Facebook is a powerful social media platform that has transformed the marketing landscape as we know it. From driving over $84.2 billion in ad revenue last year to getting almost 1.85 billion daily active users, you can’t afford to ignore using Facebook for your marketing strategy.
More and more small business owners are turning to Facebook to promote their brands and build their businesses.
But, Facebook can be a confusing place, especially when it comes to Facebook Ads.
People often increase their spending on an ad campaign if it hasn't been performing as expected. However, this isn't your best bet in most situations.
This article breaks down some of the reasons why your Facebook Ads aren’t converting as well as they should be and what you can do about it. It will help you decide what to change and what to keep the same when setting up your next campaign.
So, before increasing your ad budget to make your Facebook ads convert, try one of these 11 tips first!
1. Check if you don't make one of the 13 Facebook Ads mistakes
Before making any specific changes to your Facebook Ads, you should first check if you haven't made any mistakes while setting up your ad campaign.
That's because if you make one of these mistakes in your campaigns, most tips in this article will have little effect on your ads.
Since Facebook offers so many options in their ad campaigns, making a mistake is easier than you might think.
Luckily, preventing and solving mistakes in your Facebook ad campaign isn't that difficult. We have written an article that outlines precisely what kinds of mistakes beginners make and how you should fix them.
Here it is: 13 Facebook Ad Beginner Mistakes (2024)
Some examples of mistakes that you will find in the article are:
- Not having your Meta Pixel installed correctly
- Not researching how your target audience looks like
- And copying ads from others
We are all humans, and we all make mistakes. So, don't skip this step, keep yourself on the safe side, and check your campaigns for any of these mistakes!
2. Don't be too quick with your decisions
When setting up a Facebook Ads campaign, you should know that your ads often need at least two days of running time to progress from the learning phase.
In the learning phase, your ads will often perform poorly. That's because Facebook's algorithm is still "testing out the waters" and trying to target different smaller audience groups within your target audience to find out which responds the best to your ad.
So, before thinking that your Facebook ads aren't converting, leave them running for at least two or three days, and you will likely see an improvement in your campaign's performance.
Don't forget that it works the other way around as well. If you leave your ads running for a long time (especially for smaller audiences), ad fatigue will occur, and your Facebook ads will stop converting.
Thus, if you have noticed a dip in your campaign's performance after running your ads for a few weeks, check out how to combat Facebook ad fatigue here!
3. Stop overcomplicating your ads
People on Facebook have a very short attention span. They are there to catch up with their friends' activities and watch some funny cat videos.
When browsing through Facebook, most people don't like reading about all features your product offers. It's even worse when advertisers promote all kinds of technical details about their product, like how many Watts it uses.
What people on Facebook do like, though, is reading about how your product will solve the problems they experience and make their lives better.
For example, this advertiser talks about how you could get a nice massage at home after a long day at work and keeps their ad simple:
To conclude, don't think that you should include all your product's features in your ad to win the audience for you. Instead:
- Tell them what their problem is
- Tell them how they can solve it (with your product)
- Say that they should go to your website to buy it (call to action)
Users on Facebook have a very short attention span. Research shows that users spend an average of just 1.7 seconds per news feed item on mobile.
So, remember to make your product and offer easy to understand. Otherwise, people lose interest, and you will have a poor conversion rate.
Using simple ads, your customer will know exactly why they should buy your product.
4. Analyze what can be improved for your ads
Most businesses want to increase their Facebook Ads conversion rate, but with so many variables to consider, I understand that it may be challenging to do so.
Luckily, you can analyze your Facebook ad campaigns to get a clearer picture of what can be improved. The more data that you have, the better your chances of optimizing your ads.
To optimize the conversion of your Facebook ads, these are the most important metrics to look at:
- CPC (Cost per Click)
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)
- CPM (Cost per 1,000 Impressions)
- Cost per Content View
- Video Average Play Time (if applicable)
If you get to know which of these metrics underperform for your campaign, then it will be much easier to fix the problem that your Facebook ads are not converting!
After advertising on Facebook for some time, you will get a feeling for when a particular metric is under or overperforming.
If you're still a beginner, you can compare them to the average metrics you find online.
I will now give you the average value of each metric that I talked about above and tell you what you can do to improve them if they are underperforming:
| Metric | Average | How to improve it? |
| CPC | $0.39 (Source) | Improve your CTR and lower your CPM |
| CTR | 0.90% (Source) | Use a strong call-to-action and engaging creatives |
| CPM | $7.19 (Source) | Check if your audience size isn't too small, try targeting a different audience, or try a different marketing objective |
| Cost per Content View | Unknown | Lower your landing page's loading time |
| Video Average Play Time | ~10 seconds (Source) | Focus on optimizing your video's "hook" (first three seconds of the video) |
Disclaimer: The average values for these metrics are not always good benchmarks. For instance, CPM can heavily depend on your industry, campaign objective, audience, and more! Also, different databases claim different averages for these metrics.
5. Check your website's conversion rate
You have probably noticed that the tip above is focused on optimizing the part of the ecommerce purchase funnel that takes place on Facebook:
However, by optimizing your website's conversion rate, your Facebook ads will convert much better as well!
If you're interested in optimizing the conversion rate for your store, then check out this article:
Why Is No One Buying From My Online Store? (14 Things To Check)
It will go over everything that you can try to make as many of your store visitors become customers!
