Marketing

forward with Facebook advertising BUSINESS DRIVING

Most holistic therapists use Facebook to connect with their customer base, but it can be more difficult to master microtargeting, messaging and campaign planning to create an effective Facebook advertising campaign that brings in new clients and encourages past clients to return…

AS the world’s largest social network, with over 40 million regular users in the UK, advertising on Facebook allows businesses to reach potential clients without the wastage associated with direct mail or newspaper ads.

Facebook in the UK On average, UK internet users are on social media for an hour and 50 minutes each day, with 38 million accessing Facebook and other social media sites via mobile devices. Figures suggest that 77% of users actively contributed or engaged with social media each month, whether it’s liking a post, retweeting or providing comments and content of their own. An impressive 71% of adults can be reached through Facebook ads, 52% are women and 48% men. So how can you narrow down that audience to those who live within your geographical sphere of influence and would be interested in your services?

The first step is to understand who your existing and ideal clients are. Are they mainly male or female? What age range do they come from? How far do they travel to visit your practice? Are they working full time, part time, students, retired? What kind of jobs do they do and what are their reasons for coming to see you?

Once you have this information, you can start to build a micro-target profile that matches your customer base. This helps keep costs manageable and means you’re not bombarding people who are unlikely to become clients with ads.

Facebook offers several different ad types, so you will need to decide what would work best for you. Image ads are often a good starting point. You’re really just boosting an existing post from your Facebook page by adding an

image. Facebook may even prompt you about boosting a post that is doing well and getting a higher level of response than usual.

Video ads can be used to show a technique in action. They can be placed in your target audience’s news feed or stories sections. You can also make video ads using ready-made footage animations to engage your audience. Other options include Carousel ads, which offer a rotating selection of images, which can work well if you want to show off different

facilities or treatments. It’s probably best to start with something simple in a tightly defined geographical area and consumer demographic. Another option that can be cost-effective is to use Dynamic ads. These are the almost spooky ads that pop up shortly after you have visited a product page or placed something in your shopping cart, but not completed a purchase. Dynamic ads can be used to prompt a further action, perhaps by offering a discount, or reminding a potential client of an introductory offer or free postage.

Facebook offers several different ad types, so you will need to decide what would work best for you

How to create a Facebook ad campaign As with any ad campaign, using any form of media, you first need to figure out what it is you want to achieve before you set out. The more precise you can be, the better your chance of achieving the desired result. Facebook offers a range of marketing objective options to choose

from, but three are more likely to be of interest for an initial campaign:

Reach: exposes your ads to as many people in your target audience as possible Traffic: drives people to a specific page on your website Lead generation: brings in new prospects

You will need a Facebook Business page as a starting point, so set one up if you don’t already

have one. Go to the Ads Manager page, selecting Campaigns and then Create. You now need to decide what you want this campaign to do, keeping in mind that there are different payment methodologies for conversion-related marketing objectives and exposure-related ones. After you’ve chosen your objectives, you can name your campaign. You can also chose whether to run two campaigns to see which is more effective, using a split A/B test, but again, it’s probably simpler just to dip your toe in the water with a straightforward campaign.

The next step is to set up your ad account. Here you will select a number of options including your time zone, currency and country. Depending on the type of campaign you are running, you might also need to add in where Facebook should direct interested prospects to, like a particular page on your website.

Now, you will begin to define the audience demographic you want to reach. The temptation is to tick every box, but this will add to your costs without necessarily bringing in more new customers, so try to keep it tightly defined. You can select a custom audience of people who have already interacted with your business, or select by age, location, gender and language. Facebook will show you how big your potential daily audience and number of likes is, so keep this to a workable number. There’s little point reaching 300,000 people if you can only see 30 each week.

Refine your audience further using detailed targeting. A remedial sports massage therapist, for example, might choose to target men and women over thirty and under fifty, living within a certain radius, who are training for a marathon or 5K, but exclude those who go to a gym which might already have a massage therapist on site. You can also choose to include or exclude those who have an existing connection to your Facebook page or their Facebook friends.

Where to place your ads, budgeting and scheduling when they appear Now that you have tightly defined your audience, you need to decide where your ads will appear. You can select device types, and whether the ads should appear in Facebook users’ feeds, stories on within articles, as well as external sites. When it comes to setting a budget, you may want to try a short term campaign first, so you can see how Facebook ads work for you. Alternatively, you can choose a campaign lifetime budget or set a daily cap on your spending. There are a number of advanced budget controls that can help your budget go further such as running your campaign in the evenings only, but this requires setting a lifetime rather than a daily budget. You can also set a start and end date, which is particularly useful for special offers tied to events such as Mother’s Day or Christmas.

Creating your ad Now that the budget, schedule and audience have all been defined, the next step is to create your ad. As we’ve noted, it’s best to start with a simple ad using an image and text and including a call to action. Facebook provides guidelines on the amount of characters you can use in headlines and body text and lets you preview the ad you have created, so try out several options. Use your own imagery or choose good quality stock photography, depending on your aims. Once you’re happy, click confirm and Facebook will come back to you to let you know your ad has been approved and you’re all set to bring in new business. n