Facebook Ads for your Salon and Spa

You’ve seen posts on your Facebook timeline that say ‘Sponsored’ on them. So what are they, and why do they keep popping up on your news feed?

Facebook ads are shown as ‘Sponsored posts’. They’re advertisements that have been paid for by the page owner. If you’ve ever wondered why Facebook is free, Facebook ads are how the company makes money. They link with Instagram as well (owned by Facebook), so that’s why you may see the same ad on both platforms. They’re a great way for your business to expand reach and get your posts out to a wider market if you’re trying to grow your client base.

They work particularly well for businesses with beautiful imagery, like salons and spas.

It’s easy to follow the Facebook notifications that encourage you to whip out your credit card and put your hard earned cash behind an ad, without really knowing what it’s going to do. So let’s not do that.

The best way to get Facebook advertising right is to follow a simple three step formula.

1. Grow awareness
2. Increase engagement
3. Call to action

Generate Awareness

Firstly, you want generate awareness of your salon and brand. This means using Facebook ads to get your brand in front of people who may not have ever heard of you before. To do this you want to target a wider audience than those who already like your page. You can select ‘Friends and friends of followers’ which will target an audience that is similar to the people who already follow you.

Try targeting your local area, within 10-30 kms of your salon. Then segment further to only show women aged 20-45, for example. You can even select people who have an ‘Interest’ in something, like ‘hair’, ‘tanning’ or ‘mindfulness’.

Video content

A video is the best sort of content grow your brand awareness. Facebook gets over 8 billion views on average, every day. Videos help tell the story of who you are and show what sort of services you provide. It also sets you up to be able to retarget these people later. This the top of the marketing funnel. Find a local videographer to come in and capture the essence of your salon or spa.

Read this blog for tips on making an effective video.

Increase Engagement

Now we’ve drawn a bit of a crowd on Facebook. Like any good entertainer, we want to engage them and capture their attention. The best way to do this is to ‘retarget’ those people who watched your video above. If you don’t have access to this feature you’ll need to set-up a free business account at business.facebook.com to unlock it.

Here’s the steps to set up an audience for Facebook retargeting.

1. Click menu
2. Assets
3. Audiences
4. Create Audience
5. Custom Audience
6. Engagement
7. Video
8. People who have watched at 50% of your video
9. ‘Choose Videos’ and select the video audience you wish to retarget.
10. Name and save.

So now the audience is good to go, you can begin setting up an advertising campaign. Head back to ‘Ads Manager’ and select ‘+Create’. You’ll be walked through the necessary steps to getting your Facebook Ads campaign off the ground. Just remember to select the retargeted audience that you created above when it comes to that section.

Some examples of engaging content could be photos of your favourite styles, influencers who came to visit, interior shots of your space, a story about a staff member or even just a story about your business.

Call to Action

Now that we’ve done all the heavy lifting at the front end, it’s time to convert this hard work into something tangible, like a booking, purchase or a visit to your space. You want to create a Facebook Ad in the same way as you did above, but include a link to your website and tell them exactly what you want them to do.

• “Make a booking before the long weekend”
• “Try our hair and make-up special”
• “Come see us in store for a free brow assessment”

Without this step, you never really know if your social media and advertising is really working or increasing sales. So it’s vital to gauge whether Facebook advertising is beneficial for your business and if it does increase bookings and sales.

How much should I be spending?

Spend whatever amount you have budget for. Facebook advertising is very lenient on budget, so it’s really up to you. You will achieve more results with more budget, but it’s better to start small and test the waters before you put substantial budget behind ads. Keep your ads running for as long as possible as Facebook improves it’s targeting for you, so you will begin to achieve better results for less, without even doing anything.

Facebook Ads can be a bit tricky if it’s your first time, so please leave a comment with any questions you have and we’ll do our best to answer them all.