We all love giving our hard-earned money to dearest Mark, especially when we’re promised likes, followers, and the occasional sale.
But with all that’s been happening over in the US, and Facebook being more and more reliant on AI to approve the ever growing number of ads, it’s pretty hard to stay on top of all the recent changes.
So – this article will give you practical tips of what you CAN do to increase you chances of ads being approved smoothly, as well as troubleshooting tips for when things to wrong. If you found it valuable, please share it!
The ideal configuration to run ads
Business Manager
To increase your chances, you want to make sure to create a free Business Manager account (at this address: https://business.facebook.com). This insulates your personal Facebook profile from potential repercussion, and makes asset (=ad accounts, pages) sharing seamless even when you are not friends with someone.
Facebook Pixel
You want to install a Facebook Pixel on your website. Basically, it’s a small script (=piece of code) that tracks the activity on your website, and matches it to Facebook and Instagram users. This is powerful if you want to run retargeting campaigns!
If you are using a CMS such as Shopify or Squarespace, all you need to do is create the Pixel on Business Manager (Business Settings > Events Manager > Create Pixel) and copy the numeric code in the dedicated field.
Business Ad Account
Lastly, you want to use a business ad account when advertising on Fb/Ig. Why? It not only it allows you more features – but it also makes it safer, just in case you are ever banned (or shadow banned) from the platform. It sounds scary but in reality it happens more often than you think. Usually for stupid reasons, which I’m going to get into later in this article.
Boost vs Ads Manager?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. You’ve heard it before about how boosting posts isn’t as effective as running ads from Ads Manager. Honestly? If you want to drive more engagement on a post that’s already doing pretty good with organic reach – boost post is a fantastic feature!! With a small budget and a few clicks, you are able to increase your reach. But keep my advice in mind: only use this on posts that already have a higher-than-usual reach!
If instead you want to run a traffic, or video views, or conversion campaign with a higher budget (>10/day) then yes, you should use Ads Manager to make sure your money is well spent and returns are maximised.
Troubleshooting tips!
If you see... Account Error
If you see a scary “Account Error” message appearing – you’re fine. What happened is that you hit the “spending limit”.
By going into Ad Account Setting > Spending Limit you will be able to edit it or remove it altogether. I recommend you remove it altogether, as this is a lifetime metric with very little sense.
If you see... Account Quality Issue
Facebook is requesting additional validation of your personal identity. This can happen if there’s a mismatch between your IP and your credit card country, for example. Or if you’re travelling. Or if you moved from living room to office and that day the AI is having a bad day…. you get what I mean!
Follow the steps, submit a photo of your ID, and it should be re-instated within 48h. If not, you can contact Facebook Support at this link: https://business.facebook.com/direct-support
If you see... Ad Rejected
Ads can be rejected for a myriad of reasons! A crazy example?
- Using the word YOU/YOUR or hinting at the fact that your audience is of a certain sexual orientation or condition (personal attributes)
Example:
- If you’re suffering from cancer and…
- If you’re bi-sexual and struggling with…
- You’re a mom of three…
These are EXTREMES! But your ad will get banned for MUCH LESS! And btw – Facebook allows you to target moms who live in Singapore who used to live in the UK and have 1 child between the age of 9-12 years old. BUT THEN, you can’t refer to that in your ad. Sneaky, right?! So, be careful.
For example, this is an ad of mine that was recently banned from Facebook. Was it the “you guys are going to get an ass kicking discount”? Who knows. Whatever.
It goes without saying that anything illegal can’t be advertised. But did you know that reusable face masks are also a NO-GO? That’s right! You can’t advertise fabric face masks, unless you use some pretty sneaky workaround which can work in the short term, but you risk getting banned in the long term.
So if you sell CBD oil, online courses on how to grow medical marijuana, or face masks – you’re in the same boat according to Facebook. The ad rejection boat.
Other possible causes of trouble, red flags and rejected ads:
- Missing Privacy Policy on your page
- Missing disclaimer that you’re not affiliated with Instagram on a giveaway post
- Mention of any big brand names (Google, Facebook, Instagram…)
- Your landing page loads slowly
- Your landing page contains health claims or “MLM claims” – so anything related to dieting, investing money is OUT too
- Increasing budget on a campaign suddenly and quickly
- Starting too many ads at the same time
- A new ad account
- A new Ig/Fb account
- Using any sort of automated Ig follow/unfollow bot
- Malformed links: missing https:// at the beginning of the URL, or using http:// if your website uses https:// protocols
- Using BAD words
If you use words in your posts such as :
- Giveaway
- Free
- Lucky draw
- Comment
- Tag
- Share
- Send me
- Tell me
- Make more money
- Lose weight
- Cure for cancer (or any other disease or health claim)
- Increase revenue
Not only will your organic reach be penalised, but your boosts will likely not work.
In the past, images underwent scrutiny as well, with the rule that you can’t have more than 20% of the image covered in text.
Now, that rule has been removed and you can have as much text as you wish in an image. Although I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to look good…
What about running ads on Instagram from Instagram?
I’ve had clients experience mild success from it, but my problem with it is that you can’t use a UTM parameter and track what results were driven by the IG ads vs Organic Instagram traffic.
So…. It’s a no for me. Unless, all you want to do is spend $5-$10 to boost the reach of a post that’s already doing well. In that case, the trouble of going to Ads Manager and creating a campaign to only be shown on Instagram isn’t worth it.
Plus, targeting possibilities are very limited, so if you want to spend serious money to see real returns, you’re better off going from the Ads Manager.
So, how CAN WE run ads then?!
The safest thing to do to avoid being banned or worse, blocked is:
- Use Ads Manager, as that will tell Fb you are a fb-skilled, competent person
- Publish 1 campaign with 1 ad set and 1 ad ONLY at first
- After that first campaign, ad set, ad has been approved – create audience variations (ad set level) and creative variations (ad level)
- Start with a small budget (whatever that means for your usual spend), and only increase the budget by 20% every 3 days.
- Increasing gradually will help the ad to keep performing. If you change something too suddenly, you may get banned or the ad may go back to the “learning” phase, which will slow down your results.
What objective should I choose for my campaign? Why is my audience size so small? Why doesn't my ad work?
And how long is a piece of string?! Answers vary, but these are the rules of thumb I try and use when running ads for myself and my clients.
Campaign type:
- Video views brings cheapest results and is super effective if you have videos
- Traffic works awesome to drive traffic to an existing post with a link, so you get both the paid boost as well as the extra organic reach
- Conversions: isn’t that all we want?! But to make this work, we need to have a Pixel installed for at least 2 weeks during which you receive 200+ orders. If you have less data than this, it will be a costly campaign to run, and might not be as effective as a traffic campaign.
Audience size:
- Retargeting ads: use Pixel data of 15 days website visitors
- Customer Acquisition: 1-10M is the sweet spot. For Singapore, try to have 500k – 1M audience size. Anything less won’t be effective.
Ads can work and be wonderful for your sales. But sometimes, they are a time-delay bomb and all they bring is more website visitors who don’t buy immediately.
Keep your eyes open to spot any trends, and when you see that something is working between that audience targeting – ad creative – website conversions mechanism – INCREASE THE BUDGET!
Until then, keep testing and trying new ways to drive traffic and awareness to your brand. Facebook Ads is definitely one of the most *famous* channels, but don’t forget there are gazillions more which may be more suitable for your audience.
