Placing ads on Facebook pages is a common business marketing strategy, but one that creates a lot of confusion. Here, we expose 14 common myths and misconceptions about Facebook advertisements so that you can invest your money wisely and with greater awareness about how your ads affect your target audience.
1. Ad placement does not matter
Of course, it does. Facebook offers specific spaces on its real estate to display ads. The trick is to know how your audience behaves. If you place your ad in the newsfeed, it will have to compete with other content from friends. In the right column, you get the complete attention of your user.
2. Facebook Advertisements don’t lead to sales
This is one of the most common and oldest misconceptions about Facebook advertisements. From the time they were first in use, marketers have assumed that these ads are only great to create awareness about a brand or business and that they do not have any impact on increasing purchases. However, the reality is quite the opposite. An increasing number of online users are actually absorbing the messages in these ads and basing their purchase decisions on them. So yes, advertisements for Facebook do lead to online purchases and marketers should be aware of this when designing their Facebook advertisements.
3. You cannot integrate with ads on social media
Of course, you can. Instagram is a great example. You can integrate these ads with your Facebook page to get traffic from both platforms.
4. Facebook Advertisements rely only on images
Again, not true. While Facebook prefers ads based on images for easy accessibility, there is no restriction on how much text you can use. A few years ago, Facebook lifted the restriction on using only 20% text in an ad. Therefore, you are free to use text as long as it keeps the ad informative and understandable.
Read 10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You about Facebook Ads
5. Facebook Advertisements are just spam
This misconception arises because Facebook has imposed some controls on what appears on a user’s newsfeed. Nonetheless, if you are competitive and your ad is relevant to the user, Facebook cannot stop the user from seeing it on their timeline.
6. Likes are pretty useless if they don’t translate to sales
That’s taking a very narrow view of things. While simple likes do not lead to sales, they help you in other ways. The more likes your ad receives, the more frequently Facebook displays it on other users’ timelines, giving you more exposure. In addition, Facebook reduces the amount charged for ads depending on how many likes or shares the previous ads have received.
7. There are no genuine clicks on Facebook Advertisements
This is another widespread myth that needs to be exposed. While it is true that fake ad clicks do exist, their percentage is extremely small compared to authentic ad clicks. Therefore, as marketers, we do not need to worry about having our investment go down the drain or even Facebook blocking us.
8. Buying Facebook likes is fair practice
Why? Because everyone is doing it. Well, not any more. Buying likes does nothing to increase your sales or any form of engagement with your site. Simply invest that money into making good, compelling ads.
9. Facebook Advertisements don’t work for new customers
There is a lot of confusion around whether a potential customer would risk spending their money and time on a Facebook ad. On the contrary, advertisements on Facebook are quite effective as lead ads and generating new customers for the business. You can design ads that involve less expenditure by new customers, such as downloading an app or taking a survey. Then, build on to making a sale.
10. Facebook Advertisements don’t link elsewhere
Absolutely wrong. The best thing you can do is link the Facebook ad to your website’s landing page. Facebook won’t penalize you for doing this and you’ll get instant traffic to your website where users can browse through more products and learn more about your business.
11. Low CPC is the perfect approach
Again, this is a matter of setting priorities. Instead of focusing on the cost you spend per click, focus on how many clicks convert into sales or app downloads. This will lead to higher revenues from your Facebook advertisements.
12. Facebook Advertisements only work with consumer brands
Not true. Many businesses use advertisements on Facebook to reach out to corporate customers. The trick is to use a nuanced approach instead of a machine gun approach. Spend time in searching for relevant potential buyers. You can search people on Facebook by their job titles and craft customized marketing messages for them.
13. Facebook Advertisements without offers are useless
To some extent, this is true. Most users on Facebook like or share ads if they offer a discount or any special incentive. However, you cannot build offers into your ads all the time. Include such offers from time to time but they don’t have to be part of all your Facebook advertisements.
14. Facebook Advertisements are passé
No. There is an evolution going on and the costs, as well as competition, is increasing. However, Facebook advertisements are far from over. They are still very relevant in the online marketplace and a valuable source of information for social media users.