Welcome To: “Social Media Ads By Industry” — A blog series dedicated to covering how social media ads can benefit your company on an industry by industry basis.
Home Improvement & Home Services Industry
Not in the Home Improvement Industry? Scroll to the end to see every industry we have already covered or to suggest an industry you’d like to see in the comments.
I hear quite often when we’re prospecting potential clients why/how Social Media Ads would be beneficial to them. They don’t feel like their company could benefit from social media ads or that their industry is the right fit. So one of the things we try to do is show each individual company how their business can ABSOLUTELY benefit from Social Media Ads.
One of the problems that arises is that “Social Media” tend to get pigeon-holed and stereotyped to mean “Facebook” — “I don’t DO Facebook”, “Isn’t social media just for sharing baby pics”, “My grand kids are on Facebook, why would my company need to be?” All statement heard in many meetings. While these are valid in some respects, they are completely off base in many, many others. Facebook is not the only “Social Network” on the internet and there are matches for each and every industry out there where social media ads can benefit them. I have already written about the value of social media ads before, so if you have time check that out first.
Our second entry in this series is for the Home Improvement and Home Services industry. This includes everyone from roofers, landscaping, HVAC, residential contractors, cleaning services and beyond!
The Medium
This first thing we need to do in any campaign is decide what Social Media Channels we’re going to utilize. When dealing with home services and/or home improvement services our ultimate goal is to get quote requests via phone, email or website. So our Campaign goal should reflect that.
Appropriate Social Media Ad Channels for Home Services: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Best Social Media Ad Channels for Home Services: Facebook; Instagram
Benefits: Facebook and Instagram have a combined user base of almost 2.5 billion people. The demographics of these users is in line with a home services companies typical target market (35-65). And the targeting options available on these platforms are second to none.
The Goal
As a home services business your obvious number one business goal is to get people to request quotes or appointments. When it comes to deciding the Campaign Goal to get those quote requests there are a few routes we can take.
Appropriate Social Media Ad Campaign Goals for Home Services: Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Engagement, Messages, Conversions
Best Social Media Ad Campaign Goals for Home Services: Conversions
Benefits: The biggest benefit of using the conversion campaign is that we are able to track the success of the ads themselves. Any time someone converts on your website we are able to attribute that back to a specific ad. Not only that, we are then able to re-target our ads to users who fit the ideal demographic of your already converting customer leads. This creates a closed funnel of lead generation where we can target, track, collect data, and then retarget guaranteeing the most efficient ROI.
The Target
Most businesses first instinct is to just advertise to everybody at all times, everywhere. While that certainly could work for some businesses it’s not ideal in this situation. For example, you don’t really want your Home Improvement ads to be shown to college students for example. Not only are they either living at home with their parents or on campus, they most likely can’t afford your services in the first place. Another reason casting a wide net isn’t a great idea here is that renters can come into play when they have no need for your services. Minimizing wasted ad spend is the goal when we are targeting our ads.
Appropriate Social Media Ad Targeting Options For Home Services: Locations, Location Radius, Age, Gender, Lookalike Audience, Detailed Targeting
Best Social Media Ad Targeting Options For Home Services: Location, Location Radius, Detailed Targeting (home ownership, income, etc.)
Benefits: Gender really shouldn’t ever be selected as a targeting option Male or Female one way or the other. However there are a few key targeting options that you should be utilizing. The first, is location. And selecting your location radius for people who actually LIVE inside that radius and not just to everyone inside of the radius is crucial. If someone happens to be passing through you service area but doesn’t physically live inside that area you are wasting dollars on them. Another key targeting factor is Detailed Targeting by Home Ownership and Income Level. You want to make sure you are targeting home/property owners who can afford your services.
The Creative
Now that we’ve chosen our channel, goal, and targeting it’s time to decide on the user facing portion of the ad: the ad creative. For home services we have a lot of options available that would be beneficial for our specific goal. Take a look at a few examples of ads that have been successful for clients we’ve worked with.
Single Image Ad
The goal of a single image ad is to make sure that it is striking enough to warrant a user to stop scrolling. The creative needs to be interesting enough to catch the eye. We wanted an example of a patio project that others would admire and crave – a view from high above of the city did the job here. From there you can get into the details. In this case the details we wanted to portray were the experience, quality and reliability of the business. The CTA is to the website where a customer can request a quote or call the business directly.
Carousel Ad
Carousel ads are the best way to convey every service that you offer in a clean and interactive way. By putting your services, along with photo examples, into a carousel you are increasing your ads that the user needs at least one of your services. While someone who needs a patio may not need basement waterproofing a carousel ad lays everything out on the table allowing the user to select the service they need more info on.
Video Ad (Looping Auto-Play)
Video ads receive the highest engagement rate (aside from Stories) of any type of ad creative option. This is because video ads are set to autoplay in users News Feeds. This is great if you have a fantastic promotional video. Or, in this case a short, looping teaser video with information regarding your services. Videos tend to make people stop scrolling, which is the goal here. We can then capture them with all of the details and CTA’s. These also look professional and clean and tend to instill more trust in a user than simple photo ads.
Wrapping Up
Home services companies tend to still invest in some more antiquated forms of advertising like radio or Yellow Pages. However, by investing only a few bucks a day into social media ads you are able to reach an audience that is your exact target market. By using the basic targeting recommendations above, to go along with many other far advanced targeting features (lookalike audiences, LTV Customer targeting, competitor targeting, user behavior and more) the ROI on your investment is one of the best in digital marketing.
Not in the Home Improvement and/or Home Services industry? Let us know which industry you’d like us to cover next, and we add it to our running ‘Social Media Ads by Industry’ Blog series.
Other Industries Covered:
Home Improvement & Home Services
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