If you’re a subscription box owner then you know that running Facebook ads is a great way to generate sales for your business. But running FB ads can be extremely daunting, especially if you’ve never done it before. If you’re scared of blowing tens of thousands of dollars without any clue what you’re doing, then you’re in the right place. If you want to turn FB ads into a profitable and scalable sales channel for your business, then keep reading to see the three most common mistakes we see in ad accounts and how to fix them.
One of the biggest mistakes we see a lot of sub box entrepreneurs make when it comes to FB ads is not having their tracking properly installed before launching ads. Before you launch any campaigns you need to make sure that both your pixel and conversion api are installed properly. This can seem pretty technical and advanced, but all you really need to know is that these things help to track everything that is happening with your FB ads. They can track what actions people are taking on your website, who is purchasing, who is adding to cart, etc. Then they’ll take all of that data and they’ll send it back to the FB ad platform so that FB can gain attribution/credit for the sales.
It also helps to optimize your campaigns so the more people that go to your site and purchase, the more data will be sent back to Facebook. If you have these two things installed then FB will be better at learning who is responding positively to your ads and who is or isn’t purchasing. Then FB will know who to serve your ads to based on the data it’s receiving.
We see this mistake all the time – people think that their FB ads are not working and they’re wondering why there aren’t any sales showing up in the ads manager. When we look in their ad account, we’ll see that their pixel and conversion api are not set up properly which explains why it might look like their ads aren’t working. Save yourself a headache and set this up before you launch your ads.
Another common mistake that sub box owners make is using the wrong campaign objective in their ad account. When you create a campaign, Facebook gives a large list of campaign objectives to choose from that will determine the end goal of your campaign. This is a really critical element to building a successful FB ad campaign and a lot of people don’t understand how important it really is.
Facebook has a lot of campaign objective options, including reach or brand awareness, traffic, engagement, video views, conversions, etc. The objective you choose can really impact the results of your campaign, but not all objectives will actually result in sales for your business. When you choose a traffic campaign for example, you’re basically telling FB to go out and deliver your ads to people who are likely to click on them but not necessarily likely to purchase.
That’s why you’ll end up with a high click-through rate and a low cost per click. This might lead you to think that you have a conversion rate issue, but in reality the people you were delivering your ads to were never going to convert/purchase anyway.
If you’re running an engagement campaign you might get a lot of comments, likes, and shares, but no sales. That’s because you’re telling FB to go out and deliver your ads to people that are likely to engage with them but not necessarily purchase from them.
To see conversions from your ads you’ll want to select a conversion objective campaign and optimize it for purchases. When you do that you are telling FB to go out and deliver your ads to people who are actually likely to purchase your product. If your goal is to get sales from FB ads, choosing a conversion objective campaign will convert better than any other campaign objective 99% of the time. Use a conversion objective optimized for purchases and save yourself a lot of headaches and money down the road.
Many people make the mistake of running way too many ads per ad set. Our general recommendation is to only run two to three ads per set. The problem with running 10-15 ads per ad set, which we see often, is that you’re spreading your budget way too thin.
You’ll find that Facebook will distribute your budget across all of those ads and none of them will really get enough reach to gain any valuable insights. Or FB will spend a couple dollars here and there on eight of the ads in your ad set and spend the majority of your budget on the other two and you end up just wasting money.
Keep your ad account simple – run two to three ads per ad set and let them run for 72 hours up to a week so that you can really let them get enough impressions, properly optimize, and make a more data-backed decision on their performance. Once that time period is up you can decide whether you want to let them keep running if those ads are hitting your CPA targets or if you want to test new creative and turn off the ads that are underperforming.
To recap, make sure that your pixel and conversion api are installed properly. They will help you track sales from your ads and better optimize your campaigns. Make sure that you’re using a conversion objective optimized for purchases that is going to tell Facebook to go after people who are actually likely to purchase your subscription box. Last, keep your account simple and only run 2-3 ads per ad set. Don’t be that person that runs 10-15 ads per set, spreading your budget way too thin.
Running FB ads for your sub box business really isn’t as daunting as it seems, but only if you keep these three things in mind as you get started. If you have everything set-up, monitoring, and reporting properly, then you’ll be testing creative and seeing conversions in no time!
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