hi guys it's ben heath from lead guru
and in this video
i'm going to talk about facebook ads for
service
businesses and specifically i'm going to
give you seven keys to success seven
things that you want to be doing or not
doing
seven techniques that you want to use
and if you are advertising for a
service-based business perhaps you you
run a service
business yourself and you're running
facebook ad campaigns and to try and
generate leads
we've got some stuff in here that i
think you're going to find very very
useful before we're going to talk to
very very quickly ask you to smash that
like button click that thumbs up button
that would help me out and be much
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and haven't done so already okay so
seven key success i've
i've you know we've worked with many
many different service businesses over
you know last five or six years and um
i think a lot of people assume that
facebook advertising is much more geared
up for e-commerce businesses
you know companies that sell t-shirts
and little bits and bobs and things like
that
honestly the businesses that i
consistently see have the absolute best
results
with facebook advertising in terms of
the return on ad spend
are service-based businesses and that's
because you're not usually competing
nationally or internationally so your
competition is far
smaller when you're advertising service
business because you're usually
advertising locally there's only
so many other people offering the same
thing in your local area and
depending on your industry probably not
a huge amount of them actually
advertising
on on facebook and instagram but also
your average customer value is probably
much higher
you know if your average customer value
is 30 when you're selling a t-shirt if
you're a service business it could be
you know it could be down at that level
but could be anything up to tens of
thousands of dollars
with a lot of service providers sitting
somewhere in between and that that
really high average customer value means
that
your potential return on ad spend if
you've got a campaign that can
consistently
generate quality leads can be phenomenal
you can really grow a very successful
business
a very successful service business by um
by doing so so
as i said lots of experience in this
place these seven things are
very much uh tried and tested and been
thought about and proven so you've got
some uh
some stuff you can really rely on and
trust in this video so i've got some
notes alongside me you should probably
see me glancing down
to help me make sure i get this right so
the first one
the first thing i really want to
emphasize is you don't want to over
complicate your facebook advertising
if you're a service based business
there's lots of
online trainings tutorials courses on
facebook advertising that have these
very complex you know six seven step
sales funnels now i would argue they're
often not necessary but they're more
necessary for certain types of
businesses
if you're a service-based business you
often want to keep it
much more simple than that you don't
want this
elaborate you know people do this then
they do this then they do this then they
do this
because you're probably going to be
advertising locally your audiences are
going to be fairly small
and in order for those seven-step
salespers to work you need tons of
people going in the top stage
because you're going to get drop off at
each one of those okay so i think it's
it's very important to keep it simple a
free consultation
a free quote something along those lines
for a lot of service providers
is going to be an offer that can really
do the trick so first thing don't over
complicate it if you've got a sales
funnel that's more than let's say
three steps i think you're going wrong
okay so that's the very first point
the second point is is sort of the
it's added onto that first point and
i'll explain don't advertise your
service directly so whilst i think you
want a really
simple sales funnel structure when
you're advertising a service business
you can't often just go direct for sale
so in general my rule of thumb is
if you're offering something that costs
more than a hundred dollars you can't
ask people
to directly purchase it there are always
going to be exceptions but in general
you need something to happen between
them seeing an ad and then becoming a
customer some step in between that
builds a relationship
that takes people further down the sales
funnel before someone's willing to hand
over
that amount of money and so if you're
advertising a service that costs less
than
a hundred dollars then absolutely go
with a direct hit or service come by
this
but if you're advertising something more
particularly if it's in the you know
high hundreds
thousands of maybe tens of thousands of
dollars and i think you need
something in between now that's
something in between can be something on
something online or offline so for
example you could be using a lead magnet
strategy
whereby you know let's say you're
a kitchen fitter you know you build new
kitchens and fit kitchens for uh
for people that's what your
service-based business is and
you have elite magnets that's the
ultimate guide to kitchen
countertops okay some things people are
thinking about new kitchen they want to
know should they have a
you know granite or you know uh whatever
all the various different options that
you can have for uh for a kitchen
kitchen countertop you can provide a
free guide on that and then you can
re-target those people to perhaps
book a free course that'll be like an
online um
