Facebook advertising for SMEs: does it still work?

Yes, Facebook advertising still works for SMEs, but on conditions. You need a concrete offer, a page the visitor can go to, working measurement and enough budget to let the system learn. Without those four parts there is a good chance you will spend money on reach without enquiries. This article is about the choices you make in advance; for how the costs are built up, read more in our article about the cost of Facebook Ads in the Netherlands.

Why Facebook is still strong for local businesses

The average age of the Dutch Facebook user has risen in recent years, and for many SMEs that is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Homeowners, parents of school-age children and people with money to spend are exactly the audiences who end up at a contractor, an installer, a car business or a practice. On top of that, you can target advertising at a radius around your location, which for a business with a service area of thirty kilometres is far more useful than national visibility.

Important to know: Facebook and Instagram share the same advertising system. You create your campaign once and choose within it where the ad appears. In practice we often let the system distribute it itself, because it can judge better than we can where a specific ad performs most cheaply.

What you need in order before the first euro

1. A concrete offer. "Follow us" is not an offer. A free inspection, a trial lesson, a quote within a day or a promotion with an end date is.
2. A destination that fits. Do not send people to your homepage but to the page about exactly that offer, or use a form inside Facebook itself.
3. Measurement that is right. Without the pixel and the Conversions API, the system does not know which enquiries come from which ad and therefore cannot optimise.
4. Room to learn. We advise an advertising budget of at least € 750 per month for Meta, because with too few events the algorithm keeps guessing.

Which campaign type do you choose?

A lead form inside Facebook usually delivers more enquiries at a lower cost, because the user's details are already filled in. The downside is that the barrier is low and the enquiries can therefore be less considered. If you follow leads up quickly, usually within an hour, the advantage weighs up more than enough against that downside. If you can only call back in three days, it is better to choose a campaign to your own website with a more extensive form.

What works in the ad itself?

For SMEs, advertising on Facebook is rarely a matter of nicer design. The difference lies in recognition: an ad in which the visitor recognises their own situation performs better than an ad describing your business. So start with the client's problem or question, use visuals from your own practice instead of a bought stock photo, and say concretely what happens when someone clicks.

Also expect an ad to wear out. With a local audience of a few tens of thousands of people, your visual has passed everyone within a few weeks. You see that in the figures as a rising frequency and a falling click-through rate. New visuals help then, not more budget.

How do you judge whether it works?

First look at the cost per enquiry and set it against the value of a client. An enquiry at € 40 is expensive for a bicycle repair shop and dirt cheap for an installer fitting a heat pump. Also look at what happens after the enquiry: how many enquiries become an appointment, and how many appointments become a job. That calls for simple record-keeping in your own administration, because the advertising platform only sees the enquiry and not the revenue that follows it.

Finally, bear in mind that the figures in Meta's Ads Manager never match your own count exactly. The platform attributes conversions within an attribution window and also counts people who saw the ad and came back by themselves later. Use your own count of enquiries as the leading figure and the platform's figures to steer with.

Doing it yourself or outsourcing?

A business owner can set up a simple campaign perfectly well, certainly with a lead form. The hard part starts after that: setting the measurement up correctly on the technical side, knowing when to intervene and when not to, and having new visuals ready in time. We manage Meta campaigns as a stand-alone service, separate from any content subscription; what that costs and how we build campaigns can be read on the page about Meta Ads. For SMEs that first want to know which approach suits their situation, the page about social media for SMEs is a good starting point.

Common mistakes among SMEs

• Boosting from the app. A boosted post has hardly any audience or objective settings and therefore delivers reach without direction.
• Too many campaigns side by side. With a small budget your own campaigns compete for the same people and none of them finishes learning.
• Changing everything every week. Every major change puts the campaign back into the learning phase, where the cost per result is temporarily higher.
• Not arranging follow-up. Leads that are only called after days have often gone elsewhere already.
• Stopping after two weeks. The first two weeks are rarely representative; judge after two months.

The Dutch Chamber of Commerce advises entrepreneurs to budget marketing spend in advance and to evaluate it periodically. For Facebook campaigns that means concretely: start with a budget you can keep up for three months, agree in advance which amount per enquiry is acceptable, and judge on that figure instead of on the number of impressions.