Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones and this is episode 73 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast. I am now pleased to say I’m covid free and slowly getting back to normal. I went two weeks without taking a photo.
This week I’m going to take you through getting new customers using Facebook Ads.
Now I assume you have a website, if you don’t have one you need to set one up before you start doing Facebook ads. Potential customers need to see your work before deciding to hire you.
If you don’t know how to put a website together you can use Pixieset or SmugMug. I’ll put links in the show notes. I’m sure there are others available, so have a look around before deciding on which one to go with. Squarespace and Wix are popular website providers but I think they can get a bit expensive.
Ok, so you now have a website, and the problem with a new website is that nobody knows they exist.
If you build your website and don’t tell anyone where it is you will get zero visitors. Now if you use social media to spread the word you will get a few people stopping by, but when you are starting out you need a lot of visitors and maybe 10% of them will book you. I have found the best method to get potential customers to visit your website is Facebook Ads.
Now don’t stop listening because you think it’s going to cost you a small fortune. You can put a limit on how much you want to spend a day, and you can go as low as $2 a day.
For $2 a day your ad will be shown to 1k to 3k people per day. The number of clicks through to your website will be 22 - 65 a day. Which is approximately 2% of the people that see the ad. Some days the ad will maybe only reach 1.5k people, and you will only be charged $1, it varies every day but doesn’t go over your $2 limit.
Now you need to set up a Facebook page for your business. Once you have done that you can start promoting your business using ads.
Choose Ad Type
Once you have clicked on promote your page or create an ad, you get two options.
Get started with Automated Ads, or create a new ad. Avoid automated ads at this point. The automation is based on using the Facebook pixel which needs to be embedded in your website. Apple now gives its users the option to keep their details private, and it has affected the accuracy of the data the Facebook pixel collects.
So for you, I think the best option is to create a new ad with no automation.
Create New Ad
When you create a new ad you are making an ad made up of text and photos or video. The photos need to be cropped square, I haven’t used a video yet but I’m guessing it also would need to be square. There is an option to crop images once you have picked them.
I make my ads in Photoshop, but if you’re not comfortable using Photoshop use Canva. I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Your ad needs to use your own images with text that can be easily read. Think magazine covers, dark background with light text, a light background with dark text. You can include up to 5 images for the carousel.
When Facebook users see your ad, they will see the image with a headline and description below. The first thing that grabs their attention is the image. So if you are trying to get family portrait customers, your image must be a family portrait. Remember to get a release signed before you use any image. You could add text to the image that says, “Book now and save 10%”, or “Free 8x10 Print”.
These phrases will get people's attention quickly and tempt them to get more information.
Goal
So once you have clicked on Create a New Ad, the first thing you see is GOAL, what would you like from this ad?
It is set by default to Automatic, let Facebook choose. Click on “change”, and you get a list of possible options. You need to choose “Get more website visitors”.
The next setting after Goal is Shuffle Creative. Turn this off.
Ad Creative
Next is Ad Creative.
Here you put your description that appears below the ad image. This description needs to address problems and worries that potential customers have.
Like …
They don’t have a good quality family portrait.
The kids will be leaving for college soon and they need to get the family together for a portrait.
If you position yourself as the cure for their problem you will get lots of interest. Just telling people on Facebook about your expensive equipment, or how many sessions you shot last year won’t draw people to you. Solving worries and problems will get you bookings.
Below the description is Avantage+ creative which uses Facebook data. Turn this off.
Next, you choose the images you are going to use in the ad.
Below media is Headline, Button Label, and Website URL.
For the headline, you can use your business name.
The button label default is “contact us” but there are lots of options. My favorite is “learn more”, it’s more of an invite than a call to action. Take a look at them, you might find something more appealing.
Website URL can be your website domain or a specific page on your website. If you put a call to action on your home page, like “Sign up for our special offers” where you get the visitor's email address. Just use your domain name, https://www.yourdomain.com, but make sure the call to action is near the top of the page. Down the bottom won’t work.
If you make a landing page for your ad, you can have the email sign-up right at the top. The address would be something like https://www.yourdomain.com/promotion.
Audience
In this section, you set up who gets to see your ad. I would turn off Advantage Audience. It’s based on your Facebook Page content, and as you have just set it up, it won’t work well.
Here you can set up your audience's age range. Think about who is going to make the booking, or who is going to be interested in your services. If you shoot family portraits your age range might be 24 - 65. Don’t waste money showing your ad to people that won’t be interested in booking you.
Next is location. This is my favorite, as you can define an area on a map that your ad is shown. You can drop multiple pins on the map and expand each area's coverage.
The last one is detailed targeting where you use interest keywords to target customers. If you shoot weddings don’t use weddings or wedding photography as keywords. This will only target other photographers and other businesses that offer wedding services. I would use this section if you do real estate photography. If you used the keyword realtor, your ad would be shown to realtors.
Give it lots of thought before using detailed targeting.
Once all that is set up, you set the duration of the ad and the daily budget.
In the end, you put in your credit card details, turn off the meta pixel and decide where the ad will show. Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger are your options. I turn off Instagram and Messenger. Instagram is a bit like the wild west, it’s full of ads and short videos. It has changed so much in the last 12 months. Messenger shows small ads and doesn’t offer as much as straightforward Facebook ads.
These are my opinions and you might find Instagram gives you good results. I’ve been using these ads to promote Anna’s business to great effect. We’ve used newspaper, radio, and Facebook ads and 95% of her customers reacted to the Facebook ads. So give it a try with your business.
Ok, that’s it for this episode, I’ll be back next week with more waffle. Have a great week, bye.