4 Common Facebook Ads Budget Mistakes

For some marketers, Facebook ads have lost their shiny new appeal over the past few years. Facebook advertising costs have risen, and businesses have had to compete harder for ad placements. But that’s not the whole story. Facebook is still the biggest social media platform out there, by miles. It claims almost 3 billion monthly active users. That’s more than Instagram and TikTok put together. It’s more than any other social network. Facebook Ads is an immensely powerful platform for social marketers. But some very common mistakes can prevent you from getting the results you want.

1. You Don’t Test Facebook Ads Enough

To run successful ads, you need to know what works. To know what works, you have to test… and you have to test enough. Lots of first-time marketers on Facebook make the mistake of not investing enough in testing. You don’t have to spend the entire budget on testing different audiences, placements, and creative but you do have to test enough to get meaningful results.

That also means being smart about how you spend your testing budget. For example, if you only have $100, don’t test 100 different ads. Test just four ads, and you’ll get statistically significant, useful results. Once you have some solid data from that first testing round, you can start scaling up. Spend the majority of your budget on tactics you know are successful but always have some money set aside to keep testing.

2. You Don’t Dig Into Facebook Ads Metrics

You need to get really comfortable with Facebook’s Insights and Analytics. At a high level, that data will tell you how your Facebook ads are performing compared to other platforms. At a more zoomed-in level, tracking your Facebook metrics will help you keep your ads effective over time. Even if you test a strategy to perfection, the same formula for success may not work 6 months down the line.

3. You Don’t Utilize Off-Facebook Tracking Mechanisms

Facebook’s own metrics are valuable but they’re not the whole picture. You’ll also need:

- The Facebook pixel to track activity on your website and match it to your Facebook presence.

- The Facebook Conversions API to track conversions on your website that get missed by the pixel.

- UTMs so you can use Google Analytics to check and corroborate which links people click on from Facebook.

These analytics are all a bit more technically complicated than Facebook’s built-in metrics. But they are well worth the extra effort because they give you so much more data. For example, your metrics within Facebook might show that two ads are equally successful in terms of clicks and conversions. But when you dig into the Conversions API data, you might find that one ad actually leads to a much higher order value than the other. Conclusion: you only want to keep one of those ads running.

4. You Don’t Use a Facebook Ads Budget

Finally, the biggest single mistake you can make with an ads budget is… Not having a budget! Right from the start, you need to set boundaries for your spending. That might include setting some money aside for testing—but there should always be a limit. Otherwise, you risk spending money randomly without knowing how much you’ve spent or where it’s going.

Facebook offers a specific demographic to marketers. While younger generations are focused on the new generation of video-first apps, Facebook’s audience skews a little older. That means that the people viewing your ads on Facebook have a lot more disposable income to spend. This isn’t to say that you should go all in on Facebook and ignore every other ad platform. Diversification is still a great strategy. If you want to get the most return for your money, you’ll spread your budget across other platforms such as Google Ads, YouTube, and TikTok.