Advertising on social media platforms like Facebook can extend the reach of your online marketing strategies so you can appeal to more people in more places. Paid, targeted ads on Facebook are not only lower in cost than other types of PPC, you also get access to a powerful marketing tool that takes advantage of the 48 percent of users who log onto Facebook in any given day, according to Statistics Brain. Advertising your home care business on Facebook allows you to promote customized ads to target your audience: family members of aging or ill people — more specifically, adult children of elderly parents.
Those ads can show up in their news feed or the right-hand side of the Facebook page of your target audience. Not only does Facebook advertising put your name in front of the people who most need your services, but it also collects data that can help you improve your ad targeting efforts. The result? A more efficient and effective advertising strategy to benefit your home care business.
Best Practices for Facebook Advertising
First off, it’s imperative that you come up with some objectives before beginning your ad campaign on Facebook. What is your purpose? What is your budget? What do you hope to accomplish? Video views…brand awareness…conversions…outreach…these are all good goals to have but you need to determine what your primary concern will be. That’s because every action you make on Facebook in terms of your ad will cost you money — make it count.
Here are a couple more best practices to keep in mind:
- Get specific on who your audience is: With billions of data points working behind the scenes on this platform, it’s necessary to narrow down your audience so you can pinpoint exactly who will see your ad and where.
- Rotate your ads on a regular basis: There’s a thing called ad fatigue that sets in when people see the same ad too many times and become blind to it. They’ll get bored and go click somewhere else. Ad fatigue can lead to a decrease in click-through rates and Facebook can even penalize you by upping your cost per click (CPC). What happens? Your likes, comments, and click-throughs suddenly start to become more expensive. Don’t neglect your online ads. They need to be refreshed and updated so they remain intriguing, informative, and compelling. The worst thing you can do is “set it and forget it,” says Search Engine Land. Instead, change and evolve your digital ad copy on Facebook so it stays relevant and current according to changing customer needs, seasonality and the overall competitive landscape.
Once you’ve determined your goals, you are better able to target your ads based on:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Language
- Behavior
You can drill down further into your capabilities to create custom audiences through anything from customer lists to website traffic to app activity. Next, it’s time to come up with an ad budget — you can choose from a daily budget or a lifetime budget. A big factor that will determine how you’ll pay for the service and to whom your ad will serve is how you decide to bid for an objective: either through clicks or through impressions. Now you can set up a timeline for when you want your ad to run, down to the day and hour.
This is where some research on your part comes into play. Find out when your target audience is likely online and choose your time that way. For instance, you may find that older adult children of elderly parents in their 90s will largely be retired at this point, and likely will have more spare time during the day. In contrast, if you’re targeting younger adults who are faced with the task of caring for their parents or even their grandparents, you have to assume this demographic is at work during the day and may have more time for browsing Facebook in the evening.
In setting up your actual ad, you have many options available to you, with a wide selection of images, headline, text, and placement. In general, you’re allowed to incorporate five images, with a headline of up to 25 characters.
Understanding the Concept
Facebook advertising is many things but it’s not a direct sales platform. Your audience my not be ready to enlist your services right now. In fact, they may not need them for many months or years. Perhaps their parent was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease; they may not need home care quite yet but want to explore their options when the time comes. This is the beauty of Facebook: it allows businesses like yours to reach your target audience throughout the entire marketing cycle, says Business Insider. This represents an opportunity to grow and foster ongoing relationships with your potential customers now and into the future. It’s important to keep in mind that a large part of your audience is not ready to enlist your services. If you can do that, you’ll be successful advertising on this platform.
Reach out to A Servant’s Heart to learn how we can help with your Facebook advertising campaign at (760) 227-2720. Let us help you create a successful eldercare business by utilizing social media today.
