Why Your Facebook Ads Are Not Working

You need to make sure your ad campaigns are effective for the money you are spending. 

And now that Facebook has changed the ad process, any companies that use it for marketing need to spend more money to get the same reach.

There are many factors that could be affecting the ROI of your Facebook Ad Campaigns. 

Sometimes it’s the copy and sometimes it can be technical issues regarding Facebook’s terms of service. 

The best way to increase your conversion rates with your Facebook Ads is to troubleshoot and measure the results. Randomly starting new campaigns or trying everything at once will not help you get the results you need.

Thankfully, we have created a list of possible reasons why your Facebook Ads aren’t working: 

Your Ads Are Not Relevant 

Before you even set up your Facebook Ads, you need to know who you are targeting. Make sure your ads are not generic or you won’t receive any response on your ad campaign. If people click and aren’t converted, this will also drive up the price you are paying for clicks. 

One of the best ways to know you are reaching your right audience is by looking at your ‘Relevance Score’ on Facebook. Though often overlooked, your relevance score is crucial to creating successful Facebook ads. You can find the relevance score in the ‘Ads Manager’ section under your campaign. You will receive your score in addition to a positive or negative feedback response. One of the best ways to increase your relevance score is by making your ads interesting, which you can do by using captivating images. Why not use your own images instead of using stock photos that everyone has seen before?  

The Ad Image To Text Ratio is Incorrect

This is one of those ‘unwritten’ rules, which states that your Facebook ads cannot go beyond the image to text ratio of 20%. Basically, don’t put an image for your ad that has an excessive amount of text. If your image violates this rule, Facebook will limit the reach you can get on your campaign. Previously, they told you to replace the graphic, but nowadays you need to keep an eye on your marketing yourself. There are some exceptions to the rule, such as book covers, products, games and posters. If you are unsure, use Facebook’s Ad Overlay Checker Tool. 

You Have Reached Your Spending Limit 

This is a practical issue that can be resolved very simply. Each ad account has a separate spending limit to protect you from running over your budget in your ad campaigns. Too often, people set this and completely forget about it! It is so easy to forget. To find out if you have reached your spending limit, go to your billing and payment methods sections and edit the budget.

It’s Against Facebook’s Advertising Policies 

There is now a list of things that Facebook could disapprove of in relation to your ad. 

Here are the few main ones to check and the rest can be found on Facebook: 

• Illegal products or services 
• Discriminatory practices
• Tobacco, drugs and drug-related products 
• Low-quality or disruptive content
• Weapons, ammunition or explosives 
• Adult products, services or content
• Personal attributes 
• Misinformation
• Bad grammar or profanity 
• Multi-level marketing
• Non-functional landing page 

Etc…

If your ad has been rejected, you need to make the appropriate changes and appeal to Facebook directly. 

Audience Overlap 

Facebook has a digital auction method that will stop your ads competing with each other if they have similar interests and audiences. This is supposed to help you, but Facebook will stop some of your ads from running and simultaneously push the ones that are performing better. (This is based on your previous ad history.) If this is occurring, click onto ‘Show Audience Overlap’ in the ‘Actions’ dropdown menu. Ad Expresso uses the example of changes in the ads when the audiences ‘Cats USA’ and ‘Cats Worldwide’ had a 100% overlap:

You Aren’t Measuring

There isn’t one way to solve your ads and get you full-proof campaigns. The best way to improve them is to simply measure your results. If you change something, wait and test it to see what result it has on your campaigns. There is no point randomly pushing buttons and trying the list above without measuring it. This can also be done in split testing (A/B), which compares two ads on one or two specific changes.