The Ins and outs of Successful Social Media Ads: 7 qualities that make an ad work
Are you running ads for your studio?
Many studios are not. Instead they rely exclusively on their social media platforms to increase their audience and the traffic to their website. And while you will see growth by maintaining robust and vibrant social media platforms, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity if you’re passing up social media ads.
Social media ads give you the ability to build brand awareness, increase post likes, drive engagement, and boost event sales and registration. Ads enable you to reach more potential students and also retarget clients who have interacted in some way with your business or brand but are not fully committed. Depending where a client is in your customer journey, an ad can be the final push that gets them to remove any last doubt and become a regular customer (and potentially a brand ambassador down the road!).
Yet, creating an advertising strategy and implementing individual fitness marketing campaigns can feel very overwhelming, especially if you’re not well-versed in the language, metrics and the algorithms that companies like Meta (previously known as Facebook) use. So we’re breaking it down for you—here are the 7 qualities that make an ad successful:
1. A clearly defined goal or objective
Your goal or objective should be the first thing you establish when creating your ad campaign strategy. Your goal will determine your budget and duration as well as your headline, body copy, image, audience and call-to-action. When trying to establish your goals consider the five types of social media ads:
Brand Awareness Ad: These ads build brand exposure and show your ads to people most likely to remember them.
Traffic Ad: These ads send people to a website (landing page, Facebook page etc.) to learn more about your company or promotion.
Engagement Ad: These ads build customer engagements by showing your ads to people who are most likely to like your page, comment, react and share.
Lead Ad: These ads gather information about the people interested in your company - directly through a lead form on Facebook.
Conversion Ad: This ad is used to track purchases or specific conversions such as page views.
Yoga and boutique fitness studios should offer a variety of ads throughout the year, but there are three key ads we suggest everyone has running on an ongoing basis:
“Get to Know Us” Brand Awareness Ad- This is an excellent ad to start with to build your audience and create buzz about your company. We suggest that studios continuously run a brand awareness campaign.
“Intro Offer” Traffic Ad- You have a great intro offer, right? Now send people to your landing page to purchase the offer.
“Event” Lead Ad- This is an ideal ad for higher ticket items like a yoga retreat or teacher training, or just a higher price package like a yearly pass. If those don’t apply to you, you could also use this ad for promoting a specific class type!
2. A Small Target Audience
Have you ever had an ad pop into your feed that you were like, “huh?” This was likely because the audience was too broad. Most often we receive ads that we are actually interested in because the target audience was defined enough to capture the right people. Social media ads are crafted to appear in your timeline via the various algorithms including your website browsing history, page likes, friends’ likes, content you’ve engaged with and more. Ads will show you content you may have never found organically but still content you’d be interested in learning more about. When you’re crafting your audience, consider who you want to see your ad. You can also run an ad with a re-targeted audience (individuals who have already engaged or visited specific pages of your website). Your audience can be modified over time so if you find that you’re not capturing the right people making small adjustments might just be all that you need.
3. An interesting, high-quality and relevant image or video
Your image is the first impression the customer is going to experience with your company. Make it count. You want something that encapsulates your mission and is relevant to the action you’re asking them to take. You don’t, however, have to create new content for your ads. You can use content created for social media or from your website if it is relevant to the ad. Video (up to 15 seconds is our recommendation) performs the best for ads across the board, including reels for Instagram. Ultimately consider this: Could a potential customer understand what your ad was about with the image/video alone?
4. Short, concise description of the offer
You do not want to be wordy in your description. Ideally the copy is around 125 characters and is catchy, brief and gives them the most important information in as few words as possible. This isn’t an easy task. Our suggestion is to try to summarize what it is you want to say and actually say it outloud to someone. Can you sell your idea/brand/event in one sentence or two?
5. One CTA
Make it very clear what you want the client to do. Who is your target audience and what is the goal of the ad? Is it to sign up to learn more? Like your page? Choose one CTA and make it visible and easy to act on.
6. Set aside a reasonable budget
We recommend a minimum of $250/month per ad campaign. The conversion ads cost the most, so we recommend a $500/month minimum for this type of ad.
"If your daily budget is on the lower end, it may take longer for Facebook's algorithm to exit the Learning Phase. For this reason, costs for new ad sets are often higher upfront while the system understands how your audience behaves with your ads and how to optimize them for the highest engagement. If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time." - wordstream.com
7. Easy follow-through
Finally, you want the process to be seamless for the customer so they don’t get lost on your website and give up. Create a link that goes directly to a landing page that provides more information and the next steps. Remember they found your ad because they were thumbing through IG or FB. You don’t want to break up the process with a lengthy dive into your website. Make it quick and simple and you’re more likely to capture new leads.
Social media ads offer a wonderful opportunity to capture new leads, generate more sales and bring more awareness to your business at a relatively inexpensive rate. If you’re curious and want to learn more about social media ads, reach out to Telomere. We have a team of fitness studio consultants ready to help you get started on your advertising journey!
Telomere Consulting provides business consulting and marketing services to studio owners in the boutique fitness and yoga space. The Telomere team helps you navigate business strategy from conception to implementation. We provide end-to-end marketing support and would love to hear from you. Click here to book your free intro call. We want you to treat your business the way you treat your body – making the right choices now to optimize its potential for a long and healthy life. Visit us here to learn more.
