Facebook, or Meta, ads aren’t what they used to be, even a few years ago. As of early 2023, even Facebook verification has changed. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company launched a new Meta Verified subscription service, which provides Facebook users verification for $11.99 per month on the web. Mimicking Twitter’s user verification, Meta’s new service—according to Meta— is “about increasing authenticity and security” across its services. An early rollout in Australia may tell us more about the value of Meta verification, so stay tuned.
But even with the unknowns of a new Meta verification, Facebook ads retain value, particularly if your construction business is smart about how to create and manage them. If you haven’t already established a Facebook business page, don’t worry. You can easily go to Facebook and register a business here. The prompt will guide you through registering your company name, category (your category will probably be engineering/construction) and company description.
According to Hootsuite, once you have a business page established, go to Facebook Ads Manager, which is now part of Meta Business Suite, and add an existing Facebook ads account or create a new one. Once your account is created, you can start an automated campaign, generate your own campaign from scratch, or boost/promote existing content.
Once your company page is established, here are the next steps to a successful construction company ad plan on Facebook.
Establish Your Goals
Determine your goals and the purpose of your advertising before you launch into creating ads. Maybe you just want your customers to “sign contracts” or “request a quote,” but you might want to build brand awareness of your business, maintain a consistent messaging and presence across all social media, or enhance customer service. Maybe you have a longer game goal than “call for a quote.”
Talk to your team, evaluate your business and its seasonal—or not—needs and choose your goals wisely. Advertising, including Facebook Ads, will perform better if it’s linked to concrete and thoughtful goals. And, as always, don’t expect advertising to “grow your market share” by itself. It’s a marketing function. Yes, it’s linked to business functions, but it can’t help you grow your business if you don’t have the employees to complete work or the vendors to supply materials.
For specific social media goals, you can look to a marketing partner (like ER Marketing), or start with an online tool, such as Hootsuite’s social media goals guide.
Define Your Target Audience
Your audience could be other businesses, such as subcontractors, commercial vendors and real estate agents, or your audience could be exclusively homeowners. Think about the individual people who might use word-of-mouth advertising to contact your business for a quote. Also, consider the people following your competitors. Often, you can target audiences on Facebook that follow other pages.
You decide, based on your goals and the reasons you have for advertising, and then stick to that audience and keep your messaging specific to that audience. Don’t think you’ll get everyone with one message or ad.
If you’re looking to generally add brand recognition, consider targeting residents of a specific neighborhood or your town. While you won’t likely get too many leads from this process, you can use these ads to talk about community outreach and other information that links your firm to good things happening in your area.
If you already have a page, look at the information in Audience Insights (within the Meta Business Suite) to see the demographics of your current audience.
Caveat here: Don’t start Facebook Ads immediately after establishing your new business Facebook page. No one way exists to determine when to start with Facebook Ads, but several social media management tools have guidelines. HootSuite’s includes having “at least 100 page Likes (followers), a Meta Pixel set up, clear Facebook marketing goals, at least 20+ page posts, multiple creative assets for each ad and an A/B testing strategy.”
Choose an Ad Format and Structure
Once you have a target audience and goals, you can start to structure your ads and message to your audience’s needs and your goals. Consider all types of Facebook ads, including video, image, carousel, collection ads (mobile only), Stories ads and Messenger ads. The types of ads you’ll use are based on your goals and target audience. A good source of info on the recommendation technical and text requirements for each type of ad can be found on Facebook, or with social media management service providers like Social Pilot.
For commercial construction companies, the most important ones are going to be video ads, photo ads, and slideshow ads. Lead form ads are also important, but not as vital as they would be for a residential service company. Dynamic product ads don’t mean anything, as you aren’t selling a product as eCommerce.
Video ads and photo ads are excellent for talking about your company, projects you’ve worked on in the past, or creating those awareness ads about involvement in the community. As they are named, one involves a still photo with text and one includes an upload of some sort of video. Slideshow ads are good for showing before-and-after on renovation projects, new builds, and other scenarios where there is a clear visual difference between the beginning and the end.
When thinking about Facebook marketing for your commercial construction company, decide on one or two ad structures that would get the most attention from your target audience and then move forward.
Plan How Much You’ll Spend on Facebook Ads
Budget is a driving force in how Facebook ads for commercial construction companies work. The bigger your pool of funds, the better it is to target your audience.
