Small Business Series: using facebook ads
Many small businesses rely on their location, word of mouth and their reputation to attract customers. Small business owners often don’t have much money set aside to spend on marketing and tend to avoid ways of promoting their businesses that cost “a lot”…. or even cost anything!
Sometimes things change though.
Customers who’d previously been happy to spend, may change their behavour as they are hit by new demands on their money with higher mortgages, food & heating bills.
People working from home more are not around to spend with businesses in town and city centres.
The competition is fiercer as people are more comfortable shopping around, buying online and getting goods delivered to their house.
Big structural changes like this - which are totally out of the control of individual people and businesses - are having a huge impact on patterns of spending. Small business owners can be particularly vulnerable to loosing customers as a result of big structural changes.
Those who have always promoted themselves the same way, may feel very stuck when they realise that doing the same thing is no longer working as it once did.
Facebook (& instagram,google, tiktok, linked in….) advertising can be a really helpful avenue for small businesses owners to explore - particularly if they haven’t used it before. It’s advantages include:
you can control how much you spend - there’s an app on your phone for that!
you can start with a very low level of spend - a few £s a day
you can get instant data on how it’s working tracking results on an app on your phone. If it’s working you can keep going; if not you can stop
you can choose your audience - parents with under 5s that live in Sheffield and like walking? Dog owners, working from home? Etc
once you know how, it’s can be quick and easy to do an advert … people with experience can do one in a couple of minutes on their phone! Leaving you free to get on with the 1001 tasks you have to get through to keep your small business going.
Despite these advantages there are all sorts of reasons why lots of local small businesses avoid using digital advertising. If you haven’t used it before, it can feel hard to take a risk and explore a new way of doing things - particularly if the reason you’ve been prompted to try it is through fear of lost sales. Many people don’t like facebook and want to avoid it entirely for moral and ethical reasons.
But what if, in fact, it wasn’t that difficult, not that expensve & could work for your business?
I thought we’d share a bit of info on how we use it in our businesses - in case it could be helpful for other small business owners looking for new options and considering digital advertising
John St Kitchen - this is the cafe at Harland Works. We recently ran a facebook ad for parents in Sheffield promoting our February half term activities. I spent £16 on an ad in the week before which got seen by 3,678 people. 114 of those clicked on the ad to look at the half term events on offer. 6 of them bought tickets - overall we sold 40 tickets so as well as these immediate sales, the ad might have helped other people to buy.
Eyeye Opticians - We recently ran an instagram advert over 6 days spending £9.69 which was seen by 1,625 people and resulted in 112 website visits. Our ads are pointed at our website where people can book an appointment.
This is just a snap shot, but I hope it wets your appetite if you are a small business owner thinking that you need to try using digital marketing to help find new customers - it doesn’t have to be as expensive or difficult as you might perhaps have thought!
If you are interested in learning more sign up for my new Small Business Series in which I’ll be sharing more info like this designed to support small business owners looking to grow their businesses.
Sophy Hallam is a small business owner of many years standing. She and her husband, Karl, currently run three bricks and mortar businesses in Sheffield. Currently training to be a small business coach (with a long term aim to create a location-independent business once all our kids have left home…), the Small Business Series is a new project to share resources, community and good ideas with other small business owners. Join my new mailing list to keep in touch.