Running a business and keeping it profitable is tough. As a business owner, you have to make more decisions on a daily basis than the average person. Between hiring people, finding clients, and setting a budget, it all falls on your shoulders. Of those decisions, some of the most important that you make will be on marketing. No matter how much revenue you generate each year, the U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that you spend around 7%-8% of your gross revenue on advertising if you’re doing less than $5 million in business each year. That’s not a bad number, but many home service contractors are spending far more than that on marketing — close to the 20%
So, what’s the best way to allocate the marketing budget?
For many small businesses, it comes down to advertising on Facebook. Since Facebook started allowing businesses to create pages and advertise on their network, it has absolutely exploded. According to a recent report, there are as many as 25 million small businesses with active pages on the network.
If you aren’t one of them, you should be.
Here’s how you can run a lean marketing campaign on Facebook.
Any Business Can Afford Facebook Ads
Whether you’re just starting out or have been around for a while, your company can afford to run ads on Facebook.
It’s one of the most affordable platforms out there. In fact, Facebook features the lowest rate for 1,000 impressions of any other platform (around $0.25 per 1,000 impressions). According to Moz, as little as $1 per day can be effective. For around $1 per day, you can get your business in front of around 4,000 new people that wouldn’t have seen your advertisement otherwise.
Even if you’re still in the startup phase, you likely can afford to spend $30/month on advertising. If you can’t swing that, your business might have trouble getting started.
Set Clear Objectives for Your Campaign
What do you hope to get out of your ad campaign?
Is it page likes? Signups? Clicks to your website? If you’re trying to increase your brand awareness, consider running a likes campaign. If you’re trying to increase sales, then maybe you should focus on an ad with conversions as your objective.
Not all clicks and campaigns will cost the same.
No matter what it is that you want your customers to do, you have to have a goal in mind. Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can then start narrowing down your demographics, optimizing your ad, and analyzing your results. If you know your objectives, you can more easily adjust your ads if they aren’t performing as well as you want them to perform.;
Make Your Ads Creative
One of the best things about being a small business owner is that you have complete control over your creativity and brand message. You don’t have to please shareholders or executives.
It’s all up to you.
To make the best use of your marketing dollars, it’s important that you take the time to create an interesting ad.
People don’t click on boring stuff. When people don’t click your ads, you end up spending more money. So, take the time to come up with an attention-grabbing headline, write interesting copy, and design an image that catches your customer’s eye.
Test Out Your Ad
After you’ve determined what it is that you hope to achieve with your ad, set your budget, and come up with a couple of different ad ideas, it’s time to test out your ad on real people to see what works and what doesn’t. Although many companies think that testing out ads is a waste of time and money, it actually saves you money in the long run. While you may spend a little bit more upfront trying to find the ad that works the best, you then have that ad to run forever. You’ll have the right audience, message, and design to help you run your future ads more effectively and efficiently. If you don’t test out your ads, you’re going to end up wasting your money on ads that don’t really work.
Start With a Budget That Works for You and Increase From There
Now that you’ve gone through the steps to find the correct audience and ads that work the best for your business, it’s time to set aside some money for a real ad campaign that will bring you a positive ROI (i.e. for every dollar that you spend, you get more than a dollar back in sales).
Although it can be a bit painful for a small business to set aside a real chunk of change, even small businesses should aim to set aside around $1,000 for their first real ad campaign. With $1,000, you’ll have enough money to play with to test and optimize your campaign.
This initial $1,000 will help you set the foundation for even more profitable campaigns in the future. Once you’ve nailed down your campaign, you can then just switch it on in the future to increase your sales and leads.
Get Started Today
A lot of contractors that I know in the home services industry rely a lot on word of mouth advertising. Especially those who have been in the industry for a long time. Maybe they think that advertising is a waste of money, or maybe they think that running Facebook ads is too complicated.
However, nearly every company can benefit from marketing. Whether you want to improve the quality of your customers or increase the amount of business that your company is doing, ads will help you get there. And Facebook is the most cost-efficient way to do that. No matter what your budget is, even if it’s as little as $30 per month, you can get started.
Suggested Reading:
Facebook’s Power Marketing Features For Home Service Businesses
How & Why Facebook Advertising Is Replacing Community Mailers Ads
What do you think?
Let us know what your experience has been with running advertisements in the home services industry in the comments section below!