ads and paying to acquire customers, they you MUST have a way to bring them back and sell to them again. Your customer LTV (lifetime value) is one of the most important metrics you can pay attention to.

When you are developing products, think of extending lines so you can cross sell and up-sell. What is the next logical step for the customer? For examples, if you sell candles, sell them the candle stick and lighter and bath salts too. This can be such a great way to increase life time value and create more loyal customers because you are giving them more of what they want.

9) You don’t know your key metrics.

I could literally speak about this all day, but I know if you are a creative this will make you snooze, so I’ll keep it short and snappy.

These are the metrics you need to understand to run profitable ads:

Margin - goes without saying, know your numbers! Do not continue until you know this.

Target CPA - how much can you afford to spend to acquire a new customer. Remember we are acquiring customers here, not sales. We can go on to sell to them forever.

AOV - Average order value. Ideally you want this to be around ￡30 - if it’s not there then look at ways to increase it, like bundling products together.

LTV - Lifetime value. As discussed above, knowing this number can really help when it comes to working out your target CPA. Sure you don’t want to pay ￡10 to acquire a customer if your first sale to them is only ￡20, but if you know your LTV is ￡200, then you would pay ￡10 and bring new customers in all day long!

Return customer rate - this is how many customers come back to buy in a given period. We usually measure this on 90 days and would expect to see 20% +. This is SUCH an important metric when you are run Ning ads and if you don’t already measure it, this could be why you think your ads aren’t working.

10) Your expectations are WAAAAYYYYYY off

If you have all of the above nailed and you still don’t think your ads are working, then it probably comes down to expectations.

We see this alllllll the time.

Maybe you boosted a few posts over Black Friday or Christmas and got a 20X ROAS, or you have seen a screenshot where someone is telling you about a 15X return (and probably selling a course on the back of it!) well, I’m really sorry, but this isn’t the same as using ads to build a sustainable business.

Used effectively, ads should be bringing new customers - and by that I mean the right people, not people who will buy once, then want to return it, then leave you a bad review - and take them through the full funnel or journey to make a purchase. Done right, only the people we want actually make it to the purchase stage, because we have qualified them along the way

Average returns for ads are around a 3X, which is incredible - imagine getting a 3X return in your savings account! Ok, so if you are spending ￡10 and making ￡30, that doesn’t sound like such a great deal, but what if you put in ￡1000 and got ￡3000, or ￡10,000 and made ￡30,000 - that isn’t a bad way to build a business. And remember, you have all of those lovely new customers to carry on selling to through social, content and email - forever! 

So, next time you tell me that ads don’t work, or you have ‘wasted’ money on them, questions whether you have put the work in your end too. Paid social is essentially about buying data and then using it effectively to make money - if you don’t have the foundations of your business set up correctly, then we aren’t going to be buying the best data, and so we aren’t going to get the best results.

Let me know if this helped and what you will be working on to help improve your results!