Just a small sample of the Charleston area businesses advertising on Facebook:
Okay, that’s cool but how can YOU use Facebook Ads for YOUR business? Keep reading đ
There are a lot of ways to advertise your business in Charleston South Carolina.
You can buy space on a billboard on one of the busy highways like Highway 17 or 526. Youâll get plenty of eyeballs on your billboard, especially during rush hour when traffic is moving at a snailâs pace.
You can advertise on TV.
The local stations have space that they will sell you during one of the nightly newscasts for a premium.
Then there are the Yellow Pages (do people still use that?).
You can take out an ad in the Post and Courier newspaper, or in the local Charleston Magazines.
If you want to find local customers, thereâs no shortage of places to advertise.
But what if you want to target women, aged 35-55, who like HGTV, yoga, live in a certain zip code, and use an iPhone?
Good luck getting that specific with any of those other advertising platforms.
There is good news though. You CAN do that with Facebook Ads.
Why Facebook Ads?
Facebook has almost 2 BILLION users registered on its platform. Millions spend hours on it every single day.
You have probably found this article on Facebook.
See what I did there? đ
People are increasingly spending time on Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) to connect with friends, family, be entertained, AND connect with local businesses that may have a product or service they want.
~Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/544001/facebooks-advertising-revenue-worldwide-usa/
A lot of local businesses think that the best way to use Facebook to get customers aware of them is to post organically on their page so that people who follow them will see their post or new followers will find them.
If you have a Facebook business page with followers you know that even if you have a lot of followers when you post something you are usually disappointed in the amount of engagement you get.
The reason Facebook limits how many people (even YOUR followers) see your posts is because they want you to pay to reach them and reach more people who donât follow you.
How dare they!
Making me pay to advertise on something like Facebook. Itâs supposed to be free!
Thereâs more good news. Really good news.
Facebookâs advertising platform is extremely powerful and once you know how to harness its power, you can start to market your business to exactly who your best customers are and in any local area that you wish.
I know that a lot of people are familiar with Facebookâs âBoost Postâ option, but thatâs only the tip of the iceberg.
Facebook has an entire ad platform that gives you literally thousands of ways to target your ideal customer.
Let me explain a little more about how it works.
How Facebook Ads Work
So I mentioned that Iâm not talking about Boosted Posts here and that there is a more powerful way to do Facebook advertising.
You have to use something called Facebook Ads Manager.
It has waaayyy more options to target people than the boosted post function and gives you the power to create ads that are going to get your prospectâs attention and get them to take action.
So people are clicking on ads and not just watching cat videos.
Advertisers create an ad, pick who they want to target, and then they are charged a price for every one thousand people that see the ad (impressions).
They break it down into simpler terms like how much you are paying per click and CPM (cost per 1000 impressions).
The ads are served through an auction system and the advertiser with the highest click-through rate, and engagement (shares, likes, comments) usually is rewarded by moving to the front of the auction and having their ads seen by more of their target audience.
How Facebook Ad Targeting Works
You got a lot of choices when it comes to targeting in your Facebook ad campaign.
Here are just a few.
Location
You can pick the geographic location that you want to target from within the Facebook Ads Manager.
You can go all the way down to a 10-mile radius and all the way up to a 50-mile radius.
You can even target by zip-code if you want to get really specific.
Gender and Age Targeting
What if you know that your target customer tends to be female age 25-50? You can do that too.
Take a look at the graphic below.
I have targeted people who live in a 15-mile radius of Charleston, men and women, age 25-50.
That gives me a potential audience that I can advertise to of about 230,000 – 271,000 people!
Ok, I can hear what youâre saying.
Thatâs great, I can target people in a certain area but what about the fancy stuff where I can REALLY target my best prospective customers??
Settle down. Zuck has you covered.
The Power of Facebook Interest Targeting
The real power of Facebook targeting comes from how much it knows about its users and what they like and do on the internet.
Some may think this is a little creepy, but business owners need to look at all of the information that Facebook stores on its potential customers as a gold mine just ripe for the plucking.
Gold mine and plucking donât exactly fit but just go with me.
You see, when you like something on Facebook like a page, a post, a video, Facebook is taking that information and storing it among its thousands of servers all over the world.They are constantly building a profile of you based on what you are doing when you are logged in to the service.
If you are constantly clicking likes on posts about shopping or travel, Facebook knows that and keeps a record of it.
