Using Facebook Ads has been a tried-and-true method of increasing traffic and sales for eCommerce businesses over many years now. But, it’s never without issues along the way…
I often joke that a zoo animal or an alien must be driving the Meta bus because it can be unpredictable and completely arbitrary at times!
I’m sure we all know the frustration when you invest the time, energy, and money into ads that either don’t produce the expected results, OR that do and then suddenly those results just take a nosedive for no apparent reason.
The truth is, many business owners run into this problem. Their Facebook ads stopped converting. And it can be one or more of many different reasons, such as:
- An ever-evolving Facebook Ads rulebook
- Your audience’s psychology and unpredictability
- Having to create copy and graphics that engage your target market
Here are 10 steps you can take to get back on track if your Facebook ads stopped converting
Facebook often implements new updates to their Ads platform, many of which end up causing issues with campaigns that were otherwise performing well.
I know, I know – it’s incredibly frustrating!
And whilst there is no playbook that Meta hands out – Meta are notoriously silent when it comes to sharing any kind of information about what they’re doing and how it impacts the way we use the platforms – so there’s no foolproof guide for troubleshooting issues when your Facebook ads stop working.
However, long experience tells me there are several steps you can take to bring your ad performance back where you need it to be.
Step 1: Duplicate the campaign
If high-performing ads suddenly drop and there really isn’t any mitigating circumstances, try duplicating the ads into a new campaign to kick-start the algorithm afresh.
Step 2: The creative sucks…
Sometimes when you send a new campaign live, Facebook will get a few initial quick conversions (the ‘low hanging fruit’), but then the results drop off.
This can be because your ad creatives aren’t all that appealing, particularly for new (cold) audiences. Perhaps the copy or visuals just don’t engage their attention or you’re missing the mark when it comes to motivating action.
Or, you may have ‘Optimize Creative’ toggled on in the ad setup and your customers may be seeing some weird AI-generated rubbish in your ads. (One of our clients spotted some fake landscapes and some psychedelic colours being added to their product catalog ads!)
Step 3: Creative fatigue
If you’ve been running the same ads for more than 2 months and the results have dropped off, there’s a good chance you’re suffering from creative fatigue.
What does this mean?
Basically – your audience stops noticing your ads because they’ve seen them too frequently.
Step 4: Your offer sucks…
Your offer includes the way you describe your product benefits, and it can also include any incentives you’re running.
If the messaging around your product offering is bland and boring, or not enticing enough compared to your competitors, then your ads are likely to be costly and not very effective. Particularly for cold audiences who will not be as forgiving as your existing customers.
You need to answer your customers’ silent question, ‘what’s in it for me?’ (WIFM!)
Step 5: Creative too slick
Sometimes, people are less responsive to social media ads that look too polished and ad-like.
If all your organic content is like that, then that might be fine for your brand.
However, also consider the idea that really slick-looking production value may not feel like it’s native to the social media platform, and it it looks too ad-like it might be a turn-off.
Step 6: Wrong campaign objectives
A lot of eCommerce business owners think that the cheapest and fastest way to get their Facebook ads converting into orders, is to just run purchase conversion campaigns (or Advantage + Shopping campaigns).
IE ‘asking for the sale’ straight away.
The issue with this is, only a very very small percentage of your audience will be ready to buy.
The rest of them won’t respond so well to such a sales-oriented message.
So for earlier stages in the buyer journey, you need to choose a more appropriate campaign objective for the purpose and match it with the right ad messaging and creatives.
Step 7: Wrong targeting
How well do you really know your target audience?
Have you pinpointed them accurately with your audience targeting?
And do you give your ad account enough quality ‘audience signals’ through syncing with Klaviyo, adding in custom audiences of customers, and sharing really great organic content that your ideal audience wants to engage with?
Or could your ad targeting be off and your ads aren’t showing to the correct audience? If that’s the case, your ads will not be efficient at finding new customers and your results will be lacklustre and expensive.
Step 8: Landing page not optimised for conversions
I definitely see this a LOT. Ads sending traffic to poorly-optimised landing pages.
Sometimes, ads are sending traffic to collection pages that just don’t have much (if any) content on there aside from product images. Which is not a great introduction to a brand for someone new.
Or, they’re sending traffic to a product page that’s very simple and also not very well optimised for conversions.
Landing pages are a critical element when it comes to converting cold audiences into customers, so if your add-to-cart and purchase conversion rates are low then I would suggest yours need some attention.
Step 9: Poor budget allocation
This one can go either way: spend too little and the budget will be too small for the campaign to achieve the required 50 conversion events in a week. You’ll get stuck in ‘Learning Phase’ and your results will be dismal and expensive.
Spend too much and you’ll also run the risk of over-spending per conversion.
You need to work out what your ideal cost-per-purchase is and keep a close eye on your campaigns so that you spend within that sweet spot.
Step 10: Sell more on the back end
Use automated Klaviyo flows to help speed up your time-to-first-purchase, average order value (AOV), and repeat purchase rate.
AOV, combined with the recency and frequency of orders, helps you to increase the lifetime value of every customer you acquire, and by extension the ROI on your ad spend.
Take outs
So that’s the process you need to go through in order to get back on track if your Facebook ads stoped converting.
It will always be an iterative approach where you cycle through those steps over and over again, just as the digital environment we’re advertising in is ever-changing and we need to react and respond to that by revising our advertising according to what the data tells us.
Now, you might be wondering how on earth you can implement this process yourself in your business.
Generally speaking, there’s always a knowledge gap when it comes to mastering new or different ways of doing things, and that includes your marketing and advertising.
And there’s always three options available to you when it comes to mastering new skills: figure it out by trial and error, pay to learn from someone, or outsource it.
If you do want to accelerate learning and implementing this stuff in your business so you can scale and grow faster, then I’d love to invite you to work with us.
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