Do social media ads actually work or are most clicks just from bots

I just started making social media ads and my ads get tons of clicks. The problem is none of these clicks lead to anything. Like seriously, I got 1200 clicks and only 1 signup. How is that possible? A year ago I ran a similar ad and the conversions were way better.

I even ran the same ad from a different account and got about 100 times the conversions.

Has anyone else seen this happen?

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Most of the time, if I click an ad on social media, it’s an accident when I’m scrolling.

Ember said:
Most of the time, if I click an ad on social media, it’s an accident when I’m scrolling.

So true.

I’ve been really successful with social ads.

One big change I made was to stop using FB forms as the signup method and switched to a landing page.

The quality of leads is way better now and I don’t get any complaints like ‘I didn’t sign up for that’ anymore (it used to be 25% of my leads).

@Zane
What types of ads do you run if you don’t mind sharing?

Zane said:
@Zane
What types of ads do you run if you don’t mind sharing?

I use FB and IG. I run ads for in-person Golf Body Assessments that I conduct (I’m a physical therapist) and then offer session packages.

@Zane
Sounds just like my crowd!

@Zane
Interesting. So people get the assessment and go to a landing page instead of an FB immediate form, or they just contact you through the website now? Are people more likely to convert this way than through FB?

@Reilly
The call to action on the ads is ‘learn more.’ It sends them to a landing page I created in my CRM where they fill out a form.

Adding the landing page step and providing them with more info about what they’re clicking on has really helped improve the quality of leads.

@Zane
Could you share your landing page? Feel free to PM me if you prefer.

I’m trying to figure out the right length for mine. Should it be short and sweet or more detailed? Have you experimented to see what works best?

Think about it. How often do you actually sign up after clicking an ad? If your product is good and your audience is right, you should see results. But if you’re offering a bad product and targeting the wrong people, you might just keep seeing that one signup. Sure, bot activity happens, but it’s rare. Sounds like you need to look at your targeting, product, and messaging.

@Nico
I’m not questioning advertising as a whole, I know it works since it’s a huge industry’but the results I’m getting on some platforms just don’t make sense. For instance, on X.com, I did the same campaign with the same target groups, languages, and settings. One account is getting 100 times more conversions than the other. It’s odd because the account with fewer conversions looks more professional, yet my personal account gets much better results, nearly 100 times more.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

@Zane
Personal accounts usually perform better than business accounts. People prefer engaging with individuals over brands. It’s a basic concept.

@Qi
Can I DM you about that?

@Qi
That’s interesting! Could you share a bit more about the types of ads you run on Facebook, like your budget and other details? That sounds really insightful.

I look at an ad 20 times before I actually buy anything.

For most of my paid ad spend, my success metric is either getting an online purchase or a form submission. For my market, it’s super unlikely that people seeing my ad on social media will lead to an immediate sale. So my goal and what I measure as successful is different.

For social media ads, I focus on brand and product awareness among my target audience and high-value potential customers.

@Gale
That’s interesting. How do you connect with customers who actually buy the products?

Zane said:
@Gale
That’s interesting. How do you connect with customers who actually buy the products?

If you’re asking about the middle and bottom of the funnel, we mainly run digital ads on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. We’re also experimenting with StackAdapt for digital ads and retargeting.

At the top of the funnel, we use all of those plus Facebook and LinkedIn.

This is in addition to other non-digital marketing efforts like SEO, email, and PR.