option of an intermediary step between
the ad and someone becoming a customer
would be that lead magnet
but you can also do it offline and i've
already given an example things like a
free consultation a free quote
and why don't we come around and do a
free strategy session to work this out
for you know if you're a business space
why don't we do a free audit you know if
you're offering an accountancy service
or bookkeeping services
or you're a financial advisor or
something perhaps you could do an audit
of what they currently already have
work out where they're going or make
some recommendations and that's how they
become a customer
so you don't need multiple steps on
the lead magnet is two steps because
you've got the initial campaign then
you're retargeting
you could have the two steps being one
ad campaign effectively of a free
consultation
that people then um have the free
consultation and that's that next step
before they then go on to work with you
but you can't get away with directly
advertising it
so you can see you're already getting a
sweet spot here you either got
um you know you haven't got a five-step
sales funnel and you also don't have a
one-step sales funnel a two or three
step sales one is usually perfect
for most service-based businesses which
hopefully i was pointing the right
direction because getting that right in
terms of structure
is absolutely key oh by the way i should
quickly mention that i have created a
free webinar and there'll be a link to
this in the video description completely
free to watch
and that shows you all about different
sales funnel structures two-step
three-step sales funnels
and a lot of that is in that webinar i
talk a lot about if you're a service
business you want to use this if you're
offering a service across this you want
to use this type of sales funnel so
strongly recommend you check that out
60-70 minutes long
be well worth your time to watch it link
is in the video description below so
make sure you go ahead and check that
out if you want to know more about
exactly the sales funnel you should be
using
for your service based business okay
so those are the two things about sales
funnel structure now i want to get into
some stuff around the ads because i
think this is also really important
with a service based business i think
it's incredibly important to demonstrate
your work
in the ad itself so what does that look
like if your portfolio base is quite
straightforward include images of you
know using the example before
a kitchen fitter you know use fantastic
images of that and
if you're anything you know if you're a
photographer anything sort of where you
can demonstrate
images of your work if you make stuff
for people um
then do so if you
don't you're not portfolio-based a
service provider and that doesn't really
fit there are still ways you can
demonstrate your work perhaps with a
client testimonial
okay either a text or video format you
know if you're a
you know a physiotherapist for example
perhaps that's how you can demonstrate
your work could be
some one of your previous customers
saying how much you know
you help them achieve their objectives
that shows your work to your potential
prospects
if you're a financial adviser of some
sort perhaps you can show how much
you know talk about a particular you
know it could be anonymized of course
we'll talk about a particular client how
much
tax you save them or you know how you
set them up with a proper pension scheme
or something along those lines
find a way to show your work okay is the
first point i want to make on on the
facebook ad created
the second one is that i think with a
service business getting
someone from your company to be like to
be effectively the face of it and
represent the brand
is really important whenever we work
with
local businesses and i say we as just
just everyone and not my company
specifically
you want to feel like you're connecting
with a person you want to feel like that
person
is who i'm going to be working with i'm
going to be working with their company
they're in charge of what's going on
they've got an eye on things nothing's
going to go wrong because they've
they've got it they've got it taken care
of for me so
obviously even if you know if you're a
company of any size in a service-based
business it
might necessarily be you um actually
delivering the service if it's your
business
but still getting your face
into the ads getting your presence there
so this could be
including you in part of a static image
it could be obviously face to camera
video ads
there's a number of different ways you
can do this but it does have to be on
every ad but i think in some of your
advertising
you want that to help build that
relationship with your local market
and i think that we've seen that really
help if you try and be a bit anonymous
as a local business and just hide behind
a
logo and a brand name doesn't seem to
work as well because they want that
connection
when you're hiring sales providers you
want to make the thing that everyone's
worried about is are they going to do a
good job
i know that you know we're a service
business it's a facebook ads agency the
thing everyone's worried about is
oh we worked in agency before it didn't
work so well are they going to do a good
job
so a lot of our marketing is
demonstrating that we can do a good job
okay and part of that is
having a face to the company getting in
front of in front of things so the
second point i'll make i'll talk about
the uh
the facebook ad creative the first um i
don't know what i said here now just
