When you run a Facebook ad, users who see it can react and comment.
That’s usually great. If you can grab people’s attention long enough for them to stop scrolling and interact with your ad, it means you’re getting at least something right.
But what if one or more of those comments are negative or, worse, abusive?
Can you delete them from your Facebook ad?
Should you even be deleting them in the first place?
Well, yes and no.
On the one hand, certain types of comments can make you look less credible and trustworthy, which could harm conversions and damage your brand.
But deleting every remotely negative comment on your ad can also backfire.
It’s simply impossible to be in business without ever having an unhappy customer. So, at best, you’ll come across as thin-skinned. And, at worst, it’ll look like you don’t take customer service seriously or have something to hide. Either way, not a good look.
So which comments can safely get the chop, and which ones should you leave alone?
As a rule, you can safely delete comments that are objectively irrelevant, unreasonable, or harmful. That means:
This is more than just an annoyance.
Many spam comments include links to viruses, malware, and phishing sites. And you don’t want potential customers to associate your brand with getting scammed
Here, a user tries to piggyback on your ad to sell their own products or services.
Leaving aside that it’s just not cool, the product or service is usually unrelated to yours, so the comment is irrelevant. And, more to the point, you’ve no way of vouching for the product or service’s quality.
Sexism, racism, homophobia…
We shouldn’t have to explain why you should send these kinds of comments into digital oblivion double-quick. But, in case you need a reason, we’ll give you two.
First, your ad can blow up for the wrong reasons. It can become a hotbed of controversy, with commenter after commenter arguing their bit on something that’s completely unrelated to your ad.
Second, inappropriate content can trigger users to hide your ads. And hidden ads affect your quality score and could lead to your Ads Manager account getting shut down.
Replying thoughtfully to negative comments can help you win unhappy customers over and strengthen your brand (more on this in the next section). But, sometimes, negative comments aren’t down to a genuinely bad experience. The commenter is simply trying to get a reaction. Any reaction.
Here, your best bet is to — restate an often-repeated piece of social media wisdom — not feed the trolls. Sometimes, engaging won’t achieve anything except further negative attention.
While you should get rid of certain comments on your Facebook ads, others should stay. These include:
While these comments are negative towards your brand, they’re genuine experiences or concerns.
Crucially, responding to these comments can increase positive sentiment towards your brand by up to 269%, because it shows you care what customers think.
The trick is to handle these interactions the right way.
Many unhappy customers turn to social media as a last resort, so dealing with their issues quickly makes a huge difference.
85% of customers expect you to reply to their comments within 6 hours.
That said many brands struggle to respond to social media comments at all. So even just taking the time to make sure comments don’t fall through the cracks can set you apart.
With Loomly, you can easily reply to comments on your Facebook and other social media posts from one place.
The worst thing you can do when a customer complains or criticizes your brand is to try to deflect blame. While you might think the criticism is unfair or unwarranted, the negative experience will feel very real to the customer.
With this in mind, it helps to try and see things from the customer’s point of view. Ask questions to get to the bottom of the issue, and own up to and apologize for your mistakes.
Most importantly, don’t underestimate the impact of a thorough explanation. If you feel that an issue isn’t your fault — for example, a product hasn’t arrived because the delivery driver was in an accident — spell this out.
If the comment relates to a customer service issue, it’s a good idea to move the conversation to somewhere more private, like your DMs.
This takes the issue out of the spotlight. It also allows you to delve into more detail because the customer can share information — their email address or order number, for instance — that it wouldn’t be advisable to share on your main page.
Needless to say, sometimes DMs won’t cut it. And that’s fine too. Offer to jump on a phone call to clarify things further or give the customer a time frame within which you’ll get back to them with further information.
And, it goes without saying, but if you tell a customer you’ll get back to them within a certain time frame, make sure you do so. Otherwise, you’ll damage trust further.
Apologies and explanations are a good start. But what will you do to set things right?
Customers who have their issues resolved to their satisfaction are more loyal and willing to pay an extra $8 on future purchases. So resolving things to their satisfaction pays off in the long term.
Now that you know which comments you should remove from your Facebook ads and which ones you should leave and address, let’s get familiar with the delete function.
Here’s a step by step guide to deleting comments from your Facebook ads:
You can go to the comment directly by clicking on your Facebook notifications drop-down menu, toggling to unread, and clicking on the comment.
Click on preview, and then on the icon next to ad preview.
Then, from the drop-down menu, select ‘Facebook post with comments’.
You’ll get a drop-down menu. ‘Delete’ is the first option on the list.
As the name suggests, this will hide the comment, and only the commenter and their friends will be able to see it.
The benefit of this approach is that it buys you some time, so you can think about whether you should delete the comment without the risk that your ad will get hijacked by an irrelevant discussion.
Craft, schedule, & auto-post content to all your social channels, then track analytics and manage interactions from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
While you can delete comments from Facebook ads, that doesn’t mean you always should.
Be ruthless about deleting spam, self-promotion, and abusive or harmful content, but look at bad reviews and constructive criticism as an opportunity to learn, grow, and strengthen your brand.