Everyone likes likes. But successful ad campaigns are about more than just vanity metrics. If you don’t know what to focus on, your ad campaign can quickly become an expensive cautionary tale. So how do you measure a successful ad campaign? And how do you know if you’re messing up?

Here are the most common mistakes our agency sees when auditing Facebook and Instagram ad accounts:

• Not using post IDs in ads for multiple ad sets or using the exact same ad
  You’re not carrying over social proofing, which has a snowball effect. When you see an ad in your news feed that has a thousand likes, 50 comments, and 50 shares versus the exact same ad that has nothing, which one are you most likely to look at first? And which are you most likely to click on? Post IDs are essential because it shows your prospect that other people also resonate with the ad and are responding to it. 

• Not using URL parameters within your ad
  Facebook is only going to show you so much. It’s going to show you if somebody clicked, opted in, added to cart, initiated checkout, purchased, watched a certain percentage of video, etc. And that is the end of the data that you’re going to see within Facebook ads manager. But if you use UTM parameters with Google Analytics, you’re able to get access to a lot more detailed information like how long someone interacted with your site and how many pages they looked at. This is really important information, and the only way to get it is by using UTM parameters within your individual ads.

• Not A/B split testing anything
  You want your ads to keep performing better, right? Then you need to test what works and what doesn’t in terms of audiences, ad types, copy, and ad creatives.

Audiences: Whether it’s a bunch of different audiences, an interest-based audience, or a bunch of different lookalike audiences that are being tested, you need to know which audience responds the best.

Ad types: Maybe an instant experience ad performs better for you than a single image ad, or maybe a video ad is going to perform better than a single image ad or a carousel ad. The only way you’ll know is through testing.

Copywriting: Does a story resonate better with your audience or do testimonials? Does driving home the pain points or emphasizing their desires get them to act?

Ad creatives: To find out what works best for your brand, split test multiple images, carousels, different types of video content, different thumbnails, and more. Because even just changing a simple thumbnail can directly impact your click-through rate from videos.

Those are some of the three most common areas where we see businesses making mistakes within their ad accounts. Armed with that information, you’re now all set to go correct your campaigns and ensure they leverage the latest best practices.