Is Promoting My Home Service Business on the Social
Networks Right for Me?
The best way to tell whether a particular social network is right for your home service business is to answer these two questions: Are my ideal prospects on this social
network, and Are they looking for my home service? A third question to answer might be, Is my competition there?
You don’t need to advertise on Twitter because everyone is talking about that network. It’s time for some due diligence.
Investigate the platform. What are people saying? Are other home service companies present? Facebook, for instance, has a tremendous demographic resource. You can show your ad to only males over a certain age, living close by or nationally. Take the time to see if the people you want to advertise to are on a specific social network.
Here’s a graphic by the Pew Research Center that will help you understand who uses what social network.
Are Google Ads Right for My Business?
“There are over 70,000 Google searches each second. That’s almost 227 million an hour and about 5.4 billion Google searches per day. Google, the most popular search engine controls 90% of the global search engine market. Google has over 246 million unique US visitors. That’s more than 75% of the US population.” – Source: Review42
“Google Ads have an 8:1 ROI” – Source: Google Economic Impact
“People are four times more likely to click ads on Google (63%) than any other advertisement network” – Source: BClutch.co
Users who visit a website through Google’s Ads are 50% more likely to make a purchase.” – Source: NMoz
It makes sense to try Google Ads to see if marketing your home service company can get traction.
Google offers a variety of ad formats
- Search ads (appear when searching on Google.com)
- Display ads (appear on websites)
- Video ads (appear on YouTube)
- Shopping Ads (appear as product listings on Google)
- App Promotion Ads (appear on many channels)
- Call-only Ads (encourage people to call your business)
- Responsive Ads (adjust their size, appearance, and format based on the device
Use Google’s Keyword Planner to see people’s search numbers. If the search totals are high, there’s a good chance people are looking for your home service. If the search numbers are low, there is also a good chance your advertising campaigns will gain little traction.
Once you’ve determined people are looking for your home service on Google, the next step would be to build a strategy to reach those audiences. This piece will discuss How to Build Smarter Social Media Campaigns.
When Not to Spend Your Marketing Dollars Advertising Your Home Service Business on Google
If you have not taken the time to identify your target audiences, and their pain points, your marketing campaign will see little success. Remember, not everyone will be
interested in the home service you have to offer.
Four more elements must be in the mix to ensure your ad’s success: specific goals, great-looking ads that attract attention, measuring the ad’s performance, and constant testing and tuning.
Are Facebook Ads Right or My Business?
Distribution of Facebook users worldwide as of January 2022, by age and gender.
Here’s a quick snapshot of who’s on Facebook. This graphic will help identify if the audience you’re trying to reach with your home service business uses this social platform.
Facebook had 2.934 billion monthly active users in July 2022, placing it 1st in our ranking of the world’s most ‘active’ social media platforms. – Source: datareportal.com
Facebook offers three ad formats single image, single video, and carousal. Carousal ads, which tell a story through many images and videos in a single ad space, perform the best because they tend to be what’s known as “sticky,” and people tend to look at them for longer periods.
When Not to Spend Your Marketing Dollars Advertising Your Home Service Business on Facebook
Various reasons can cause a business to contemplate pausing its Facebook Ad campaigns. Perhaps the ads are performing poorly. Maybe the Cost per Click (CPC) is getting too costly, or the Click Through Rate (CTR) is almost nonexistent. The ads’ quality score might be low, or the engagement rate is deficient. Two other contributors may be that your daily budget spend is not being exhausted, or that you’re receiving negative feedback from audience members.
In other words, you can’t start a Facebook campaign and walk away. The ads demand your attention. Social networks are dynamic, and people are logging in and logging out all day. New people are joining the platforms every minute, and businesses like yours are jumping into the ad game to see if they can build a new revenue stream.
Are Instagram Ads Right for My Business?
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social network. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. – Wikipedia
Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of April 2022, by age and gender. Statista is a great resource to gain insight into what audiences frequent which social platforms. The latest reports show that there are 1.44 billion active users on Instagram each month. It continues to be one of the fastest-growing social networks.
