Interior designers often miss marketing opportunities because they think they’re too expensive or aren’t necessarily the right channel to reach their audience. For example, Facebook ads might seem a little off brand when in fact it’s an effective marketing tactic for your design business.
In this episode we talk with Carolyn Fagerholm, an ad strategist and the one-woman show behind CMF and Company. Carolyn shares her insights on Facebook ad foundations for interior designers and how Meta ads can be a game-changer for your interior design business.
Where do Meta ads appear?
Meta ads commonly appear when you’re scrolling through Instagram feeds as well as on stories. That makes them feel more organic and less spammy because your ad content is designed to appeal to the right audience. Also, users have the choice to keep scrolling right on past them, so they don’t disrupt the user experience. And that’s a nice fit for designers who hate the idea of hard selling ads.
Becoming familiar with Meta ads
Meta ads include Facebook and Instagram as well as messenger, WhatsApp, and Quest. Although they might feel a little too techy to tackle, once you start experimenting with campaigns, you’ll see how easy it is to get a basic understanding of the platform.
Your Instagram and Facebook business page has a section called Business Manager where you’re probably already doing things like scheduling your posts and tracking engagement. So, you’re already in familiar territory when you use the menu to find the Ads Manager.
Leveraging Pixel
One of the most powerful tools Meta offers is a free piece of code you can install on your website called Facebook pixel. Pixel is a cookie that tracks data such as how many people are visiting your website. The data helps you create more effective audiences for Meta ads. The sooner you get the pixel on your website the more data you can collect and the more people you can target who already know your company. There’s tons of tutorials providing step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
Meta ads structure
A good marketing strategy sets different marketing goals to help you achieve different business objectives. Whether it’s capturing leads, increasing followers, or booking more consultations, when you go into ads manager to start a campaign, it’s going to provide a list of objectives to select. If this is your first ad, don’t go for sales, but instead focus on something like engagement, video views or website traffic.
Next, you can choose when your ads are going to run and set a budget for your daily spend. You can also choose your ideal target based on things like age and interests, as well as the audience pixel has created.
Meta ads creative
This is the fun part where you’ll add your video, carousel, or post. The system walks you through the process and tells you where to add a headline, body copy and call to action. You can experiment until you’re satisfied with your ad, and then it’s ready to publish.
Understanding results
The beauty of Meta ads is the results are measurable and the ads are adjustable so you can find the sweet spot that works and pivot to constantly improve.
It takes three to seven days to start seeing how your ads perform while the system figures out what your ad is all about. Meta calls this the learning phase. However, after the first week, your ad will start building traction.
It’s important to track results to see how your ads perform. For example, if you’re running an engagement campaign, you look at how many people you’re engaging, whereas with a traffic campaign you’re interested in increased clicks on your website. Lead generation would be things like additions to your email list subscribers or downloading a freebie you offered in the ad. Depending on the results, you might want to tweak your headline or your audience to see if this helps.
The Importance of testing
Testing ads and trying out different approaches helps you learn what works and what doesn’t. You can become better and better at running campaigns by setting different objectives and comparing them against each other to see where you get better results. Other tests might include:
- Using two different audiences such as a group of moms and avid gardeners to see who’s engaging more
- Using different creative such as carousels versus static images
- Trying different colors
- Using different CTA’s or headings
Meta ad ROI
It can be confusing knowing how much to spend and what would be considered a good ROI. Often, it’s all about experimenting to get to know how much certain types of ads cost. For example, let’s say you’re running an ad for video views, in this case you would set your daily spend to a couple of dollars because it won’t have as high an ROI. However, if you’re running a sales campaign, you will want to spend more because the return on that ad is significantly higher if you succeed.
Setting goals for how much you expect to earn or gain from your ads allows you to measure your success.
Incorporate video
People love video and casual reels that feel organic work very well on Instagram including:
- Using archived video
- Current projects
- Life at the office
- Clips when you’re out shopping
- Personal clips
The point is to use organic content that helps avoid the ick or cringe factor static ads tend to have. You’ll soon learn what works and what doesn’t to constantly improve your ad strategy. (Just be sure to keep up with Meta ads content policies.)
Granular audiences
Hitting that sweet spot for your audiences will have a huge impact on your results. Go too generic such as age and sex and you’ll hit a broader audience with more volume but not necessarily see the quality leads you want. Go too specific and you’ll have the opposite effect of having too small an audience that only responds to very specific ads.
Granular is good as it ensures you hit as many traits as possible to define your ideal client along with logical locations in areas where you serve your clients.
Use AI with caution
AI can be very helpful when setting up ads but use it with caution. For example, Meta might recommend using music, but you discover too late the music is totally unsuitable for your brand. So, keep tabs on your ads and make sure the details fall into place the way you expect them to.
Meta ads might not be on your marketing radar, but it’s an excellent tool to warm up an audience, increase engagement and drive traffic.
Episode highlights
Here are the highlights from this episode:
- 17:35: Where ads appear
- 19:13: Setting goals with Meta ads
- 12:08: Becoming familiar with Meta ads
- 15:17: The all-important business manager
- 22:58: Leveraging Pixel
- 25:49: Meta ads structure
- 30:48: Meta ads creative
- 32:36: Understanding results
- 34:45: Meta ad ROI
- 36:58: The Importance of testing
- 39:39: Incorporate video
- 44:34: Granular audiences
- 45:45: Use AI with caution
Need help with messaging strategy or copywriting for your interior design website? Set up a conversation with me today.
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