When trying to come up with a segment of your overall marketing budget to allocate to paid advertising, make sure you know your goal. Are you trying to get brand recognition with decision-makers in your area like real estate agents? Or do you just want to announce to the community what your firm has achieved or plans?
The more targeted your strategy, the higher the budget you’ll need. You’ll hear some people claim that B2C advertising doesn’t work on Facebook, but it is possible. It might take a little extra ad spend and more time to get in front of your best audience, but social media marketing can still be a great way to boost leads in the long term.
Create an Omnichannel Strategy for Digital Advertising
Keeping budget in mind, it is important to realize that using paid ads to grow your commercial construction company requires an omnichannel strategy. What does this mean? To make Facebook ads for construction companies work, you don’t want to just rely on Facebook ads.
Remember the days when someone used to have to look you up in the phone book, see your ad on a billboard and then hear an ad on the radio to call you for a quote? Omnichannel marketing is like that, but in digital.
While your Facebook ads might not necessarily get someone to request a quote on your website, repeated interaction will make a difference. To keep with our example, let’s say a member of your target audience sees a Facebook ad, searches the web and a Google ad comes up, and then the audience member sees your name on a local news story highlighting your community efforts. That audience member has now seen your business name and brand in three separate places, which means your audience member now knows who you are and what you do. It’s an omnichannel marketing strategy in the wild.
Before you go…consider this suggestion:
It’s Not Necessary, But It’s Smart to Seek Professional Assistance for Paid Social Ads
Pay-per-click advertising, branded or influencer-generated content, and display ads are all examples of paid social media. You’ll know a paid social media advertisement when you see one based on the tags near the post that announce “sponsored” or “paid.”
Working with Facebook Ads, or any paid ad strategy or platform, can get confusing. While going it alone is almost always the least-expensive route, it often isn’t the most cost-effective. Paid advertising works on a display and pay-per-click basis, which can really add up if you’re just broadcasting your Facebook Ads to everyone. Coming up with strategies and steps, as we’ve mentioned here takes time and experience, which means learning the latest best practices and trying to implement them. Relying on organic social media, according to HubSpot, also has its drawbacks—although it’s cost-appealing.
“Organic social media traffic can take days to build due to the algorithms at work behind the scenes of the most popular social media sites. If you’re running a short campaign, that ramp up time can cost you visibility and leads,” writes HubSpot. “With paid social media, your campaign can get started with an extra boost at a speed that organic posts just can’t match. In addition to sustaining views, traffic, and engagement for as long as your credit card can stand, you’ll have the benefit of retargeting consumers with your ads to achieve an advertisement frequency that you can control.”
That’s the conversation on how to get Facebook Ads to work for your commercial construction company. Let’s talk about hiring a professional to help you get the most boost for your buck (and stay up-to-date on those verification changes). Learn how ER Marketing can help you run Facebook Ads for construction companies, such as yours, and create an overall effective omnichannel digital marketing strategy. Call or email us today to start a deeper conversation.
FAQs
Yes, as of early 2023, Facebook verification has changed. Meta (formerly Facebook) launched a new subscription service called Meta Verified, offering user verification for $11.99 per month on the web. This service aims to enhance authenticity and security across Meta’s services.
Creating a Facebook business page is easy. Simply go to Facebook and register your business by providing your company name, category (likely engineering/construction), and company description. The registration process will guide you through the steps.
While it’s not necessary, seeking professional assistance can be beneficial. Paid social media advertising can be complex, and working with experts can help you develop effective strategies, stay updated with best practices, and optimize your ad campaigns for better results. Professionals can also guide you through changes in verification and provide insights on running successful Facebook ads for your construction company.
To measure the success of your Facebook ad campaigns, you can track metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, engagement (likes, comments, shares), lead generation, and return on investment (ROI). Facebook Ads Manager provides insights and analytics to help you evaluate the performance of your campaigns.
Yes, Facebook offers powerful targeting options. You can narrow down your target audience based on factors such as location (country, city, radius targeting), age, gender, interests, behaviors, and even connections (people who like your page or their friends). This allows you to focus your ads on the most relevant audience for your commercial construction business.
It depends on your goals and the performance of your existing content. Boosting existing content can be a quick and easy way to increase its reach and engagement among your current audience. However, if you have specific campaign objectives or want more control over the ad creative and targeting, creating new campaigns from scratch may be a better approach.
