How 4 Industries Are Getting Creative With Their Facebook Ads

Not every consumer wants to convert and make purchases online. Consumers that engage on social media platforms like Facebook also choose to connect with businesses offline by making a phone call. So much so that calls from Facebook and social advertising are expected to skyrocket nearly 200% between 2016 and 2019.

We’re going to walk through 4 industry-specific tips to help drive more call conversions from Facebook. But first let’s briefly talk about “Why Facebook?”

Why Facebook Over Other Platforms?

Many marketers are skeptical. Isn’t the point of Facebook to be social and forge connections with businesses? Yet consumers are still calling. With Facebook you can reach a large pool of mobile consumers on their smartphones, which, as we all know, are still phones. Facebook is a great place to start targeting mobile users and drive calls:

• Of the 1.5 billion people that visit Facebook on their mobile devices each month, nearly 1 billion of those people only ever visit on their smartphones.

Now let’s dive into how a few industries (even though there are many) benefit from customer calls, and some examples of how they can use Facebook ads to help drive high-quality calls. These examples should help inspire you to think of ways you can creatively leverage Facebook ads to drive quality calls to your business.

Travel and Hospitality

Calls are an important part of the customer journey for hotels, resorts, and cruise lines, where consumers will call 800 numbers, local properties, and agents in order to ask questions and get special deals.

• 35% of hotel bookings are from phone calls.
  
• 44% of people who booked travel on their smartphones call.
  
• 68% find it extremely/very important to call to book a hotel.

Call Tip: Leverage Facebook’s “Local Awareness” program to geo-target nearby mobile shoppers that are away from their home city with last minute hotel room deals. These consumers are more concerned about price and tend to book in the evening at nearby hotels. Your mobile Facebook ads should clearly speak to those immediate needs and include a “Call Now” button as your CTA to create a sense of urgency.

Automotive

Shoppers calling dealerships are much more engaged and ready to make appointments. They want to have a conversation and see the vehicle before making a large financial purchase.

• 25% first contact dealerships by calling.
  
• Paragon Honda in New York found that 70% of their phone calls become scheduled in-store appointments.

Call Tip: The most effective way to drive calls to a business is to have consumers click on your ad, visit your website, and call. Personalized videos on Facebook are a great way to capture attention and generate leads. Take Lexus for example, which launched over 1,000 individualized videos for audiences based on location, gender, likes, and car brand ownership. It reached over 11.2 million Facebook users and over 10 million video views.

Try using a video to target local viewers to help drive engagement. They can click through to your landing page for that specific local market to call and schedule an appointment.

Another great way to capture attention is by telling a story through Facebook carousel ads. They enable you to show different images with different calls to action. You can showcase your brand’s uniqueness in bite-sized bits using images to tell an interesting narrative. And according to Facebook, this format consistently drives higher engagement compared to single-image ads.

Financial Services

Financial services, such as mortgages, are a complex purchase decision. Shoppers are extremely likely to call because they need to immediately speak with a person to help answer their personalized questions. There’s usually a sense of urgency as these people are serious about figuring out if they can make a large, long-term financial investment.

• 67% of mobile shoppers visiting a financial services mobile site or app are looking to make a purchase that day.
  
• 68% find it very important to be able to call a bank while researching a purchase.
  
• 62% of smartphone shoppers want a financial agent to be within 5 miles.

Call Tip: Use location targeting to run mobile Facebook ads that promote your local agents and raise awareness. Deals will help incentivize calls and use a “Call Now” call to action to schedule an appointment.

Senior Living

The majority of adult seniors will move to a local facility , which is a decision made by 73% of the adult children for their parents. And with 70% of Boomers on Facebook, it creates a large audience of decision makers to target.

• 54% of boomers and seniors watch online video.
  
• 75% have taken action to learn more about a facility.

Call Tip: Boomers may research online, but they’re going to make this life-changing decision for their parents offline. It’s an emotional decision, so make them feel comfortable with the facility or even the idea of placing a loved one in a facility. First, capture their attention online and focus your mobile ads on videos that help eliminate fears by showing the daily life of seniors. And target users near each facility as they want to be near their loved ones.

We’ve only just hit the surface in terms of the various ads and targeting strategies that can be used to help drive quality calls and conversions for your business. On top of using the right ads and targeting strategies, you need to know if your ads are creating a desired behavior in order to measure and optimize ROI. Are videos generating clicks? Are call-only ads and landing pages driving calls?

Just like you account for clicks, you need do the same for the calls generated from your Facebook marketing efforts. And this requires having the proper call attribution technology that helps you connect both online conversions and call conversions to your campaigns. By including call attribution in your marketing analytics, you can measure true ROI and optimize your social marketing campaigns for what’s driving the most conversions at the best CPL (cost per lead).

To learn more in-depth Facebook ad and targeting tactics, and see more examples of how other industries drive calls from their Facebook ads, download The Facebook Playbook to Call Conversions: How To Use Facebook Ads to Drive Quality Calls and Conversions.

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