Instagram offers a wide variety of ad formats like its social competitors. You have Image, Story, Video, Carousal, Collection, Explore, IGTV, Shopping, and Reel. Image and Carousal are the most successful ad formats. Again, we’ll stress the importance of having specific goals, targeted audiences, ads that attract attention, measurable metrics, and testing and fine-tuning.
When Not to Spend Your Marketing Dollars Advertising Your Home Service Business on Instagram
Instagram is not a click-friendly platform. Advertisers cannot place clickable links within their ads, and Instagram’s audience is more limited than Facebook or YouTube. Lastly, Instagram’s ad features are less advanced.
A fourth consideration might be that Instagram is less of a business-centric platform than Google, Facebook, or YouTube.
Are YouTube Ads Right for My Business?
YouTube is a video-sharing social media platform launched on February 14, 2005. It is owned by Google, the second most visited website after Google Search.
62% of Americans use YouTube daily, and 92% use it weekly. (Statista)
22% of YouTube users are using the site via mobile devices. (Digital 2022: Global Overview Report)
With only 9% of small businesses using YouTube, there’s plenty of room for growth among home service providers.
YouTube offers six types of video ad formats:
- Skippable in-stream ads
- Non-skippable in-stream ads
- In-feed video ads
- Bumper ads
- Outstream ads
- Masthead ads
Skippable ads have produced the best results
The video ads can be casual but still need to be professional. Many people use their mobile devices with the advent of megapixel cameras.
When Not to Spend Your Marketing Dollars Advertising Your Home Service Business on YouTube
According to the graphic on YouTube, 63.1% of the platform’s audience is under 55. This may be a deterrent in your advertising strategy to go after a more mature crowd.
Keep in mind, that displaying ads while someone is watching their favorite video may cause negative emotions.
Not every potential may have the bandwidth to watch YouTube videos.
And last, smaller companies may find advertising on YouTube a budget constraint.
How to Build Smarter Social Media Campaigns?
Each social network may have differences, but the strategies behind creating a winning social media campaign are similar. Here’s a quick list:
- You must establish well-defined goals. Are you trying to acquire ten new customers for the coming month? What are you willing to spend to acquire each new customer? Your goals must be measurable.
- You must target the right audience. Everyone will not want the service you offer. Who are your ideal prospects? Men? Women? Young or Old? Single or Married? Homeowners or Renters?
- Use high-quality images in your ads. Your ads will be people’s first impression of your home service business. Make an excellent first impression.
- Create headlines that attract attention. Don’t talk about your company. Talk about why someone would want to hire you. Talk about the benefits.
- Include a solid call to action. Don’t let people guess what you want them to do. Be direct. Call now! Get the discount today? Don’t lose out on this promotional sale!
- Test the ads and track the results. One ad does not suit all customers. Try a few different images and calls to action. Advertise on other days and at various times. Measure the responses and go with the best results.
- Create a persuasive landing page. The landing page must be a continuation of the ad. You have the person interested now close the deal.
How Do I Measure the Success of My Advertising?
Each social platform has insights and analytics where the advertiser can measure the traffic and actions taken by those viewing the ads. There is, however, a significant difference between vanity metrics and actionable numbers. A vanity metric might be the number of people that decide to follow your home service business page on Instagram. It’s nice to see the number of followers increase, but are they taking action? Are they downloading the latest coupons, taking advantage of the latest sale, or filling out the contact form because they want to hear more about your home service company? These actions are examples of people showing interest — in other words, actional numbers.
The one tried-and-true way to measure if your advertising dollars are paying off is to ask each new inquiry, How did you hear about us? Suppose you’re pouring money into advertising your home service company on YouTube, and no one mentions seeing the company’s ads. In that case, it’s time to consider moving from YouTube to the social network that shows the most promise.
Conclusion
The beauty of advertising on different social networks is that the results are almost immediate. Search engine optimization (SEO), which can cost thousands of dollars per month, can take months to show results. Email marketing may take weeks or months before people start to see the company as a valuable resource.
A minimal investment on a social platform, say Facebook or Google, can show results in as little as a few weeks.
Your social media strategy is bound for success as long as you have identified your audience, their pain points, and the social platforms they congregate on and have designed impactful ads that generate interest and cause the reader to act.
