All kinds of brands, big and small, are investing in Facebook Ads. They're using all kinds of ads, promoting via all kinds of content — be it images, videos, guides or even user-generated content. The wide variety of Facebook ad types help businesses fulfill various marketing objectives like generating leads and build awareness.

This means there is value in Facebook Ads. But what if they're not working too well for you? Here are a few possible reasons:

1. They're not targeted

Clicks on Facebook can be expensive. Don't spend money on consumers who may or may not care about interacting with your ad/brand. If you think targeting locations and demographics is enough, think again.

"Targeting" consists of actually targeting at a really micro level, where you use as many (accurate) interests of your target audience as possible — which you should know by creating customer personas — then creating relevant offers or content for that audience.

Facebook offers a variety of targeting options, like location, age, gender, interests, languages, relationship status, education, work and much more. Here is a good infographic on Facebook's targeting options.

2. You're not using tools

When using Facebook Ads:

• Drive fans to a specific landing page where you can record conversion events via Google Analytics
• Use UTM parameters
• Use Bitly to track clicks independently of both Google and Facebook analytics
• Use marketing automation systems like Marketo to create forms and Salesforce drivers to identify where people are coming from and if they fill out the form

3. You haven't found the right format yet

Facebook Ads offer a rich variety of different ad formats. If one doesn't work, another might resonate with your audience much better.

For example, you could try:

• Page like ads
• Slideshow ads
• Website conversions
• Click-to-website ads
• Offer-claims ads
• In-store/local-awareness ads
• Canvas ads
• The carousel format
• Dynamic ads
• Lead-generation ads
• Event-response ads
• App installs and engagement
• Video views

And much more! There are so many ways you can target — and so many types of content you can promote — the opportunities and combinations here are endless.

4. You haven't tried retargeting

Retargeting basically means targeting users who have visited your website on Facebook. This is a common tactic that helps target people who are already familiar with your brand, which leads to a higher chance of a conversion and thus lower cost/higher ROI on your Facebook ad.

Here is a guide by Facebook on using ads to remarket to website visitors.

5. The ads don't feature customers or users

Potential customers rely on and respond better to references from their peers or existing customers of a brand, as compared to an ad from the brand itself. Try promoting a customer testimonial video, a case study or a success story on Facebook and see how it performs.

Another idea is to crowdsource your content, i.e. promote content that is created by existing customers using your product. Go Pro is a great example of this.

Conclusion

The Facebook Ads landscape has become cluttered, with so many brands and businesses using it. To break through the noise and get your message out there, you have to target a specific group with specific content — and you won't pay as much per click.

The idea to make Facebook ads work for you is to show your audience the ads they actually want to see.