Facebook Advertising For Small Businesses [Case Study]

THE ADVERTISING OBJECTIVE:

Veenstra’s Garage is an auto mechanic shop located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the past, Mike Veenstra (owner) has turned to direct mailing campaigns in order to generate new sales for their auto garage. While the direct mail campaigns were considered to be working, Mike was interested testing our ability to promote his offers using Facebook’s sophisticated advertising platform. Agreements were made, parameters were set, and we went to work creating the advertisements.

Over the course of 1 month, we ran a series of targeted Facebook ads promoting Veenstra’s oil change offer. Through continuous testing and optimization, we were able to narrow down our digital ad targeting to only the individuals who were most likely to claim Veenstra’s oil change offer. When finished, the latest digital ad targeting group accounted for nearly 50% of the total number of oil change offers claimed.

THE RESULTS:

The results from Veenstra’s oil change offer were very optimistic. Veenstra’s reported a total of 57 oil changed offers that were redeemed. More importantly, of the 57 redeemed offers, 42 were from new customers! The average ticket price for new customers redeeming a $12 oil change was $207.00, contributing a total gross sales of $9,697.00, not bad for a coupon offer.

Going further, we asked Veenstra’s to assess the lifetime value of a new customer. They discovered that a new customer’s lifetime value averages around $2,500. According to their data, the 42 new customers acquired for Veenstra’s Garage equates to $105,000 in new business! Not bad, huh?

RETURN ON ADVERTISING SPEND:

Try looking at it this way, for every $1 that Veenstra’s invested in their digital advertising spend, they received $14 in new sales generated for the company. You don’t have to be Mark Cuban to recognize that as a good business opportunity! Veenstra’s was so pleased with the results of their initial Facebook ad campaign, they doubled-down for a second campaign the following month.

CONCLUSION:

When used appropriately, Facebook ads can be a great way to reach potential new audiences and increase sales revenue. Facebook’s sophisticated targeting capabilities allow businesses to hone in on their ideal potential customer. For this particular campaign we used a combination of Facebook ad types, targeting parameters, and bidding strategies. One key variable we want to point on in this study, is the suspicious presence of Veenstra’s consistent branding throughout all of the web assets and in the store. 

How much of this campaign’s success can we attribute to great brand synergy? What is the overall of a great rebrand? What does a rebrand do for your new customer acquisition strategy? These are questions we’re passionate about solving at Deksia. You can start looking at your own brand strategy today by downloading our branding guide, found at deksia.com/thebrandingguide.

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The full case 

Why Context Is Everything In Advertising

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2. Advertising context is incredibly important when it comes to our creative considerations. It’s really what it’s all about, because it tells us how to most effectively communicate. You have to use the brand rules as inspiration of course, but the context is really everything.
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4. When envisioning an ad, it’s more important to start with the context and then create rather than vice versa. You can’t try to reverse engineer an idea to fit a format; the compromise will show for all to see. We always start with the context. What are our options? What’s the sandbox look like? We only want to build a sandcastle with the toys at our disposal. We’re more creative with parameters in place.
   
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6. Context is especially important when considering ad placement. If you’re thinking about advertising on Fox News for example, you need to keep in mind that it’s a very polarizing media outlet. To some it’s the gospel, while to others it’s the exact opposite. So if a brand like Whole Foods, that has more of a liberal, consumer-conscious image, advertises in the middle of Bill O’Reilly’s show, the audiences for both might be confused or put off by the association.
   
7. When it comes to context, you do your best to assemble the research you need to make the best decisions. But sometimes even that’s out of your hands, especially with retargeter ads online. I was recently retargeted by the NRA while visiting a vegetarian/vegan recipe blog. If you took a screenshot out of context, some people may really believe this vegan blog was choosing to take money from the NRA for advertising, something which goes against the core beliefs of many in their audience. But when you have more control over an ad placement situation, it’s always to your advantage to exert it.
   
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9. With any form of advertising, you need to consider what your clients will respond to. But as far as creating design, you should consider the context. You could have 10 locations, whether that’s environmental or print or digital, and all 10 of those have the potential to communicate to different segments of your audience that all want your products or services. They just want different pieces of them, and they both need to be respected in different ways.
   There’s been a lot made lately about the fragmenting of audiences. We don’t come together like we used to; now we have a million things to choose from. I think the more you can speak to different audiences in the places they live, the better off you are.
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How Establishing A Brand Tone Leads To Success

From a business perspective, it’s absolutely crucial to establish and maintain a clear brand tone. Ensuring that your business’s brand statement, tone of voice, and tagline are all on the same wavelength will do wonders for your company. If they’re all working together, then you’re in good shape. But they not only have to work together; they also have to work with your business.

THE BRAND STATEMENT

The brand statement is like a company’s secret decoder ring. If you hold it up to anything related to your business, it should tell you what works and what doesn’t. The tone of voice is more related to how you communicate with the public. It’s going to be a little more drawn out and longwinded. The tagline is the public brand statement. It’s a summary of the tone, but it communicates the message to the public without saying “this is our brand statement.”

It’s important for the brand statement to line up, because if it doesn’t, your brand integrity will be called into question. Think of it like this: at a restaurant, you see something on the menu and think, “Wow, that looks amazing. I want to eat that.” But when it comes to your table, it’s haphazardly put together. You were anticipating a gorgeous burger, but what you got was closer to Alpo. You have to make sure you are who you say you are, because if you don’t live up to your brand statement, you’re dead.

THE BUSINESS MODEL

A business like the restaurant above doesn’t set out to sell a false bill of goods, but they end up doing just that, because they’ve ignored their brand statement from a business perspective. They look at it as just a marketing thing: “I don’t have to actually live that in my company culture. I just have to live that when my marketing material goes out.” You really have to connect the business model to the brand statement.

We work for NAI, a real estate firm in West Michigan. What’s cool about them is they take a team approach to real estate. Emphasizing this aspect of their business sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t initially, because to them it was part of their normal business routine. I asked NAI and their clients why they thought NAI was special; working as a team was just one of the many reasons they gave me. But when I asked potential clients looking for an agent how they felt about having a team of realtors selling their property instead of just one, they said they would choose that option every time. So I crafted the NAI brand statement around the idea of commercial real estate with a team approach. The approach really started to become the backbone of the company. When they send out any correspondence now, it always says “from your real estate team.”

If everyone involved with your business feels the same way about the business, your continuity and your flow works so much better. The janitorial staff has to feel the same way about your business as the owner. If you have everyone in the company on board with the brand tone that’s been established, and if you’re able to maintain continuity, a strong, unified brand identity can be developed.

THE BRANDING GUIDE

We've been helping small businesses brand and rebrand themselves for years, and along the way we've kept a few of the key ingredients that go into performing such an endeavor. What has resulted is a sophisticated branding approach that has lead to one successful brand after another. That brand strategy has now been release, and you can download your free Branding Guide today by visiting: Deksia.com/thebrandingguide