Tired of being thrown in Facebook gaol? Here are 10 things that will get your Facebook ad accounts banned, and tips on how to avoid them.
If you’ve spent any time running ads on Facebook, then the chances are you’ve had a few warnings that you’ve broken the rules. More often than not, you probably have no idea how you’ve broken their rules.
Facebook isn’t much help when it comes to telling people why they don’t allow some ads and not others, and sometimes it appears that decisions are made completely arbitrarily. However, there are some things you can avoid doing to put the odds of success in your favour.
Here are 10 things you should avoid if you don’t want your Facebook ad account to get Zucced!
Poor Facebook Ad Quality
Clickbait might work really well, but Facebook hates it and considers it to be low-quality. Therefore, to avoid ads being rejected and potential bans, you have to make your ads as relevant as possible to the product of service you are selling.
Don’t try to make your ads relevant to the customer, as this will lead you into the trap of personal attribution. Instead, understand what your product/service does, and what problems it solves and then find ways to highlight them in such a way that they interest people. Essentially, figure out what people want and put it in front of them, without directly saying it’s for them.
Here are some ways to ensure that your ads are high-quality:
- Use language that says what your product/service does and why it’s useful.
- Use images and text that are relevant.
- Avoid clickbait texts and images
- If you’re running special ads, be more cautious. For example, if you are offering loans, pictures of piles of money and cheques might be relevant, but they are also risky. Therefore, use your intuition to make decisions.
- Look at the ads that pop up on your own feed. Which ones catch your eye and why? Make notes and see if you can employ the same tactics in your campaigns.
- Don’t copy. You can try making similar ads to ones you see, but ripping other people’s ads never works, and Facebook will probably notice.
Associated Page is Low Quality
Any business that really cares about its brand image and customer base will care about its Facebook page. It’s where they can show off their brand organically and engage with customers and build a long-standing relationship. Therefore, businesses that neglect their Facebook pages look suspicious.
To ensure that your page quality is respectable you should:
- Post regularly and relevantly, but not too regularly, as this can be considered spam. Once or twice a week is a good benchmark.
- Make sure that all of your business info is up-to-date
- Add images and try to boost engagement
- Always adhere to Facebook’s Community Standards
Ignoring Landing Page Quality
If you’re running ads on Facebook, then you’ll already know how important having a high-quality landing page is if you want to get conversions. However, you might not be aware that Facebook cares about landing page quality.
Your landing page, as far as Facebook is concerned, is an extension of their ad platform, and they don’t want to send their visitors anywhere that isn’t trustworthy. As a result, you should apply all of the Facebook Ad Policies to your landing page.
To ensure that your landing page doesn’t get your ads rejected or your account banned, you should:
- Keep your bounce rate as low as possible. You can do this by obtaining a good CTR.
- Ensure there are no broken links.
- Avoid overly aggressive landing pages or ads disguised as news stories.
- Avoid personal attributes that talk directly to the audience you have targeted.
- Never use redirects to test multiple landing pages. Test one page per campaign.
- Use Facebook’s Crawler to check your landing page quality.
Improper Use of Facebook’s Brand
This one might seem obvious, but it’s further reaching than most people might expect. You should never use any mention of Facebook or any of their images in your ads if they don’t endorse your product or service. This applies to everything that they own rights too, including emojis!
If you use Facebook’s emojis in your images, then your ads will get rejected.
You can use their emojis in your ad copy, however, some of them will trigger the circumventing systems policy. This applies to emojis containing numbers and text. Facebook will just assume that you are trying to say something that goes against their policies without them noticing, regardless of whether or not you are.
Breaching Copyright and Using Trademarks
Copyrights and Trademarks are not unique to Facebook and this policy is one that you should always apply, regardless of what platform you are on. Nevertheless, copyright breaches are still one of the most common reasons for a ban. They are also one of the most serious.
If you are creating ads, never use brand imagery that you don’t have specific permission to use and never use music that you haven’t got express permission to use. It might be tempting to use things and change them, but not only will it get you banned from Facebook, but it could also leave you facing criminal action and hefty fines.
Being Reported Too Frequently
Not everyone out there will like what you do, and the chances are you will get reported at some point. It may be by people with genuine concerns or it might be competitors who want to try and put your campaigns on ice. Either way, getting reported isn’t good.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to stop people from reporting you, however, you can do your level best to ensure that people don’t want to report you in the first place.
Here are a few tips to limit the amount of people who report your page.
- Monitor comments and messages. A lot of people who proactively report businesses on Facebook tend to be pretty vocal about it. Let’s face it, the term Karen exists for a reason. Luckily, this gives you a red flag as to what content is triggering people and why. If there are people constantly commenting that something is a scam or that they are going to report you, it might be a good idea to cut it loose.
- Follow the rules and make sure that you are in step with Facebook’s guidelines. If you are, then when it comes to Facebook following up, they should be on your side.
- Don’t antagonise people and automatically filter out negative comments and spam.
- Put a contact email address on your site. You might be able to offset some of the reports if people choose to tell you why they dislike something, rather than Facebook.
Filling a Cold Account Too Quickly
If you don’t want to get banned, then treat your account naturally and use it to learn and improve. If you’ve had a previous account in the past that was closed, then don’t instantly open another, spam it with posts and then start trying to send hundreds of ads. Legitimate companies that are starting out don’t do that, and it will be a big red flag. Therefore, play it cool.
Any new account needs to be warmed up first and you need to do this slowly. It takes weeks, months and even years to create a reputable account. Trying to do everything in a single day will just make Facebook suspicious.
Here are some tips to warming up your account:
- Fill in all of the business information. The more the better. You can do this on the first day!
- Schedule some posts, but not too many. Aim to post once or twice a week.
- Respond to people’s messages and comments.
- It’s worth getting a chatbot or at least enabling Facebook’s automated response tool. Facebook uses how quickly you respond to messages as an indicator of the trustworthiness of your page. Automated responses can help improve your status and can be a great funnel if you put some time and effort into them.
- Spend on low budgets to start off. Facebook won’t allow you to increase your ad spend for a while if you’re using a new Business Manager or ad account.
Incorrect Billing Details
Make sure that your billing details are correct and, if you’ve started spending, then keep checking to see that payments are being made on time. Constantly missing payment or cards being declined will make Facebook suspicious.
Using Multiple Accounts
Try to only ever use one Facebook Account. Farmed accounts used to be really popular, and as a result, Facebook quickly learned how to stop them. This means that it’s now very difficult to set up new accounts to run ads from and the chances of a second account being banned are high.
Going Against Ad Policy
Last but by no means least, don’t go against Facebook’s ad policies. You will accidently break the rules from time to time, it happens to everyone. Just be sure to take the time to figure out why your ads were rejected and then don’t make the same mistake again.
If you are new to Facebook ads, then make sure you read all the complete list of ad policies. It’s not that long and it will save you a lot of problems later on if you get acquainted with them early. The majority of the policies are obvious, but others, far less so.
Here are Facebook’s ad policies that catch people out most often:
- Personal Attributes
- Controversial Content
- Non-Functional Landing Page
- Grammar & Profanity
- Misleading Claims
- Low Quality or Disruptive Content
- Unacceptable Business Practices
- Circumventing Systems
For the full list, check out Facebook’s Advertising Policies.
The Bottom Line
Facebook changes like the wind and it’s important to keep on top of any developing changes that are happening. Right now, IOS14 is front and centre for advertisers, and next month there may be more changes. It’s an ever changing marketplace and it comes with a very specific set of challenges, but if you’re up for a challenge then it can be one of the most profitable traffic sources available.