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In 2022, people spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day on social media. These days, it is hard to imagine a marketing plan that does not include social media marketing.
Professional service organizations such as accounting and law firms often struggle to develop a social media marketing strategy that extends beyond LinkedIn. The good news is that it is relatively easy to determine if other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok will work for your firm.
As of August 2022, there are between 9 and 10 million people aged 30 to 60 on Facebook that are interested in IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and NASDAQ. This audience could work well for many accounting or law firms that offer services for tech companies that want to go public, and this is just one of the examples of the type of campaigns that could be run on Facebook and Instagram.
You can also find new prospects interested in professional services on social media. There are millions of business owners and corporate executives on these platforms that need the services of small boutique firms to large organizations with hundreds of attorneys or accountants.
When developing a social media marketing strategy, it is very important to understand that you are marketing to people and not companies. That founding partner at that innovative start-up you are courting for your accounting or legal services could very well be spending time on Instagram, Facebook and even TikTok. You’ll also find that Executive VP who is the ultimate decision maker in choosing her firm’s next accounting or law firm does scroll through her newsfeed on Instagram. And that Senior Partner you would love to sign your contract, well he loves the dog videos on TikTok.
Determining if a platform will work for your business in 2022 and beyond requires testing, analysis, refinement, patience, and discipline. Testing is more important than ever since Facebook and Instagram have removed large swaths of targeting options on their platform and more are changes are yet to come. Analysis and refinement are always required in high performance marketing campaigns. Patience and discipline are just common-sense tactics. You must give your campaigns enough time to reveal reliable information.
Understanding how to conduct meaningful social media tests calls for an understanding of the basic concepts of social media paid advertising. There are three advertising objectives which are Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. All three objective are available on all the major social media platforms. Awareness is the least expensive ad objective; Consideration is more expensive, and Conversion is the most expensive.
The Awareness objective is designed to show ads to as many people as possible in your target audience. It is the perfect objective to use when testing and trying to determine if a platform is right for your business.
The first step to testing a platform is to define your target audience(s) and you may have more than one. For example, your firm may offer legal services for mergers and acquisitions as well as IPOs. It would be best to create separate audiences for each area of interest so you can determine which performs best.
Next, design graphics, videos and ad copy that piques the interest of your target audience and one great way to do that is to ask a question. If possible, ask a question that focuses on a pain point they may be experiencing in their business. For example, a question like “Is inadequate due diligence keeping you up at night?” would resonate with people concerned with this issue.
Run each ad for a minimum of five days and preferably a week and analyze the results to determine which advertisement performed best. If you are using the Awareness Objective, you can test with a very modest budget of $50 to $100 depending on the size of the target audience. Once the campaign is complete, dive into the data to determine which audiences, gender, age range and cities were most responsive.
A single test will reveal good preliminary information, but you must prove the concept by running additional tests. Four weeks of consecutive testing to identify different audiences and best performing graphics or videos and ad copy should reveal sufficient data to make reliable decisions. Whenever possible use videos in your ad creative even if it is only a video of a slide show. One-minute videos are the ideal length for newsfeed ads on most platforms and using videos allow you to track watch time on the platform which is a strong indicator of interest.
If you have an email list of existing clients and prospects, you can load the list to the given platform and have it find people that “look like” your list thereby creating a LookAlike audience. LookAlikes can produce some high-performance audiences, but they are no different than any other audience in that they must be tested and analyzed.
Once you have determined that a platform will work for your business, it is time to convert your campaigns to ad objectives with higher intent such as Consideration and Conversion. These two categories identify the subset of people within your target audiences that are likely to perform the desired action such as download a white paper, sign-up for a webinar or schedule a meeting.
When creating campaigns for ad objectives with higher intent such as Consideration or Conversion be sure to make a compelling offer as to why they need your white paper or should attend your webinar. The best way to do this is to focus on the pain point they may be experiencing and the solution that you offer for that pain point.
Getting started is often one of the most difficult parts of creating a social media campaign and one of the greatest stumbling points is choosing which platform to start with. Here’s some simple advice on how to move forward.
Facebook has been a safe choice for testing B2B campaigns because of its vast user base and wide-ranging age demographics. However, with so many millennials in the workforce gaining increasing levels of responsibility, Instagram could play an important role in your marketing efforts depending on your client base.
Think about the age range of your target audience. Facebook attracts an older audience and Instagram attracts a younger audience. If you are unclear about the precise age range of your target audience, test both. Since Facebook owns Instagram, it is very easy to test both side by side in the ad platform without breaking the budget.
The rapid growth of TikTok’s user base makes it hard to ignore. Many large brands are present on the platform and are growing huge followings. However, there has been some controversy over TikTok’s Chinese ownership which is causing many brands to proceed with caution.
A quick scroll through the TikTok newsfeed will reveal many attorneys, accountants and financial advisors all dispensing their wisdom and advice. At this point, these professionals seem to be sole practitioners or small firms and the larger firms have yet to jump on the TikTok train. Should you choose to market on TikTok, be prepared to create entertaining or informative videos or hire a creator to do it for you. The good news is that dancing is not required on TikTok.
Learn more: 20 Digital Marketing Terms for Newbies
Author:
- Sheila Donovan, President, Sheila Donovan Marketing
Compliments of Sheila Donovan Marketing – a member of the EACCNY.