15 Things Successful Facebook Ads Marketers Don't Do
Avoid these mistakes and make better ones
Aazar Shad
January 29, 2023
What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.
This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.
This newsletter is divided into:
- Sharing what I've learnt (this issue)
- Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers lessons with you (last week's issue)
- And analyzing the best brands I admire to give you actionable tips to apply in your business
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- 7 Winning Facebook Ads Tactics to Get Your Results Instantly in 2023
- The Paid Social Performance Battle – Oura Ring vs Whoop vs Fitbit
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Have you heard about The Performers Mastermind Group?
For the last four months, I have been running a paid social mastermind group, and I have only accepted 20% of all the applications (because only the best can help each other level up). So, why do people join this group and pay €24/month for it?
They get:
- Exclusive live discussions with other paid social marketing pros (no more individual jumping on Zoom calls).
- Exclusive summarized tactical newsletter for those who couldn’t attend our session.
- Paid gigs: Agency, consultant, and job offers for the community
- Sounding board: They get honest feedback on landing pages, ads and campaigns
- Insiders' secret: They also jump on bi-monthly calls to learn what’s working for us on paid socials
- Extra support: Content, community, rant, and more.
So, if you are interested in our paid social marketing group, then I’d highly encourage you to apply where folks don’t just learn from me but from each other too. And the best part? They love it!
Here’s a tweet from our mastermind a few weeks ago:
Apply here if you want to level up (prices will increase to €29 after the 35th membership, at the moment, we have 30 (last week was 25).
We had a session last week, and some marketers have a ton of experience. I am about to share it in a private newsletter.
And if you already know about the mastermind group and are still on the fence, check out why other marketers are loving this video.
Now, let's talk about how you can learn from my mistakes
Over the past 18 months, I've spent more than $2.5mn+ on Facebook ads. I learned more about what I should avoid. Here are 15 Mistakes I made that you shouldn't repeat:
1. Checking Ads account every hour.
Yes, you need to look at your numbers but it won't change anything.
Prioritize your mental health and focus on execution & strategy.
Kill this bad habit. It does not bring joy.
2. Micro-managing UGC creators.
They are creative for a reason. They need to live your product to deliver authentic & persuasive content.
Stop pushing those "standard scripts".
But give them guidance, hooks ideas, and let them find what resonates with them more.
3. Run a Traffic ads campaign (wrong objective).
The pixel is there to learn how the audience behaves.
A traffic campaign does not lead to good results.
Even if you want to run it, only run it on third-party websites which you have no control over.
4. Hiring influencers because of popularity.
Ignore popularity, focus on credibility.
Credible influencers will get you your results and add trust.
Focus on the topic specialists, not dancers who just entertain.
5. Letting in branded terms and colors in the ads.
Brand marketing is important but not as important as being "organic" and "native" to the platform.
Kill those jargons that nobody understands.
This is why the viewers are ignoring your ads and not clicking
6. Just rely on Facebook or Google Analytics.
Both platforms either under or over-report. Relying only on these two sources of truth is going to hurt your analysis.
Try Triple Whale if you are in ecommerce.
Or Hyros for non-ecommerce use-case for better attribution
7. Complicated account structure to set yourself up for failure.
A complicated Account structure makes it harder for Fb to optimize & give you desired results.
My friend Badal Pandey has a good structure:
3-5 campaigns
3-5 adset in 1 campaign
3-5 ads in 1 adset
8. Worry about the learning phase.
DTC Paid Social Queen says:
"The kearning phase is Facebook's way of making you spend more on shitty ads".
If you're seeing some irregularity in ad or adset.
Make the necessary change and don't give a shi* about the learning phase.
9. Narrowing the audience to reach nobody.
Facebook's algorithm is 1000x more powerful than your mind.
Stop those 100s of interest stacking and go broad.
If you go with interest, don't do more than 3.
10. Assuming what will work.
Great marketers test their assumptions. Let data tell you what to do next.
Find what works and double down. You're not god.
11. Making big decisions on small amounts.
It's funny when you run $100 per adset for a day and decided to turn that adset off.
Give it time and spend some signifcant amount to get significant results.
12.Stop using stock images and videos.
Intelligent marketers use that image and video and ask their customers to give something similar.
People can find those BS images from 3 meters away from their phones.
13. Launch half-assed landing pages.
You know what I mean: the one where you change the headline only.
Really make a dedicated landing page to a dedicated audience that is tailored to that specific offer, and be creative.
And, please don't drive the audience to your home page.
14. Copy-pasting the exact same ads.
I tried to copy and my ads did not stand out.
Instead, take inspiration and rework the entire with your point of view and audience.
Use Adbox for inspiration: https://meetadbox.com/aazar or Foreplay's discovery feature
Be uniquely YOU.
15. Just one format such as videos.
Videos take time. So, do focus on single-image ads.
Single-image ads with great creatives work like a charm.
Here's a good example:
Do any of these resonate with you? If I have missed any big mistakes that others should not make, then reply to this email. I'll share it with everyone and credit you (do share your social account).
Product of the week - Pencil
Now you can eliminate the guesswork in making winning ad creatives with Pencil. They have a big data set of 3000+ brand ads so now I let them help me figure out which ads will work. I don't need to trust my intuition. Plus, it's free.
Pencil works best if you already have a strong brand and a library of images and videos featuring your products or services that you need to turn into winning ads. If you don't have this, they strongly suggest building an asset library of at least 3-5 product images and 3-5 UGC videos before using Pencil. Stock images and videos are a last resort. Low-quality creative inputs will lead to low-quality creative outputs.
Also, Pencil works best if you're already spending at least $5k/mo on ads and have data in your ad account on what's working and not working. If you don't have this, you'll need to experiment with as many, and as varied, ads as possible to set a baseline and create patterns in what works and what doesn't for your business. Pencil will start learning and showing you predictions with data from ~10 ads for a given objective, targeting, and metric.
Content of the week - Foxwell Course
I get too many requests to create a Facebook Ads course. I have not thought about creating mine yet. I usually like to offer free content. But if you are serious about media buying and creative strategy, then this course was recommended by my podcast guest Cody Ploker (CMO of Jones Beauty). I got access and the courses seem legit. You can check it out if you are starting at zero.
Happy Growing with Paid Social,
Aazar Shad
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