Is Facebook really listening to your conversations? While you may want to read your Facebook app’s fine print in the terms of service, Facebook — owner of Instagram and WhatsApp — thrives to become one of today’s most prolific interests and behavioral engagement platforms. If you can pinpoint who you’d like to have as a client, you can most likely target them and turn them into Facebook leads.
Imagine showing an ad of your decorative concrete services to anyone who lives in a desired service area, who drives a specific vehicle, who has a specific career title or business acumen, and is also interested in decorative concrete. You can do that with Facebook ads.
The advertising platform is so powerful and filled with so many options, that it overwhelms most contractors when they first open Facebook Ads Manager. Many incorrectly think that boosting a post is the equivalent of running an ad campaign.
While they both garner impressions, boosting a post tends to get engagement but inconsistent leads, if any. With a properly structured ad campaign on Facebook, you can expect to dial down your cost per lead and quickly take control of lead flow.
If you want to generate leads with consistency and predictability it comes down to understanding your numbers. Facebook’s advertising platform is an impression bidding platform that determines cost per impressions based on how many other businesses are advertising to your prospect at the same time. In the beginning, you’ll have to test to determine your sweet spot in your service area.
Starting with both a realistic budget and expectations will help you speed up momentum.
Step 1: Setting up
There are three things you’ll need to properly set up an ad campaign to general leads from Facebook:
- Own a Facebook Business Page for your decorative concrete company.
- Set up a Facebook Ad Manager Account for your business page.
- Set up a Facebook Pixel dedicated to your specific business page and ad account.
To learn how to set those up step-by-step, go to facebook.com/business/help/
Step 2: Determining your objective
Next you need to determine what your marketing objective is from three categories: Awareness, Consideration or Conversion.
If you’re running any type of lead generation campaign on Facebook, the top three objectives you’ll need to focus on are listed under Consideration:
Traffic: Sends more people to a destination such as a website or Messenger conversation.
Lead Generation: Allows you to capture an individual’s information within Facebook.
Messages: Allows you to start conversations with individuals interested in what you’re offering.
What about the other objectives, Awareness and Conversion?
The “Conversion” objective is better suited for those with an advertising budget of $1,000 or more per month.
Under Awareness, “Brand awareness” and “Reach” objectives may be valuable to product manufacturers or brands that just want to get more eyeballs to their Facebook business page. They aren’t effective to generate leads.
Under Consideration, the “Engagement” objective is suitable for companies that want to get more Page Likes, Post Likes or Comments, or Event Responses. The “App installs” objective only applies to businesses that are advertising to encourage application downloads from either the Apple App Store or Android Apps on Google Play.
The “Video views” objective is designed to get engagement for video content. If you want to get more views of a specific video, you can select this ad objective. It will display in the best places where people are most likely to watch your video.
After you determine your objective, you then need to set a budget. At a minimum, to generate enough impressions per day, contractors should budget $10/day for advertising. Ideally, $25 or more will provide the greatest reach and ability to get data faster.
After a campaign has spent $90, you should then have a good idea which ads are working and also which ones aren’t. At this point, end those campaigns that aren’t producing results and focus on the ones that are.
Step 3: Targeting
Choose who you want as clients
If you have an active Facebook business page with existing videos that have been viewed by hundreds of local residents, one of your best options is to target a custom audience based on anyone local who has watched your videos in the past 60 days.
Target locals
If you want homeowners as clients, consider targeting either cities or ZIP codes where homeownership is prominent. Select “People living in this location.” If you’re targeting ZIP codes, select “Current city only.” You can also target specific areas.
Finding the perfect prospects
Now that you’ve selected your service area, it’s time to include and exclude those you want and don’t want to show your ads. Enter a general age range of the clients you want to target. Do you want to target men, women or both? Married, single or both? With or without children? Owners of a certain car brand? If you want clients that share certain interests — such as remodeling or watching HGTV — include that.
There’s no right or wrong answer here! Sometimes you can leave the interests open for Facebook to figure out, as long as you have the right target locations and age ranges in place.
When it comes to excluding people you think have no interest in your services, you have options to further narrow your audience. For instance, you can exclude employers who offer remodeling services or individual concrete contractors and subcontractors. You can also exclude people who rent rather than own their home.
Placements
You can have your ads shown everywhere within Facebook’s owned platforms such as the Facebook News Feed, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Video Feeds, Instagram Feed, Instagram Explorer, Stories on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger, Facebook Search results, Facebook Instant Articles or the Audience Network.
By default, Facebook will want you to run “Automatic Placements,” which targets every ad placement available on Facebook, Instagram and also partner sites. If you go with this automatic option, your ad budget will drain and most likely won’t generate many results.
A better option for beginners is to select “Manual Placement” and choose Facebook as the platform where you want to show your ad. Select all devices and select “Facebook News Feed” for placement. Facebook News Feed is where most of the clicks turn into leads.
Step 4: Ads that get leads
This is the fun part — the ad creation, where you get to create what everyone sees!
The one advertising formula that works great for Facebook ads is the AIDA formula. It stands for “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.” This formula is about helping the scroll stop, engage users and, if they’re motivated enough, help them to also take action.
There are two ways to get attention with lead-generating ads:
Your ad message
The opening line of your ad must make the reader stop scrolling and read to see what the ad is about. By using emojis, you can make the same ad pop and be noticeably different from the rest of the Facebook Feed.
Hey CITY NAME Homeowners!
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- Installed in as little as a single day!
- Slip resistant, stain resistant and 100% antimicrobial!
⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Amazing 5-star review from Google or other credible source” – Name
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The video or image: The more realistic and authentic the images and videos look in your ads, the higher the response. If they look like stock photos or overly enhanced images, users will just pass over them and thus not engage with the ad.
Here are a few tips to increase the interest, desire and action in your video
- Talk about the benefits your clients will experience when they hire you for your decorative concrete services.
- Use testimonials of customers either via video, images or text. The more real, the better.
- Have a special offer with a deadline for anyone who acts now.
Follow up is key! You should send a messenger ad to anyone who:
- Is local in your service area, visits your website and doesn’t take action.
- Engaged with your ads but hasn’t requested more info.
- Has also watched a lot of your videos.
Whether you’re starting with a small or large budget, you can make Facebook ads work for your decorative concrete business. It’s a matter of understanding your objective. You must also know who you’re targeting, and deliver a concise message. Additionally, showcasing your best work will motivate them to contact you.
