There are multiple reasons your Facebook Ads campaigns might not be working, but sometimes it’s impossible to know where to start.

Facebook has made it easy to set up and run ad campaigns but users often come up with the same question; why did they fail to accomplish the desired results and achieve their goals?

Well, let’s look at this logically.  When we say they aren’t working, what do we mean exactly?  They can be one of three things:

A. They aren’t running

B. They aren’t getting clicks

C. They aren’t getting conversions

So let’s take a look at these three options in detail; you’ll never have a failing campaign again!  Keep a lookout for the free checklist to download at the end.

A. Your ads aren’t running

There are so many reasons your ads might not be working, some simply technical and some for more unexpected reasons…

1. Ad Disapproved by Facebook

You may have faced this issue as Facebook commonly disapproves ads.

Usually, you receive an email and a notification in your notification bar when Facebook disapprove your ad. Why does Facebook do so? Well, there are several reasons when Facebook reject your Ads and the most common problems are:

• You are trying to promote illegal products or services such as drugs, tobacco, unsafe supplements, weapons, and explosives.
• The ad contains violent, sensational, shocking, or disrespectful content.
• The promotion of fake documents such as passport, national insurance number, degrees, or other relevant documents.
• Pornography or adult content.
• Spy tools and equipment such as trackers, spyware, and malware.
• Promotion of discriminatory content against people based on religion, political group, race, family status, gender, disability, and several others.

Please read the Facebook Advertising Policy to ensure you are up to date with their regulations and fully compliant.

How to tackle this?

There are 2 different ways to fix this issue.

Submit an Appeal

If you think that Facebook has disapproved your ad by mistake which is possible, submit an appeal.

You can submit an appeal from this page.

Make changes accordingly

Whatever is the reason behind ad disapproval, try to address it. Such as, rewrite the content if it contains prohibited words, or change the image to fulfil the Facebook standards.

2. Your images are exceeding the 20% Text limit

It is one of the trickiest problems that result in limited reach or no reach at all. According to this rule, the image you are promoting should not contain more than 20% text on it.

The text means any sort of content pasted over the image including logos, watermarks, and slogans. Also, there are some exceptions to the Text Rule and following would not be affected by this rule.

• Apps and games screenshots
• Events, festivals, and movie posters
• Infographics
• Comics
• Calligraphy
• Book and album covers

Earlier, Facebook would not approve such images at all but now, it approves the ad but limits the reach according to the text’s ratio. Before promoting any image, you can upload and check your image in Facebook’s Text Overlay tool whether it is okay to run or not.

To avoid any such problems, I recommend that you use no text at all in images where possible.  Use the headlines and copy for that!

What to do if your image promotion is rejected

If you believe that the image has less than 20% of text then you can ask Facebook for manual review while in case, the Facebook’s objection is valid, consider editing your image and try to remove and resize the text to fulfil the 20% Text Overlay rule.

3. Too Narrow Audience

Facebook Ads are all about targeting. As you know, it enables you to select your target audience based on demographics, interests, gender, household income, preferences, behaviours, and a plethora of others; the wrong audience selection can spoil your campaigns.

If your audience is too highly targetted, then your ad simply won’t run; when choosing your targeting aim to meet a happy medium between specific and broad.

If your audience is narrower than what it should be, then remove some of the narrowing targeting options, and consider extending the geographical area you are targeting.

4. Account Spending Limit Exceeded

While you run ad campaigns on Facebook, you need to put a spending limit on your account that is just to make sure that you don’t go over-budget. Usually, an advertiser puts a limit on it and forgets, and once their account spending limit has been reached, their ads would stop showing.

Fortunately, you can fix it very easily by navigating to the Billing & Payment Methods tab where you can change, remove, or reset this limit.

5. Your Budget is too Low

Facebook allows you to spend as low as around £1 but that doesn’t mean it will work.  It is recommended to set at least £4-5 per ad per day so Facebook will have enough money to be able to deliver your ad to a wide audience.

You can always increase or decrease your budget from the Ads Manager budget settings.

6. Your Bid is too Low

You must be thinking that there was nothing like bidding when you were setting the ad campaign. Actually, when you set your ad campaign, it competes with thousands of other ads at the same time.

Although Facebook considers three different factors while approving an ad against others such as Estimated Action rates, Bid Price, and Relevance and Quality, the Bid Price plays an important role in the calculation of total value.

B. Your ads aren’t getting clicks

Okay, so your ads are running wahoo!  You’ve got impressions, it’s being delivered all right, but why aren’t people clicking through or engaging?

If you have a CTR (click-through rate) or 1% or less I would say DEFINITELY look at increasing that stat.

1. Lack of Creativity in Your Ads

While on Facebook, whether you are running the paid ad campaigns or a regular post, you must put lots of creativity in it.

From catchy headlines to a concise description, and from image to “Call to Action”, you need not to do hard work but the smart work. If you are wondering, how to craft creative ads, we have got some tips for you below.

Ensure that you design your ads specifically for the right audience – e.g. if you are offering a product that has different options for men and women, then different images/videos/copy for the men and women to match their styles and language.

Make catchy visuals – Making catchy visuals was never so easy. Canva enables you to design state-of-the-art visuals without any knowledge of Photoshop or other advanced software. You’ll find many other sites if you dig deep on the internet.

