Advertising your home service business online is one of the most effective strategies to promote and communicate your services, attract customers and build a reputation.
Advertising plans are designed to run for a specific period and target potential customers using the best available channel that could help you reach the largest audience possible and attract new customers.
Facebook is the supreme social media advertising channel you can use right now. According to eMarketer, 96% of marketers claim Facebook offers the best return on investment. Moreover, the platform is estimated to reach $16.3 billion in global ad revenue this year after the number of advertisers increased by 25 percent since February 2015.
That means, if you’re not yet using Facebook Ads to increase your online presence and generate leads, then you’re indeed missing out on a great opportunity that could take your business to the next level.
In my company, Facebook Ads are a big deal! Over the last 3 years, they’ve become a key staple of our advertising. We use them to capture leads for new customers, nurture our prospects, and then connect with our past customers. It’s cheaper than Adwords, and less frustrating then email marketing which I hate.
Here are five reasons why Facebook Ads can work best for your home service business:
1. Targeted audience
Unlike traditional ads which allow you to reach hundreds of thousands of people, including those that are not interested in what you offer, Facebook ads are more specific down to your niche market – people looking for your services.
If you really know your customers, you can target them by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behavior, and connections.
This form of targeting is a tremendous way to increase exposure and traffic for your home service business without spending so much money on ads targeting people who may not be willing or don’t care about what you offer.
Another powerful ad targeting option is Facebook lookalike audiences. You can take your existing customer list, and use it to get in front of new audiences who are most likely to be interested in your services since they share similar traits with your existing customers. Even more awesome (and complex), you could take an audience of your leads that were recently captured, and then using a short time window, reach people who are right at the same place in the buying process!
By targeting such customers, you’re able to create a loyal customer base and generate leads from this section of people who haven’t been exposed to your business thereby keeping up with and beating your competitors. The best part; your competitors probably aren’t running Facebook Ads!
2. Advertising on Facebook is incredibly cheap
Placing ads in your local newspapers, distributing flyers, and advertising on TV were left in the 90’s, be their prices sure weren’t. Their rates are wildly expensive. I know personally that ads in local community newsletters cost $1200 for a ½ page, in a 1-month run to 2000 homes. TV Rates are even higher.
As a small home service business, you probably don’t have that kind of budget; nor do you need it to get traction on Facebook.
With Facebook ads, you can achieve your goal even if you don’t have a big paid advertising budget. You can start your campaign with a few dollars and reach thousands of customers who are looking for your services.
Consider video views. You can get someone in your targeted audience to watch your video for 10 seconds for just a few cents. You can’t even give your business cards away that cheap! Seriously. Conder the cost of designing, printing, and then the time associated with going to stand in high foot traffic area to hand out your cards… to people who won’t even look at them. It doesn’t take Einstein level intellect to see that paid video views on Facebook are way cheaper and far more effective!
3. Facebook has a massive audience
There is no denying the fact that Facebook is the largest social network in terms of user base.
If you look at the latest figures, 2 billion people log onto Facebook every month while 1.39 billion users visit via mobile devices. This accounts for more than one-fifth of the entire planet. In fact, you’ll be surprised to find out that Facebook has more users than Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined.
This is a huge number that any business shouldn’t ignore. A good portion of these people visiting Facebook can be your future customers.
Many of these people visit Facebook every day, not only for personal use but also to look up for answers for their everyday challenges. All you need to do is to connect and interact with them, get to know what their needs are and offer them your services.
This is possible by providing solutions to their problems, offering special deals and coupons and using ads to create an attractive message that compels them to take action.
4. User-friendly ads performance analytics
Before setting up your Facebook ad campaign, you’ll need to understand the best type of ads that will resonate with your customers, which performance indicators to track, and how to measure your results in real time.
While Facebook does an outstanding job auto-optimizing your ad campaigns, you still need to review, maintain, and improve your Facebook ad campaigns continually. This can be achieved by using the Facebook Ads Manager.
This tool allows you to monitor and analyze your campaign performance, get to know what’s working and what doesn’t learn more about your customers, campaign reach, and new insights that you can use on your existing and upcoming ad campaigns.
All these data should help you determine if your campaign is successful or not. It should also help you make more informed decisions when building your campaigns and ultimately improve your results.
Beyond the Facebook provided analytics I suggest using a call tracking system so that you have a solid understanding of how well your ads are converting. This should already be in place if you are running lean advertising to drive your costs down!
5. Puts you ahead of your competitors
Since Facebook ads and social media marketing, in general, are new marketing strategies, many home service providers are still not convinced of the value of Facebook for their businesses. They still rely on traditional media such as radio, TV or newspaper.
And of the few contractors that have tried Facebook Advertising, many got poor results. Why? Because they had the wrong type of ads. While it is worthy of another post (coming soon), you need to forget everything you know about traditional advertising. Your pay-per-click ad copy won’t work on Facebook, nor will the most effective print ad.
In one case I know a plumber who ran ads that essentially said: “call now to get an estimate”. That strategy won’t work well no matter what trade you’re in.
To have a successful FB ads campaign as a contractor you need to create ads, that provide value, make a connection, help the customer realize their problem or need, and then guide them back to you. Simple saying “call now to get an estimate” will fail you.
With many contractors overlooking Facebook ads, and others throwing in the towel there is a lot of opportunities to get in front of more potential customers in a way that your competitors don’t.
Of course, that is not to say that other advertising channels are less effective. However, if you consider Facebook user base and the targeting options, it’s clear that you’ll get an edge over your competition especially if they don’t have a Facebook presence.
Conclusion
You might not think of Facebook as a viable channel to market your services.
However, Facebook is no longer a platform that’s associated with political rants and baby photos.
If you carry out your Facebook advertising campaign the right way, the chances of seeing positive ROI are very high.
All you need is to create a good marketing plan that can greatly contribute to your business success.