The number one reason for any business to run Facebook ads is…
Lead generation.
That’s it!
You don’t own your Facebook page or any of the information on it and Facebook can, and do, close pages down at any time without having to give you a reason, so it’s hugely important that you get your prospects off Facebook and into your database.
You shouldn’t try to sell with your Facebook ad’s, that’s like asking someone to marry you on a first date, give them a reason to give you their details, offer them something of value that they will find useful in exchange for their email address, then you can keep in touch, adding value each time, keeping them up to date with promotions and special offers.
It’s really important to know that just because you are ready to sell it doesn’t mean that your prospects are ready to buy, right at that moment, so by keeping in touch with them regularly with relevant and useful information you will always be at the front of their mind when they need your services.
Getting more customers = targeting the right customers…
The main reason that photographers waste money on Facebook ads is that they get the targeting element all wrong…
They are either targeting too wide an audience, too small an audience or, the wrong audience altogether!
Facebook isn’t the problem…
This is where the majority of photographers give up and say Facebook ads don’t work where, in fact, when you look at their stats Facebook are sending lots of leads to their web site but it’s the landing page that doesn’t convert.
VERY IMPORTANT POINT THIS!
Please make sure that the landing page you are taking prospects to is relevant to and congruent with your adverts, don’t take them to your home page!
If your ad is for wedding photography take them to the page on your site about weddings, if it’s family portraits, to the family portrait page.
People have very short attention spans, if you take them to a home page where they then have to go looking for the information you promised, in most cases, they will just bounce off your page.
Take them where they need to be and MAKE SURE IT’S RELEVANT!
You can do some amazing things with Facebook ad’s…
- You can run a video ad, using the video views objective, and then you can re target people who have watched a certain percentage of your video – someone who watches 30 seconds of your video is a much warmer prospect than someone who only watches 3 seconds, now you can re target them with another add or offer, smart move this one!
- Another great use of facebook ads is the ability to target specific postcodes, handy if you are a newborn / baby photographer for instance and when you combine this with the laser targeting options available relating to pregnancy and childbirth this can be awesome, we have had huge success with this.
- Here’s a useful tip…
You can have a look at your competitors (or anyone else) ads on Facebook…
Go to their page, on a desktop or laptop, on the right hand column at the bottom, page transparency, click on see more… where it says ads from this page click on ads library to see any current or previous ads run 😊
Organic reach on Facebook is now so poor that you really should pay to advertise, it is without a doubt the greatest marketing platform on the planet, bar none.
It should be an integral part of your marketing budget because…
Your customers are there and you should be too!
Hopefully you have found this useful, if you would like to have a chat about how I can help you with Facebook ads or any other aspect of growing your business please feel free to drop me an email at info@robertmclaughlin.co.uk or fill in the form on this page and I’ll get right back to you.
Thanks for reading,
Robert.