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Salon Suite Owners: Instagram/Facebook Advertising 101

The good news for small business owners is that advertising to potential customers is much easier and more affordable than it’s ever been - thanks to social media. Facebook and Instagram are probably platforms that you and your customers are very familiar with, so they’re a natural place to try advertising to promote your Suite business. Ads allow you to directly link customers to book an appointment, claim an offer or purchase a retail product. Even better, you can now use the same Facebook “Ads Manager” platform to set up, create and manage ads that will run on both Facebook and Instagram.

Let’s Get Started

Advertising accounts are only available for business profiles so If you don’t have one, you can switch your personal profile to a business profile or set up a new account for your business. Also make sure your social profiles and pages are active and up to date. People will naturally check out your profiles and like your page when they see your advertising, so you want to make a good impression. 

Once that’s done there are 7 steps to your first ad:

1. Set Up an Ad Manager Account. An easy way to find Ads Manager is to type it into the Facebook search bar at the top of the page and then add it to your “favorites.” Your account will require a credit card on file to charge for advertising on a monthly basis. There is also a Facebook Ad Manager app for your smartphone so you can create ads and manage them on the go.

2. Create an Ad. Click on the green create button. Once you click Create, you have the option at the top to create a new campaign or use an existing campaign. Once you’re an ad pro, your account can quickly get messy with lots of ads, so we recommend setting up campaigns by goal or type. For example, set up a campaign for Hair Services, Retail Promotion, New Customer Offers and then create individual ads under those campaigns.

3. Decide on Your Goal.This is an important step because it guides everything that comes after. To set a goal, answer the question, why are you running the ad? Are you trying to drive clients to your booking tool or web site? If so, you might consider web site conversions. If you are running an event promotion you might consider, “promote your event”. In general, social ads are most effective at getting people to purchase a product or book a service. A goal like “raising awareness” is a more expensive goal that requires long term commitment to ongoing advertising.

4. Determine Your Audience. Facebook lets you target people by several demographics, like age, gender, location, occupation, hobbies, income, etc. In general, you want to target your audience as precisely as possible because it saves you money. The best way to start to profile your audience is to think of your best customers. Where do they live (within 5-20 mile radius)? What’s their income level? Occupation? Other business pages they would like in the area? You want to use your advertising to draw in more customers who are just like your best customers.

5. Designate Where You Want Your Ad to Run. Facebook’s Ad Manager tool will let you create and manage ads for Facebook AND Instagram. In this step, you can also choose to run or not run your ads on certain positions on Facebook and on mobile devices. Until you have experience and results to guide you, there is an “auto” option that lets Facebook determine where your ads and audiences will perform best.

6. Set Your Budget. Enter your daily or lifetime budget and the time period during which you want your ads to run. In general, $10-$20 a day is enough to get results.

7. Pick a Format. You can choose to show a single image or video or multiple images and videos in your ad. Or you can choose to create a slideshow, which presents like a video of your photographs.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re well on your way to your first ad. In our next post, we’ll guide you through content ideas and best practices for optimizing your copy and images to grab customers’ attention.

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