Advertising With Facebook
In an age where social media giants like TikTok or Instagram reign, and the average internet user combats a plethora of targeted and personalized ads from all sides, the world of marketing has become a hungry and ever-demanding beast that requires constant stimulation. This has led to a major shift in how businesses put together their marketing campaigns. Not only are we being challenged to develop innovative strategies, but we also have to be ready to implement, tweak, or adjust them at a moment’s notice. This pressure can be felt almost tenfold when it comes to the already fast-paced pet care industry.
This is why it is so important to consider the tools you have at your disposal and how to utilize them best to create a compelling and relevant advertising campaign that will reach your intended audience and beyond. For today’s lesson, we’ll be taking a closer look at Facebook Ads, why they are a must-have for your pet care business, and how you can best utilize them.
An Oldie, But A Goodie
Though Facebook may be considered a fading social media platform, the fact remains that over one-third of the Earth’s population is counted in the 2.9 billion users that are active on Facebook today. Of these nearly three billion users, it is estimated that 1.6 billion of them are connected to a small business on Facebook in some way. With these impressive numbers, it is clear that Facebook is an essential tool for any small business, especially those looking to connect with their potential customers locally.
In fact, almost every reputable business out there should have a presence on Facebook, even if it’s in the form of a simple Facebook page that includes a description of their business and a way to contact them. By giving existing and potential customers a place where you are active and accessible, a layer of authenticity is added to your business, allowing clients to form a quicker connection with you and the service you provide. This level of accessibility could very well be the deciding factor on whether or not a pet parent chooses you as their new dog walker or pet sitter.
This visibility is also crucial because, if there’s one thing Facebook has cultivated in spades over its long life as a social media platform, it is a strong sense of community within its users. When looking for recommendations for trustworthy services like pet care, it is not uncommon for people to turn to sites like Next Door, Yelp, or Facebook and be influenced by the voices of their peers. This is because people are not afraid to connect with one another through Facebook groups or leave honest reviews and ratings for businesses that greatly impressed or dissatisfied them, which is why capitalizing on this community cornerstone is paramount to success.
Advertising With Purpose
To help establish your business on Facebook and connect with your potential customers, you will not only need a well-thought-out Facebook page for your company (which Facebook provides a great walkthrough of how to put together here), but clear and concise advertisements to help build your local audience, as well.
In addition to resources on creating a Facebook business page, Facebook also offers a lot of assets and articles for creating a successful social media advertising campaign. They have advertising options for every level of experience and will walk you through the entire process of creating your ad campaign until it is up and running. They also offer tools for running, managing, and reporting your campaign that you can oversee yourself to ensure your ads are performing well and reaching the intended audience. With additional options to create ads geared towards specific zip codes or areas, the personalization you can infuse into your ads is even more likely to draw potential pet parents to your door.
The first step to setting up your Facebook ads is to settle on an objective for your campaign. This requires you to answer the all-important question of, “What do I want this ad to accomplish for my business?” In the pet care industry, nothing is more important than garnering new leads and boosting your company’s online presence through increased traffic to your website and business pages, so this should be where your primary focus lies.
Once you have your overall objective in mind, you want to hone in on your audience. Concentrate on a specific area or zip code (Facebook refers to this as “dynamic localization”) and consider the demographics, interests, and behaviors of potential pet parents you are hoping to attract in those areas. Start broad and encourage your current clients to like your business page and leave a comment or rating. By doing so, you establish an audience that can help you create even more detailed and specific advertisements using a Facebook ad tool called Advantage Lookalike, which uses the interests of your current clientele to target new audience members with similar interests and behaviors.
As you put together your Facebook ad campaign, other vital things to consider are where you want your ads to feature on the website and in what format. Your ad campaigns can run on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Meta Audience Network, depending on your objectives. Advertising in more than one place not only expands your ad campaign’s reach but has no drawbacks, as it does not incur any additional costs for you or your advertisement. Furthermore, your advertisement can be featured in feeds, mobile apps, as part of stories or reels, as sponsored ads on Messenger, and much more.
To capitalize on these different ad placements, you must decide how to best present your business's highest selling points and overall experience to potential pet parents to convey why they should choose you over another company effectively. If you decide to place advertisements on Facebook feeds, for example, consider if you want a photo ad featuring empathic copy or a short video people can watch on the go. Length is another crucial thing to take into account to ensure you maximize your audience’s attention and encourage them to engage with your ads. Facebook ads offer various ad formats and will undoubtedly have something that perfectly matches your advertising needs.
To The Highest Bidder
Once you have completed your ad, it’s time to order it. Once it’s ordered and ready to be released, it will begin to enter ad auctions each time there is an opportunity to show someone an ad. The ad will only be shown to someone if it is determined to be the best ad to show that particular audience member (and ads are only qualified to be directed to members of their target audiences). The winner of the ad auction is based on an ad’s “total value” and how it stacks up against the other ads in competition with yours.
Three major factors decide an ad’s total value: (1) the bid, which is essentially how much money you are willing to place on your ad to reach your intended audience; (2) estimated action rates, or the likelihood an audience member will engage with your ad; and (3) ad quality, which is calculated from several different sources, such as how many people view or hide the ad. These factors help place your ad on a spectrum of relevance, and, if its relevance is strong enough, it can still beat out ads with high bids.
Facebook offers a variety of tools to help you boost your ad’s total value, including ad relevance diagnostics and additional information regarding bids and their costs.
All At Your Fingertips
When it comes to advertising, part of what makes Facebook such a crucial instrument to add to your toolbelt is the amount of control you have and the additional resources and guidance Facebook offers.
Having control over the design and creation of your campaigns, their optics, and the ability to measure their performance gives you a unique insight into what is capturing your audience’s attention and what is potentially turning them away. Armed with this insight, Facebook’s helpful guides, and the fact that no one knows your business better than you, you are empowered in a way you won’t get through other advertising means.
So what are you waiting for? Hundreds and potentially thousands of pet parents are just waiting to be added to your ad’s targeted audience so they can fall in love with everything you and your business have to offer. Facebook is handing you the bow, the tools to craft the arrow, and every strategy you need to hit your target straight on. So go on, take aim, and hit a bullseye!