And, to make it even more clear what you should do, the article is divided into multiple parts, what to do if you have:
- Many visitors, but few add to carts
- Many add to carts, but few initiate purchases
- Many initiate purchases, but few purchases
If you're looking for even more solutions to improve your store's conversion, check out these two articles as well:
6. Change your campaign's objective
For ecommerce stores, I frequently recommend using the conversions campaign objective.
Using it, Facebook will try to target people that are most likely to take valuable actions on your store, like making a purchase.
So, if you have an ecommerce store and your Facebook ads don't convert, try out the conversion objective!
But, be aware that the conversion objective does come with a price. What I mean by that, is that you will most likely see an increase in your CPMs.
If high CPMs are a problem for your Facebook ads, you should know that there are different strategies that you can use as well when it comes to choosing campaign objectives.
For instance, you can use the engagement objective to quickly test out different products.
7. Test different images, colors, and headlines
There's one thing that you should remember when advertising on Facebook:
Test, test, and test!
So, if your Facebook ads are not converting, test out some different images (or videos), colors, and headlines.
You will never be able to predict which combination of these factors will convert the best, so the only option left is to test them all out.
Don't be afraid to test the ad more than once. The more you test, the more you'll be able to understand what works and what doesn't.
If you have no idea of how a great Facebook ad looks like, then take a look at this article for inspiration!
It's an article that will show you 14 awesome Facebook ad examples from other ecommerce stores.
Here's a sneak preview of one of the Facebook ads that will be discussed there:
When testing different ads, remember to try out different marketing angles.
Remember the ad for the neck massager that I showed you earlier?
If not, it's this one:
In this ad, they talk about how you could use their product to get a relaxing massage after a long day at work.
However, you could also advertise this product using some different marketing angles like:
- Suffering from a stiff neck? Loosen up your muscles!
- Don't like the cold? Get a nice and warm massage with our neck massager!
- Don't you think massages are expensive? Get lifetime free neck massages for the price of one standard massage and save yourself some money!
Did you notice how I first reminded the user of their problem and then proposed a solution?
8. Try using other ad types
This tip will be short and straightforward.
Besides testing out different creatives, colors, and headlines, you should test out other ad types as well.
For conversion campaigns, Facebook offers the following ad types:
- Image
- Video
- Carousel
- Collection
If your Facebook ads do not convert, you may be using the wrong ad type.
For instance, you may be using an image ad, but if your target audience is more visual, then they might prefer a short video instead.
9. Use a (more obvious) call-to-action
First of all, you might be asking yourself: "What is a call-to-action?".
Well, a call-to-action is a statement in your ad that tells your customer exactly what you want them to do next.
It's one of the most powerful things you can do to make your Facebook ads convert. People are naturally more likely to act when they’re made aware of a possible benefit for doing so.
Here's an example of a call-to-action:
Don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action in your copy.
For example, you could ask your viewers to tell you what they think of the product, visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, or to share your ad with their friends.
If you want to see your Facebook ads convert, then you need to ask people to take action. The more you ask your viewers to take action, the more likely they are to do it.
Just like other aspects of your Facebook ad, don't forget to test out different variations of your call-to-action.
For example, if you can’t get someone to click on your call-to-action button, try changing the button to something that is more appealing. And if you tried that and it didn’t work, try changing the wording.
10. Make sure you're paying attention to what your audience is saying
If you are running Facebook ads, make sure to set some alerts and monitor the comments under your ads frequently.
It can happen that people write some negative comments about your product:
When this happens a lot, people will get a bad first impression of your brand, and it's likely that your Facebook ad won't convert as well anymore.
People can write negative comments for all kinds of reasons. They may:
- Think that your product is garbage because they have had bad experiences with similar products
- Have experienced longer than usual shipping times
- Have found out that you're dropshipping from AliExpress!
But there's more; people may have trouble with purchasing from your website or may not understand how your product works.
Either way, keep an eye on the comments and try to spot your audience's pain points.
If someone posts a negative comment, try to resolve the issue with them as best as possible and try to improve your business so that it doesn't happen anymore.
In case you feel like someone's negative comment is unfair, you can also choose to delete or hide that comment from your Facebook Ads Manager.
However, be aware that some claim that deleting comments from your Facebook ads may negatively impact your ad's performance.
11. Target the right audience
Facebook offers a lot of different audience options, so it can be tough to find the right one for your business. The truth is, you’ll have to experiment with a few different options until you get it right.
Just like I said before; test, test, and test.
It’s essential to experiment with different audiences and see what resonates with them.
You can also use tools like Google Analytics to see where your audience is and what they’re interested in. There or on Facebook, you can find out what your audience’s favorite colors are, what their favorite foods are, and what they’re listening to.
Also, try using different targeting options like Lookalike Audiences and interest targeting.
If you are unsure how to pick the best interests for Facebook interest targeting, then I recommend checking our guide about it here.
It will go over exactly how to pick the best interests and give you five Facebook Ads interest targeting tips!
Conclusion
As you could read, there are quite a few possible reasons why your Facebook ads are not converting.
I hope that this article will help you to find a possible issue in your campaign and improve your Facebook ads' conversion rates.
In my opinion, here's this article's takeaway:
You can't always control the outcome of your campaigns, but you can always improve them.
You can't fully control what Facebook is doing, but you can always make changes to your campaign to improve your results.
If you are struggling to improve your Facebook ad results, even after applying the tips in this article, don't hesitate to ask us any questions.
You can do that by leaving a comment below or contacting us here.
With that out of the way, I wish you a great rest of your day and hope that you will get that ROAS that you've always dreamt of!
