.01 Not knowing your customer profiles
Targeting the wrong group of customers can result in your ads not generating any revenue. Imagine trying to sell ice to eskimos and unless you are Jordan Belfort on the ground selling your products personally, you’re going to spend a lot of time and effort for little to no returns.
There are different tiers of customers:
- Core Audience (People who need or wants your Product/Brand)
- Customers who are looking for similar products to your but have yet to decide on the brand
- Customers who aren’t sure if they need your product but who might end up purchasing them due to a lure
- Customers who are unlikely or not interested in purchasing your products
After identifying each tier, it is important to understand how each audience behave using this checklist:
- What kind of habits do they practice in a day?
- Where do they frequent?
- What are the other brands/products they patronise?
- What’s their income?
- How frequent will they purchase your products?
- How do they think, behave and live on a daily basis?
Understanding your customers is the key to achieving your goals.
.02 Bidding for expensive interest groups
Targeting obvious interest groups are the most common examples most marketers/business owners make; If you’re selling chocolate and your target interest is chocolate is one such example. Do remember that these keywords are already highly competitive and bigger brands who are selling similar products to you are out there are constantly bidding for these keywords because they can and can afford to as well.
Furthermore, if your brand isn’t as strong as your bigger competitors, there’s a high chance you’ll not convert them even with the high bid cost.
Below is an example of how your CPA would likely look like.
Example A (Targeting an obvious keyword)
- Cost per click: $6
- Cost per acquisition: $60
- Revenue per acquisition: $40
- Total loss/gain: -$20
Example B (Using a less obvious keyword, like “Cafes”)
Assuming that people who like to visit cafes to enjoy desserts, will also like to indulge in chocolate at home to make impulsive purchases.
Below is the probable result.
- Cost per click: $2
- Cost per acquisition: $20
- Revenue per acquisition: $40
- Total loss/gain: +$20
Thinking outside of the box will help you to do better targeting and create higher performance for your ads.
.03 Not optimising your landing page/website storytelling
This is yet another classic mistake that marketers/business owners often make. They forget that their website or landing page is similar to that of a retail storefront.
If you are trying to sell a $3,000 handbag but your website doesn’t portray that kind of storytelling and communication, how are you going to expect your customers to be convinced to pay a premium for your product?
Here’s an example:
If Chanel sold their handbags in a poorly decorated store that seemed rundown, you’d likely think that it’s a counterfeit. Even if it’s real, you’re going to need to overcome huge doubts from them to ensure they think your products are legit.
While this is an extreme scenario, time and time again you see international brands spending loads upgrading their retail fronts, branding and websites for one reason. To stay legit and relevant with their customers. In the digital world, your landing page or website is your retail front.
.04 Not investing in content
“An image tells a thousand words”
That is true till today, especially when people’s attention span is being reduced by the day. Investing in good visuals helps you to tell your brand and product story clearly in a short period of time.
.05 Using visuals and/or messaging that don’t resonate with the target audience
Right Visual > Right Messaging > Right Audience
So what is the right visual and messaging?
If you were to study Donald Trump’s approach to political marketing you’d be surprised to know that you can get all the answers there.
Who he’s communicating to?
- General masses who are dissatisfied and unhappy with their lives
- Public who feel strongly against outsiders
- Public who don’t have a lot of their basic needs met
- Public who don’t feel safe in their homes
How he is communicating with them:
- Keeping his messaging straight to the point
- Using the tag lines, “Make America Great Again” and “Build a Great Wall” which pulls the heartstrings of his audience
- Strong choice of words to evoke emotions (Lying, Invasion, Crooked)
- Promoting urgency
Here are some examples:
By using this theory, we need to ensure that different target audiences are served different ads to better fit their needs or wants to push for action.
.06 Not cutting loses on your ads fast
Based on the example above, you would notice that among the 7 ads in one specific adset, only one was performing. This tells us that that one ad visual is the identified winner and we should proceed to cutting the losses made on the other ad visuals so that over time, the leading ad visual makes up the difference and returns revenue. Otherwise, within this entire adset, the cost per acquisition will quickly add up and not become worth its investment.
.07 Cutting your ads too quickly
To know if you’re cutting your ads too quickly, it is crucial to understand what your ideal average cost per purchase should be at.
Let’s imagine a scenario where you are selling something that would generally be counted as something more premium and your suggested average cost per purchase is at about $70. Your ad set has currently spent about $30 from launch without a single conversion and you feel that it’s become too expensive so you turn it off.
Little do you know, by cutting your ads prematurely you’ve missed an opportunity of conversion because the threshold was $45. Now not only would you have wasted $30, but you might have missed your chance at a pot of gold because you ended the journey earlier than expected.
What we would advise here is to keep new ad set spends to at least $90 to $140 to give it a fair chance to deliver its performance before considering shifts or stoppage.
