It happens.
You find the perfect audience, craft spellbinding ad copy, and locate fetching imagery to capture the attention of future customers.
Then you wait…
And wait…
And wait.
You look into the performance reports, and see plenty of clicks, but nothing but duck eggs for recent conversions.
People are clicking those amazing ads and costing you money, but nobody is actually fulfilling conversions like downloading a white paper, requesting a helpful guide, watching a video, or purchasing a product.
What in the world is happening?
Your Facebook ad is clearly Zucked up.
Here’s a master list of things to check in order to get your Facebook ads humming with the perfect balance of C&C (clicks and conversions).
Marketing Issues
1) Bad Targeting. This is so important but is often over-looked or hurried. And in most cases, it isn’t even related to the time spent with Facebook’s targeting tools. It happens earlier.
Getting back to Marketing 101 – have you properly defined your audience?
This is called a buyer persona (or avatar) and is a method for really understanding WHO your customer is, then creating ads and copy that resonate and speak directly to this person.
It brings a laser-like focus to make sure you’re writing directly to the correct individual and hitting all of the emotional triggers and pain points.
Creating diluted messages that appeal to the masses will often fall short. You might pull initial interest with a funny or appealing ad, but little to no engagement. If you cater to everyone, you cater to no one.
Unless you’re a big brand just trying to stay top of mind, this is a losing proposition. This will also leave you with a dismal bounce rate that Facebook factors into your overall advertising cost.
Bottom line – do your research. This also applies to companies who’ve been in business for a while.
Revaluate. Ask questions. You might have markets you aren’t even aware of.
Dig in and explore who buys your products and services, then dissect all of the reasons why. Use this information to inform your ad copy, then start writing to a very specific person who exemplifies your target audience.
In many cases, you’ll end up with several different buyer personas. Give them all names and bring them to life before you write a single word of ad copy.
2) Bad offer. This doesn’t happen often but is a harsh reality.
What if the market just isn’t interested in what you have to offer?
You might have thought that bedazzled BlackBerry phone cases were going to be flying off the shelves, but the market is telling you something different…thankfully in real-time.
Heck, I’d click a BlackBerry bling ad out of curiosity, then bounce back to my cat videos.
Technical Issues
Marketing issues aside, when your ads generate ZERO conversions, the problem is typically in the settings – from the absurd to the complicated. Let’s cover each.
3) Clumsy fingers and paused ads. Did you accidentally pause an ad? Check the campaigns, ad sets and ads to make sure something wasn’t unintentionally set – or temporarily paused with the intent to reverse it later on.
4) Rejected ads. This is happening more frequently with Facebook in the crosshairs recently for privacy and political targeting concerns Even a big brand like Bush’s Beans was rejected due to the match between their name and the political family. Take a close look at your ads to make sure nothing was rejected.
5) Buttons not buttoned up. If users are clicking to your landing page, but not converting, this could be the simple fact that one or more buttons that lead to conversions are either missing or not working. Check your landing pages carefully!
6) Bad URL in the ad. When an ad is created, in most cases you’ll enter a URL, which transports the user over to your landing page. If the URL was entered incorrectly, you’ll end up with link clicks, but no landing page views. This can be quickly identified in your reports, or simply tested through the ad preview options. Google Analytics UTMs might also cause problems with your links, so test, test, test!
7) Sloppy landing page. There’s an art to creating landing pages that convert. It’s actually one of the most vulnerable links in the conversion process as high performing pages often require skills that fall outside of many ad managers. Skills like proper page layout, compelling ad copy, and professional design that instills trust and credibility. A sloppy landing page breaks the connection between clicks and conversions.
8) Landing page load time. Both Facebook and Google look at landing page quality carefully. One important metric that ties directly to user experience is the landing page load time.
If your landing page is slower than a three-toed sloth, users have no patience and will click back to where they started. This bounce-back is a negative user experience that Facebook factors into the cost of your advertising.
From a performance perspective, it’s always important to keep the landing pages loading lightning-quick. Pages need to load quickly to ensure a smooth path to conversion. You can check this through tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
Be sure to check your Facebook reporting to compare link clicks with landing page views. Link clicks are outbound clicks on the links in your ad while landing page views register when the page actually loads. For slow and slothy landing pages, look for the landing page view metric to be much lower than link clicks.
9) Time and scheduling. When ads are published, Facebook provides the option to end a campaign on a specific date or keep running the campaigns indefinitely. For new advertisers testing new campaigns – especially with limited budgets – it’s very easy to set an expiration date only to forget about this later.
10) Budget busters. Lack of conversions, in this case, is tied directly to the fact that your ads may no longer be running due to budget constraints. As a new advertiser, Facebook needs time to monitor your spending patterns, so limits are set, typically around the $700 per day mark as of this writing.
It’s also possible that your credit card company has declined payments due to unusual spending patterns. If you plan on running a lot of ads, always call your credit card company to let them know ahead of time. There’s nothing like being denied the ability to run ads during an important promotional period.
11) Missing or incorrect Facebook Pixel. Facebook needs the pixel (JavaScript code) loaded on your site to measure conversions. If the pixel is missing or simply not loading, conversions will not register – in addition to other important marketing tactics like building custom audiences based on-page and content engagement.
Always test your Facebook Pixel to make sure its loading and the website or app is accessing the correct pixel. You can do this by loading the Facebook Pixel Helper as a Chrome Extension and comparing the number to the Pixel ID shown in the pixel tab within Facebook Business Manager.
To make life easier, make sure the Facebook Pixel is firing on every single page. I accomplish this through the Google Tag Manager as it’s centralized and gives me the simplicity of managing page and event activity on a granular level. This allows the installation of the base pixel site-wide, with the addition of action-specific tags (standard events) for different pages and events on the website.
Using Facebook pixel with Google Tag Manager.
12) Check your conversion events. Conversions can be tied to a lot of different outcomes within Facebook – a lead, purchase, a custom conversion, or any of the nine standard events. If you are measuring for a certain conversion type, double-check to make sure it was actually set up correctly.
A common mistake happens within custom conversion are set to URL pattern matching. Let’s say a conversion is set up for a URL that contains thanks (yoursite.com/order/thanks). This is a common way of tracking thank you page conversions, but you run the risk of another page being published within your site that also contains thanks in the file name (yoursite.com/blog/ceo-thanks-team). Any time the blog page loads, it would register as a conversion. Obviously a problem.
In conclusion, I hope this “12 step program” to identifying and fixing Facebook conversion issues is helpful. I realize that a lack of conversions can be quite frustrating when you’re spending money on clicks. By checking each of these steps, you’ll be on the right path for getting your campaigns on the right path.
Want to learn about the proper way to create Facebook campaigns with funnels that self-optimize through user engagement?
Check out The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing Funnels that Drive Sales and Conversions.