• Utilizing Facebook Ads

    Alex Pettus  •  September 4, 2017

Like most small businesses, you probably aren’t sitting on a pile of cash that you could use for a huge marketing budget. This means that every penny of what you put toward your ad budget needs to count! So what do you do? How do you branch out and diversify your marketing efforts on a limited budget? These questions are more common than you may think, and there ARE solutions. One of the most effective methods that we suggest to some of our clients is Facebook Advertising.

Benefits of Facebook Ads

It’s well known amongst golf course managers and most small business owners that social media can have a big impact on their business. However, fully utilizing social media for advertising means looking beyond the weekly posts, hashtags and how many followers you have. It’s time to take the next step and invest in Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads run on the same pay-per-click/pay-per-impressions idea as most online ads (ie: Google AdWords). However, thanks to the amount of personal information in Facebook’s database, they allow you to get incredibly detailed with your targeting. Anything a user can put into their profile—age, sex, location, education, religion, interests, politics, job title, marital status, etc.—can be used as a filter for your ads.

For example, if you wanted to target a market specifically made up of golf fans, over 55 years old who are married, living in Orlando who vote republican and are retired, you can! And the best part is, this can all be done for pretty cheap.

Moz found that it averaged about $0.25 cents per 1,000 impressions. And Sumall found that for a photo ad, it was about $2.96 per 1,000 people reached while their blog share was about $3.78/1,000 people reached. Buffer also did an experiment where $5 per day on Facebook social media ads got them the following results:

  • Page likes: 9/day
  • Clicks to home site: 1/day
  • Boosted post: 787 new people reached/day

So results clearly vary, but any way you slice it, that’s a really good price for 1,000 people in what’s already going to be a niche audience. Here is a good point to remember that impressions, while a valuable metric for understanding brand awareness, does not always result in conversions or bookings. So how does Facebook add up when it comes to ROI?

Measuring Social ROI

As with most advertising channels, Facebook Ads are not a “one-size-fits-all” strategy that you can just plug in and forget. Success and failure with Facebook Advertising isn’t black and white. However, a lot of failures happen for two reasons. Either A: the business in question didn’t have a solid strategy in place, or B: they approach Facebook Ads with the wrong intentions.

It’s important to remember that Facebook ads are not aggressively targeting consumers the way Remarketing Ads do. They are passive. This means that people are seeing your ads when they might not be in a buying state of mind. In most cases, Facebook Ads are most useful to golf courses for the following:

  • Increasing brand awareness & social exposure
  • Capturing and nurturing leads

They do this my measuring Social ROI components, like followers, comments, likes, shares and so on. Now here is where Facebook Ads start to show their true value vs other forms of advertising.

Besides just the low cost, using Facebook ads allows you to use real time analytics to measure their performance. This allows the previously mentioned metrics to be tracked with ease and in-the-moment accuracy. That means you have the flexibility to instantly change ads that might not be performing well, or to bolster the budget for ones that are. 

How to Get Started

Even in today’s world of pervasive smart phone use, plenty of people are still wary of using social media for advertising. But we’re here to help. The fact of the matter is if you’re a small business with a tight budget, Facebook Advertising is one of the most affordable and effective ways to market your business. Here at 1-2-1 Marketing, we have the tools and experience to help you with Facebook advertising. In fact, we offer everything from website development and Search Engine Marketing, to reputation management and of course, social media advertising for golf courses. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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