An updated version of this article can be found at Facebook Ad Mistakes for Home Builders to Avoid.
Advertising with Facebook can be an extremely effective tool to reach potential buyers – if used correctly. Follow along as I show you the 3 mistakes home builder marketers make when advertising with Facebook
1 – Incorrect Placements.
The “placement” is where your ad will be shown within the Facebook Advertising network. There are quite a few options – and the default option from Facebook is Automatic Placements – meaning Facebook decides! Oh No! This is not what you want.
The option you will want to select is “Feeds”. These are the ads on desktop and mobile devices within the newsfeed that the possible buyer is scrolling through. This will result in the highest quality traffic compared to the other placements Facebook offers.
But what about Instagram? We all love “the insta” – but until you max out your budget on Facebook & Google AdWords – it is best to leave Instagram alone for now. If you do decide to spend a few dollars with Instagram – be sure to use a correctly sized image that fit will the Instagram platform.
2 – Campaign Objective – Updated 10/15/2018 – Andrew Peek
The Campaign Objective is chosen as soon as your create a campaign. Facebook has 10+ objectives available…which is quite a few. Facebook’s campaign objective let’s you tell Facebook what type of action you are looking for when your Ad is displayed.
This section has been updated due to strenuous testing of the campaign objective since this article was posted. Keep in mind that the campaign objective targets WITHIN the audience you selected – Facebook users who are most likely to complete that objective. Previously the link click/traffic objective was the best – as this brought people off of Facebook & onto your website. Then we actually found that the Engagement objective was best, as the social proof seemed to increase the number of people who would visit the site compared to traffic. Most recently we have found that [in conjunction with the FB Pixel] – that the Conversion campaign is outperforming the other objectives.
The Conversion Objective allows you to use A.I/the Facebook Pixel to find people who are similar to those who completed a conversion. Well…what is a conversion?. A conversion is an action completed on your website – just like a Goal in Google Analytics. So you will need to define this conversion in your Facebook Ad Manager and then select that conversion in the Ad Set of your Conversion Objective Campaign. I’d suggest choosing a conversion that has as many completed conversions as possible such as a “Page View” instead of a contact form being submitted.
3 – Boring Ads Images
When advertising on Facebook, we as successful marketers need to remember that we are interrupting what potential buyers are doing. They are scrolling through their newsfeed looking for something worthwhile from people they are friends with or brands they follow. Our ad needs to be *worthy* of their time. One of the easiest ways to do this is by having higher quality pictures or better edited pictures.
Using the Levels feature in Photoshop is one of the easiest transform from a losing ad, to a winning Ad. See the image below for before and after!
So What’s Next?
Take 5 minutes to review your placements, test a new campaign objective & brush-up on your Photoshop skills. Have Questions? Feel free to contact us!
