Facebook Ads management for photographers
Strategic social media marketing to get more photography clients
A steady stream of new photography clients is important to growing your business and, as a visual creator, social media is an ideal way to increase brand awareness and generate leads. Facebook Ads for photographers is a no-brainer, if done right.
When it comes to paid advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, it's crucial to be strategic and continually seek to optimise, rather than adopt a set and forget mindset which has high potential for budget wastage.
Want more people seeing your work, more enquiries and more photoshoot bookings?
Key elements of Facebook & Instagram marketing for photographers
When it comes to advertising on Facebook and Instagram for photographers, it's vital to go beyond boosted posts and your level of success lies in these areas. Photomo combines strategic thinking based on your business objectives and your ideal customer with Facebook Ads best practices to deliver results across both platforms that deliver you more leads while continually seeking to improve your ROI. These include, but are not limited to, the following.
Strategic targeting
When it comes to Facebook Ads for photographers - whether with or without Instagram advertising placements - it's wise to take full advantage of the incredible targeting options available.
As Facebook knows so much about its users, effective cold audience Demographic targeting can be achieved by thinking about who your typical or ideal photography client is: male or female, what age, what specific interests and what known behaviours. This all helps to increase the relevancy of your ads - and give you a stronger ROI - by showing them only to the Facebook users who are most likely to be interested in your services.
Lookalike audiences allow you to take cold audience targeting to the next level, while Remarketing provides the opportunity to stay in front of those who are already familiar with you.
With Photomo, every photographer's Facebook Ads strategy is customised based on the services they offer, their location, their ideal client and what custom audiences can set up immediately.
Clear campaign objective
There are many best practices around setting up campaign structure within Facebook Ads Manager and it's crucial to consider the objective of any campaign from the outset, as this will help to optimise it for the results that matter to you and deliver the strongest possible performance.
As such, Photomo tailors your Facebook and Instagram advertising strategy based around your specific business goals, whether one particular objective or you're targeting various clear outcomes that require a multi-faceted approach.
Various objectives available including Brand Awareness, Page Likes, Video Views and Post Engagement and Messages campaigns.
If targeting audiences you've already warmed up, the choice is usually between Website Conversion campaigns (typically optimised to reach those most likely to submit an online enquiry form on your website based on known past behaviour) or Lead Generation campaigns (where a form can be submitted from within Facebook itself).
The right messaging
Once you have your objective and targeting sorted out, the final piece of the Facebook Ads puzzle is ensuring your messaging - both the visuals and the text of your ad creative - matches them.
It's especially important to consider where your target audience is at within the customer journey - whether it's the awareness, consideration or conversion stage - as you'll typically burn through budget with little return if you try selling to people who have never heard of you before. The only likely chance of success here is advertising a special offer too good to refuse, but spending money on ads while slashing your prices isn’t great business sense. Certainly not in the long term.
Keeping your messaging relevant to the stage of the customer journey is the way to go, which Photomo can certainly help with.
This includes the Call To Action (CTA) button you use on your ads and any other CTA worked into the ad copy itself. "Book Now" is typically not the way to go with a cold audience.
Landing page relevancy
Similar to getting the messaging right on the actual advertisement, it's crucial that if you're objective is to drive traffic back to your website that the landing page you select is as relevant as possible to the ad.
Sending potential customers who click on a Facebook or Instagram ad for wedding photography to a page that references various other services you also offer - for example, family portraits, maternity photoshoots or newborn photography - will only confuse. The likely end result: they click 'Back' and bounce off your site. It's a sure way to waste your click budget.
Similarly, if you're advertising a particular offer, you absolutely must set up and use a landing page specifically referencing that promotion. Do not send people who see that ad to your home page and hope they find their way to wherever you've hidden the information they want to read. They won't bother. Again, they'll bounce.
Photomo can absolutely assist with choosing the right landing pages for your ads or setting up new landing pages on your website as required.
Pixel conversion tracking
Correctly installing and testing your Facebook Pixel so you know how many enquiry form submissions, phone number clicks, email address clicks or other high-value actions are undertaken on your website when people click through from Facebook or Instagram ads is crucial to knowing Website Conversion campaign’s level of success.
When it comes to photography marketing, there's certainly no point continuing with an ad campaign and paying for clicks if you're not getting results ... or, perhaps worse, have no idea whether or not the traffic going to your website is converting.
In general Facebook Ads campaigns can be optimised to deliver improved ROI, however you need relevant data to determine what tweaks should be made. Is it a problem with the targeting? The messaging? The landing page? Without accurate conversion tracking in place, you're simply guessing.
Ensuring accurate tracking of goal conversions on your website, to inform future business decisions, is a crucial step in the setup of every Photomo Facebook Ads program.
A/B testing & ongoing optimisation
Very rarely will a new Facebook Ads campaign work perfectly from day one, delivering the ultimate ROI, without ever needing optimisation.
Part of the beauty of advertising on Facebook as a photographer is being able to continually seek to improve your ROI based on the concrete performance metrics available. When compared to advertising in magazines or other traditional media, where in reality you have no idea how many people have seen your ad let alone responded to it, it's chalk and cheese.
A/B testing is a smart way to go about optimising Facebook Ads campaigns and is a practice used by Photomo whenever attempting to improve ROI, such as when refining an ad set's targeting or experimenting with different CTAs on ads for example. Insights from the A/B test can be gleaned from Facebook Ads Manager to determine whether or not improved performance has resulted before fully committing to the change.
Monthly reporting to Photomo clients not only includes raw data for KPIs but also insights into improvement in performance or otherwise.