checking
um yeah the first is demonstrate your
work the second
is to establish a personal connection
and
put the face of the company in the ads
wherever possible
another point um on ad creative before
we move on to other stuff that i want to
actually click that
that i want to make is that because with
a service business you're usually
advertising on a local basis and even if
you're not
you need to protect your brand so
whereas a lot of
facebook advertisers particularly those
that advertise e-commerce products
that are national or international
they're not
putting ads out there that really sort
of protect their brand and stay on point
with their brand and represent who they
want to be
they'll use a lot of salesy tactics and
and fake scarcity and things on those
lines because they're they're kind of
hiding behind volume
you know they're thinking our target
market is 20 million people does it
matter if
you know 10 000 of those see ads that
are you know
not how we want to represent ourselves
the the downside is limited
i don't think that's the case for
service businesses people want to know
they're going to work with
businesses that have integrity that do
what they say that follow through
that do a good work that are
conscientious have a high attention to
detail
and you're probably going to be
advertising to the same people in your
local area if you advertise locally as a
service business
again and again and again so just make
sure that you don't do anything that
misrepresents your brand protect your
brand it's very very important over the
long run
um you don't want to do sort of damage
with your
potential customer base by coming across
as sleazy you're
or almost trustful or anything like that
okay so key to success number six
is to not advertise to really really
small audiences so that's why i'm in an
example facebook ad account here i've
got an example
campaigns example ad set up so i want to
demonstrate this
so i live in a county in
um england called gloucestershire
okay now when i select the whole of the
county let's assume that that was my
target audience which is actually quite
big often service businesses can be
quite a bit smaller than that
you can see my potential reach on this
right hand side is 420 000.
i cannot now go in and add really narrow
interest into it
so for example let's say i was
advertising my own business facebook
advertising agency
and i wanted to reach admins of business
pages people who have business pages on
that's basically my target market for
the most part so if i
pop in business page admins here
and i select that from the top as a
behavior you can see my audience goes
all the way down to five and a half
thousand people
that's not a big enough audience at all
okay
i cannot advertise to an audience that's
that small
and that's it and by the way that's with
age and gender being wide open
okay so what does that mean that
basically means
when you add in your location targeting
criteria because
services are usually advertising locally
take a look at your potential reach
if that number is anything less than 250
000
i would most likely go with open
targeting no
interest-based targeting options if it's
larger than that
let's say 420 000 i still may want to
leave this open because i might decide
for example that our clients are very
unlikely to be under the age of
uh let's say 30 and if i add that in we
can see that jumps all the way down to
300 000. so that might be a good
audience to start advertising to just
the whole of the county okay and
there are scenarios in which you may
want to add in some people targeting
options but it's gonna have to be very
very broad targeting options that
encompass
a wide percentage of the population
because if we're starting with 420 000
we can't knock that down to 20 000. it's
gonna be at least a hundred thousand
uh preferably 250 000. now the caveat
being if we were just advertising the
local area where there's only
20 30 000 people well fine don't not
advertise or don't make your area
artificially large
stick with that audience but don't
constrain your audience make it too
small
when it's not necessary and i feel like
here
it would not be necessary facebook's
smart enough to work out who within your
audience
is likely to be interested give them
that runway don't put that audience down
really small unless you have to because
that's all the people that are in your
area which does sometimes happen
okay so that's um that's something
that's really really important audience
size if i come up here to
this custom audience section you might
be thinking about advertising to look
like audiences something i speak a lot
of they'll include a link in the
description to a tutorial all about
creating um look-alike audiences
and if you want to run look-alike
audiences to a local
audience which you can do just make sure
you use a 10 percent look-alike
otherwise that
the resulting audience is going to be
too small you want to make the look like
as large as possible because then
obviously you're narrowing down
at the uh the geographic level
um and small audiences and facebook ads
are just
a big no-no where possible avoid it okay
so tip number six
then number seven is
you this is going to vary business to
business but a lot of service businesses
have fairly long lead times
so if we go back to our example earlier
of a kitchen fitter
they might have a lead time of average
of three to six months i'm sure they
speak to some
clients some prospects that become
clients two or three years later
some will move more quickly than that
because obviously getting a new kitchen