You can look at this one of 2 ways in my opinion.
We all get bombarded with advertising every single day. From online ads to TV ads, radio, billboards, etc..
Most of these ads are just targeting anybody.
With Facebook, they want to show you (and your customers) ads that are about things you actually care about.
The more info they have on you the more they can tailor advertising based on your specific likes and dislikes.
That also means YOU can use this to target people who might be interested in YOUR business.
You can target by pages that your potential customer might like and they will even give you suggestions for more pages to target.
Want to target women aged 25-55 who have an interest in retail shopping AND have a Master’s Degree?
Yep, Facebook has you covered.
You also have the option to target your existing Facebook Page fans or exclude them from the targeting.
You can upload your email list of existing customers to the Facebook ads manager and target them with more offers.
Additionally, you can create whatâs called a “Look a Like Audience” based on your email list or pixel data from traffic to your website.
A lookalike audience is where Facebook takes an audience that you give them and creates an audience that is very similar to the people in that audience.
Lookalike audiences and retargeting audiences usually provide the highest ROI for our clients.
What Kind of Ads Work For Local Audiences?
There is one thing I want you to keep in mind when you are running Facebook ads.
NOBODY is on Facebook to see your ad, you have to stand out.
You need to offer something extremely appealing to your target customers so that they are compelled to take action.
That action might be to click the ad and go to a page and put their email in for a special offer or it may be to make a call directly from Facebook on their mobile device.
The point is this.
Make your ad about an offer thatâs something that will get your prospect’s attention and get them excited.
Special deals, discounts, and promotions work well.
Here are just a few ideas.
Restaurant â use an ad that shows really good photos of the food, the space, and give them an offer for something like a free appetizer or drink.
Retail â carousel ads showing your best products with an offer ad that gives them a discount.
Chiropractor â an ad that offers a $39 adjustment and consultation. Send them to a landing page that collects their info or use Facebook Lead Ads.
Contractor â make a video on your phone showing your crew working on a new local project and talk about how you are doing the job.
Donât forget to retarget everyone who goes to your website or engages with your ad with an offer to take action and become a customer.
Here are some example ads:
  
What Needs to Happen After They Click the Ad?
The ad image and text are there to get their attention so that they stop scrolling and read your ad.
The next job of the ad is to get them to take the next action, usually by clicking the ad.
Most of the ads that we run for clients use either a landing page that we custom build or we use a Facebook Lead Ad where the lead never leaves the Facebook platform and submits their contact info on a form that’s connected to the client’s Facebook page.
Example of a Landing Page
Example of a Facebook Lead Form
You donât want to give people too many other options after they click your ad.
You donât want to send them to the homepage of your site.
At the very least have a page on your site that provides more info about the offer they are interested in and a way for them to contact you or fill out a form for more information.
Sending them to a professionally designed landing page thatâs focused on getting them to perform the desired action and nothing else is the best option.
We build out professional landing pages or utilize Facebookâs Lead Ad feature because weâve found that this increases conversions.
How Do I Get Started With Facebook Ads?
The first thing that you want to do is to make sure you have a Facebook business page created for your business.
It should have a professional-looking header image and logo or if you are an individual use a professional photographer to make it look clean and sharp.
DO NOT create another personal Facebook profile and name it the name of your business.
Once you have a page set up you need to go to the top of your Facebook page and click âCreate Adsâ.
After that, you will have to add a credit card to Facebook to run ads.
You then need to research a great offer, your targeting, create the ad copy, create a landing page, decide on a budget, and launch your ads.
Then the fun begins.
You have to constantly watch your ads and make sure that they are getting impressions, and people are clicking the ads, test different images and ad copy, and optimize your funnel so that you are getting leads.
Itâs a lot of work.
You have more important things to do like running your business and having a life.
Let Us Get You More Customers With Facebook Ads
Let us create a Facebook ad campaign for your business and start driving local customers to you using the power of Facebook ads.
We will help you come up with an irresistible offer that will get your prospective customerâs attention and design professional ads that draw them in like bees to honey. đ
Facebook ads are amazing and can work for a lot of local businesses but we need to make sure itâs a good fit.
If you would like to arrange a FREE call with us so that we can help determine if Facebook ads are a good fit for you just click the button below and fill out the info on the next page.
We are a local South Carolina company and we are located in Georgetown (about an hour north of Charleston) and we love helping small businesses grow with Facebook advertising!
