After generating over 1MIL+ in sales for our clients, we know what we’re talking about.

Good and bad, we’ve seen it all!

We don’t want you to be one of the bad things we’ve seen.

Spoiler alert: committing one of these sins will increase your advertising costs and decrease your profitability!

Whether you are running your own ads, or using the services of a Facebook™ and Instagram advertising agency, read on to be sure you aren’t committing one of the deadly sins.

1. Credit card decline

You can expect a serious flogging from the Facebook algorithm if your business card gets declined. Because of declines, we’ve seen lead costs double in a matter of days, and ads start getting disapproved that had previously been approved without trouble.

Lesson: Keep your credit card open for business. Watch your card balance and add a secondary billing option for the weeks you forget or go on vacation.

Watch: How To Add or Update your Payment Method for your Ad Account

2. Out of stock inventory 

Of the problems to have, this is a good one! However, if your products are constantly out of stock, Facebook™ considers this a poor customer experience. You’ll get a ding in the algorithm which will result in higher costs. If you’re running out of inventory, pause the ads running to those specific products or consider taking those product listings off your website until you can replenish stock.

If you have products you no longer sell – retire them and archive them off your website.

Lesson: Keep tabs on your product inventory and communicate with your advertising agency about which products you can continue to promote. 

3. New website links

We get it. In the digital age, it’s so easy to make changes. Perhaps you’ve recently rebranded your website? Or decided to reorganize your product categories? Whatever the case may be, you need to check your ads or inform your advertiser if your website links will be changing.

Advance notice is key. You don’t want to change URLs in a fit of productivity and realize later that you wasted advertising spend by promoting ads that went to 404 pages. Eeek!!!

Whether ads maintain engagement (likes, comments, shares) after editing depends on which ad attribute you are editing. If you’ve invested in building engagement on a specific ad, you want to consider whether you are willing to reinvest in rebuilding this engagement prior to changing the URLs.

Lesson: Don’t hastily change your website links. If you need to change them, inform your Facebook™ advertiser to do a quick audit of your active ads and update the ad links where needed.

 

4. Altering or turning off your ads 

You’ve hired a professional to take care of your ads, let them do their job! Do not turn off or edit your ads, audiences or campaigns. How, when and why you edit a campaign can directly affect the optimization of your advertising dollars.

At our agency, we value transparency. Each one of our clients owns their ad account and can look at the status of their campaigns at any time. We also send weekly and monthly reports, so you know exactly what your advertising budget is doing for you.

If you’d like us to alter something or turn an ad off, just let us know and we can take care of it in a way that will maintain the integrity of your account.

Lesson: Trust that your Facebook™ advertiser is strategically running your account. Communicate with them if you feel like something needs to change, but don’t make any changes to your campaigns on your own.

Now, we understand there are times when people hired unresponsive advertisers. If you’ve reached out to your Facebook™ ads agency numerous times and have not had any action taken on a critical campaign, feel free to FIRE them and give us a call.

5. Running your own campaigns (while you have an agency working on your account)

Have you hired an advertiser to run one promotion, but now you have something else you’d like to promote, and you’re tempted to do it yourself? Our preference is for you to let us handle all your ads. Here’s why: it usually damages both your campaign and the one we’re working on.

Depending on the size of your audiences and your advertising budget, you may be competing with yourself for ad space. That means your advertising costs rise.

Disapprovals hurt the performance of your account. If you run ads that get disapproved the effect is felt on all campaigns. Repeated disapprovals can have your FB account banned.

Lesson: Let your Facebook™ and Instagram advertising agency take over all your campaigns and promotions. Say goodbye to the do-it-yourself (DIY) days.

6. Lackluster creative 

With Facebook™ and Instagram platforms changing constantly, there’s new ad placements, new creative specs and technical requirements rolling out all the time.

Last year’s creative might be too stale to convert this year, or it may not be in a format that is performing the best right now.

Your Facebook™ advertising agency needs a steady stream of highly engaging creative. Amazing testimonials, professional-looking product photography, and captivating videos will help you to stand apart from your competition and draw your ideal customer in Pro tip: sometimes your cell phone is all you need to create the best content!

The more engaging the ad, the better the ad performance, the higher the profit.

The data inside Facebook™ gives us direct feedback on what your customers find engaging – and your agency should be sharing that info with you. If your advertiser requests new creative, its because data shows that your customers aren’t responding to what you’ve provided so far – or they’ve stopped responding.

Lesson: Keep making fresh and engaging content that can be used in your advertising.

7. Giving up too soon 

12 hours, 24 hours or even a few days isn’t enough to know if a piece of content or offer is converting (this is especially true if you have a small budget).

Stick with it and don’t give up before you’re about to see real results. It can take months to see 2x, 3x or 5x ROI. Along the way you’re getting real-time data that shows you what offer, creatives and audiences are responding. Some businesses spend millions of dollars on market research, but you can do your own market research directly through FB and IG ads. This data is the information you need to change your business for the better.

Lesson: Stick with it. Don’t give up. Learn from the data and initiate the changes we suggest to see your goals come through.

If you stay away from these 7 deadly sins, you’re sure to find yourself in financial prosperity in no time.