put in your house is a big
decision that's a big decision it may be
that it's got to line up with other
refurbishment work that you're having
going on
it's not something you could just jump
on and go yep sure let's decide that
tomorrow
if your lead time is three months six
months
and even if it's just a month you need
to give your facebook ad campaigns a lot
longer
to assess performance than you would if
you were advertising an e-commerce
product where you can basically get
real-time data
yes you can base decisions around your
cost per lead and lead volume so if
you're not generating leads you don't
need to keep going for obvious reasons
but if you are unsure about how your
campaigns are performing and you're not
just going off lead data you're actually
going off
okay what have we generated in terms of
sales and stuff like that
from this this this facebook ad campaign
we're running
you may have to give it some time we've
worked with service providers before
where we're we're sort of
um producing reports off month one month
two and the results just
they're not looking great we're
generating liens but they're not really
converting but then by month four month
five
the results look fantastic and the truth
is that some of those leads were going
to convert
they just hadn't yet so they come
through and it completely changes the
numbers
and that's um yeah that's something that
to be to be
very much factored in don't become
disheartened don't
assess things too early otherwise you
could be missing out on a great
opportunity which is facebook
advertising for a lot of businesses
okay so those are the seven key success
we're gonna very quickly run back
through them so the first is don't over
complicate your sales funnel
you don't want to be using five six step
sales funnel for service with businesses
it's not what you wanna do number two is
don't directly advertise your products
either so you can't have a one-step
funnel you're going to want
two or three step funnels something
along those lines
is absolutely perfect number three is
that you want to demonstrate your work
where possible in your ad creative
portfolio client testimonials things
like that
number four is that you want to get the
face of the business in
the ad creative as well whether that's
in images face to camera video ads
make sure that your prospects feel like
they can connect with an actual human
being
not a faceless brand five is protect
your brand
okay don't do anything that's overly
salesy
that would lead prospects to mistrust
you or feel like you're not a reputable
company
you're gonna be able to have the same
people very important you protect that
brand and only put and creative
forward that you'll be happy with
everyone seeing
number six is to not advertise to really
small audiences
don't go with detailed targeting options
that bring your audience size down to
20 30 000 if you don't have to okay in
idea world audiences would be above 250
000
it's not always possible when you are
advertising locally which much a lot of
service businesses are
and that's fine if it's not but if it is
then don't go below that number
and then finally number seven is to
assess campaign performance over a
longer time period
what that means for you will depend on
your lead time and your business
it may be as much as six months okay so
just keep that in mind
may even be more than that but it may be
as much as six months so keep that in
mind
okay hope that's been useful for a go
couple things i want to mention the
first
is our facebook advertising services so
if you're running facebook ad campaigns
yourself
perhaps you're not getting results you
want or perhaps you follow you get
better results
we can almost certainly help improve
your results and help take your
facebook advertising and potentially
your business as a result to another
level
so we create manage optimize facebook ad
campaigns for our clients we have
you know we're running hundreds of
clients hundreds of campaigns at any one
time
um clients in every industry we've
almost certainly advertised something
that's very similar to the product or
service that you offer
if you'd be interested in finding out
more about about our service there's a
link in the video description below you
can click on that and book
a call with me or one of my team members
um
just a 30 minute chat where we can find
out more about your business how we
might be able to help you can find out
more about our service
and we can see if we would like to uh to
work together we do have a 3k
per month minimum budget so if you're
not at that level we won't be able to uh
to work with you and please don't don't
book a call if that's the case but if
you do meet that criteria we'd love to
speak with you and
please go ahead and book that and other
thing i want to quickly mention
is my facebook ads mastermind group so
we've just gone past 56 000 members in
there
an amazing community one of the biggest
in the world um of facebook advertising
one of the biggest online communities of
facebook advertisers
and um you know i do free live trainings
in there regularly there's hundreds of
questions being asked and answered all
the time by the members
it really is a fantastic community full
of people just like you just want to get
better results facebook ads and helping
each other achieve that so if that's not
something you want to be part of
go ahead and join again there'll be a
link in the video description
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okay thanks a lot guys better luck with
everything and i'll talk to you soon