2. Mismatching between Ad Copy and Visual

Can you imagine the Mercedes-Benz ad without a car or the Coca Cola ad without a chilling cold Coca Cola glass? No? Well, remember, if your Ad copy and visual are not synchronised, the people will not bother to click on it. Also, instead of making a mess, keep things simple and creative.

3. No STOP SCROLLING Factor

Think of it this way – images stop them scrolling, copy makes them click.  No matter how amazing your copy is, if your image or video doesn’t catch the users attention and make them stop scrolling, then you’ve got a pretty slim chance of getting a click.

4. Weak Headlines

So while the image may have made your audience stop scrolling, let’s just imagine that before they go to the primary copy they still want to do one last screening – the headline.

If the headline doesn’t stand out or compel them, they may just skip out on reading the copy altogether.  Make sure that the headline is well written to keep the attention of your audience and make them take the next step.

Test various headlines; never assume which headlines work with your audience.  Data is everything.

5. Crappy Copy

Yes, you saw it coming – the main copy!  The user has stopped because of your image, and approved your headline – it’s now time for a quick read of the copy.

I am a strong believer of leaving it to the experts, so if you haven’t already, make sure you outsource your copywriting to an experienced copywriter (unless you are one!).  Don’t let that be the reason you waste your budget on poorly-performing ads.

Either way, make sure you test your Ad copy – a great part of Facebook Ads is that you can run campaigns using a very small amount. So, you can easily run two or more different ads over a couple of days and analyse their outcome. Later, you can go with the one whichever had the best results.

6. Too Broad Audience

Well, it is one of the most important things you need to address. If your ad is approved and has catchy graphics along with the killer punch line or description, selection of the wrong audience can waste all your hard work.

How? If your audience selection is too broad, the chances of your ads being served to your target audience is low; y0u will be wasting money by showing your ads to the wrong people.

If your audience is on the broadside, use further targeting to narrow it down, and consider adding some exclusions.  Also, consider targeting a smaller geographical area.

C. You aren’t getting any conversions

Ooh so close!  Your ads have passed Facebooks many checks, you’ve won the trust of your audience, and real people are landing on your website!  Amazing…but they aren’t converting.

Why?

1. Your website tracking is not set up correctly

This is unfortunately so common, and also usually so easily fixed.

First of all, test your conversion tracking.  You can do this from “Events Manager” >> Click on the pixel you want to check >> Test events >> Copy and paste y0ur website address.  You can then test that all of the conversion actions are registering with Facebook.

If they aren’t, pause your campaigns immediately and get in touch with your developer!

Another great tool to use to check the pixel is installed correctly is Facebook Pixel Helper.  Ensure that you are using Google Chrome.

2. Mismatching of Ad Message and Offer

In easy words, it is like advertising fruits when you are just selling apples. There are hundreds of different fruits and a plethora of people are going to click on your ad for the sake of other fruits but they’ll end up viewing apples. So, as a result, you will be wasting a lot of money on irrelevant clicks. What should you do here? Focus on your product and be creative. Create multiple copies, run ad campaigns, and analyse the results.

3. Incorrect Link Address

It is really important to send your visitors to the relevant page once they click on your ad. I have seen many advertisers who send visitors to their homepage that is one of the biggest mistakes they are making.

For example, if you are offering a product but while a visitor clicks on your ad, if he is sent to the homepage or any page other than the specific product page, he will more likely be irritated and leave your site without making the purchase rather than find the correct page.

So, the best practice is to send your visitors to the product page or a dedicated landing page so they do not need to look further and make their decision right away.

4. Mismatched Branding

You need to ensure that your branding is on point.  Use the same images and colours in you ads and landing page so that users are sure that they have arrived at the right place.

People are often nervous about clicking on ads that cause them to leave Facebook.  So if they land on a page that looks nothing like the ad that they just clicked on, the chances are they will b0unce.

5. Wrong Temperature Traffic

The reason you aren’t getting conversions could literally just be because you are trying to force people who aren’t ready.

If you have done your strategy right and planned things out logically, hopefully, you would have based things on the famous marketing funnel.

Let’s put it this way; people aren’t going to spend £1,000 purchasing something if they have never seen you before.  Heck, they might not even feel comforting giving you an email address!

You can’t run before you walk.  Do thing properly, and gain the trust and desire of your audience before you try to make them buy.

6. Quality of Offer

And finally, you may have done absolutely everything I have mentioned above right!

But, have you had any organic sales?  If your product, service or offer isn’t good enough to entice your audience to buy, then no matter how good your Facebook Ads skills are, your ads aren’t going to work.

I would move a step back and work on my business plan if this is the case.

If however, you know that your product is awesome, then I would recommend that you go back to your copy again and point out those user benefits a bit clearer, at every step of the funnel but especially on the landing page, as that is where you are losing their interest.

Wrapping it up:

There are a number of different reasons that your Facebook Ads campaigns could not be working, however, if you take a step back, breathe, and follow our Ultimate Ads Failing Checklist, your campaigns will be back on their feet in no time!

If you have been running Google Ad campaigns and treating the Facebook Ads in the same way, you must know that both of them are totally the different platforms.

Facebook Ads may seem difficult at first, but once you master it, you’ll love it. Facebook Ads are all about creativity, smart work, strategies, and testing.

I have created a comprehensive online course called Facebook Ads: Novice to Ninja where I cover all areas of running ads, from basic to advanced.

Are you looking to become a Facebook Ads Ninja?