Here’s the scenario: Your business has built an effective full-funnel advertising campaign on Facebook. For the first couple of weeks, you saw record traffic coming through. Yet… Starting in the third week, your relevance scores are inexplicably going down. Engagement is also down. 
What’s going on? The culprit: Ad fatigue.
Here’s the lowdown on a marketer’s worst enemy, and how you can keep hitting your KPIs.
What Is Ad Fatigue?
Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer for a minute. You see a compelling ad for a business. You may not quite understand it, but you’ve been pulled into someone’s funnel. Maybe you liked the post, and now you’re seeing the ads everywhere. At first, it’s not a big deal, but soon; you keep seeing the same photos throughout your online experience. It’s starting to get annoying, and your brain is phasing them out of your consideration set.
That’s the basic premise. Consumers need to see fresh content, or else your efforts will lose traction.
What Are The Signs?
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment users decide to ignore your ads. There are a lot of factors that go into it, and each member of your audience is different. There are, however, some insights with Facebook’s Ads Manager that can help point you in the right direction.
Check your weekly traffic. Are you getting less clicks than previous weeks? How about engagement? Are you seeing less likes and comments than you’ve come to expect? Take these as warnings of things to come. The final nail in the coffin should be your relevance scores. If you’re seeing declines week over week on your ads, then this should be a clear indication that something needs to change.
What To Do
The quickest fix is to switch out your creative. Users want fresh content to help reinforce your brand. Another helpful tip would be to take a look at your audience, and the frequency they’re being served your ads. If you people are seeing the same image 3+ times, you may need to adjust your audience and how often you target it.
Think of successful companies like Coke or Nike. You recognize the logos instantly, but can’t think back to a specific image that pushed you over the edge. They do a great job of conveying the same message and voice, but in different ways at every touch point.
Long story short: You’re going to be alright. You have the right infrastructure in place, and all it takes is a few little tweaks to keep your brand top of mind. You’ve got this.
The share of marketing budgets spent on social media is expected to be over 24% by 2020 (Simply Measured). Social is here to stay. If you’d like to keep up to date on the latest trends in digital marketing, check out our blog. We also provide an in-depth Social Media Bootcamp, in case you’d like to take your campaigns to the next level.
