Facebook Fails of the Month

A successful marketing plan is all about diversity – you want to reach a variety of audiences and reach them from enough sources to become a trusted household name. The landscape of the marketing world has certainly changed over the past few decades, and today, social media is a vital part of any company’s well-rounded marketing plan. But even for our social media experts at McCauley Marketing Services, the format certainly has its challenges, and unfortunately, some of these roadblocks are caused by the social media sites themselves. We’ve run into our fair share from all the major social networks, but Facebook is quite the repeat offender, and some of the problems we encounter are comically absurd. So to offer you a little entertainment as well as some helpful tips, we’ve decided to highlight one of our recent misadventures.

Our client, a dermatology practice, is hosting a month-long event for Skin Cancer Awareness Month to encourage patients to get their annual skin cancer exams – a routine screening which the American Academy of Dermatology recommends for patients of all ages. Take a look at the post below:

Looks harmless, right? It’s important to our client to get the word out about skin cancer screenings, so to help promote their event, we attempted to boost the event on Facebook – a social media marketing technique in which you can pay Facebook to show the post to a wider number of people, rather than just the ones who already follow your business. Facebook has certain guidelines regarding the content of posts they allow to be boosted (for instance, ads cannot contain anything potentially offensive, photos cannot be overly risqué, and images cannot show text on more than 20% of the area), and each paid ad must be approved by Facebook before it can be boosted. However, our ad was not approved, and this was the reason we received:

There are a few things about Facebook’s reply which are true – the ad is promoting a health product (or health service, in this case), and it is generally considered ideal to not have skin cancer. But the ad is pretty far away from the types of posts this guideline intends to filter out: those which make the audience feel bad about their appearance or feel pressured to look a certain way.

So what happens when it seems an ad has been undeservedly rejected? The post itself still exists and can be seen by those who are following the company’s page. While you would expect that we could simply edit the post and try to boost it again, here’s the problem: the text of a post can be edited, but the picture cannot. The vast majority of rejected ads we see are unapproved because of the picture, so essentially this means that we’ll need to create a new post using a different photo and boost that one instead. There is also an option to contact Facebook when you feel an advertisement has been incorrectly rejected, which we always choose to do as well. However, it often takes weeks to get a response, at which time the event you’re trying to advertise may already be over.

Here’s the takeaway: while ad rejections aren’t 100% preventable (like the example above), you can make it less likely by either becoming highly familiar with the ins and outs of Facebook’s ad policies or by working with a team of marketing professionals who do. The other takeaway is that mistakes happen – even from Facebook themselves – so choose to laugh about it and look for other ways to spread your message. To start discussing how we can help your company make the most of your social media marketing, schedule a meeting with McCauley Marketing Services. Or, for more helpful tips and news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.