The team at East Staffordshire Council knew they needed to go digital first, so as part of their digital first marketing strategy they started experimenting with Facebook Ads in April 2016, as they continued to move away from printed media.
“Although it took us time to set up and ensure we could maintain our Facebook ads , the rewards are well worth the investment.” Nathan Gallagher, Marketing Officer, East Staffordshire Council
They started small, and each time they got great results, so they gradually scaled up their spending as the year went on.
In January they developed a campaign to drive gym membership sales, and decided to allocate more budget to digital than ever before. They spent a third of the budget on Google Ads, a third on Facebook Ads and a third on flyers.
They printed 25,000 flyers and distributed to a targeted audience. However enquiries from this method was only small, driving almost no enquiries.
They ran a Google Ad campaign, which did well.
But the Facebook Ad campaign was where it all really kicked off. This is where they got most of their results. Facebook Ads got 2.5x the result of the Google Ad campaign and about 10x the results of the flyers, even though all three tactics had the same budget allocated to them.
The campaign worked well with all age groups, and brought in over 350 enquiries altogether. But what really blew them away was the results with over 55s. They got 120 enquiries from people aged 55+, which helped led to a 9% increase in the member base of their 55+ age group at both sites!
“It’s been our most successful campaign ever. We know we’ll be allocating more budget to Facebook than Google or leaflets next time.”
Nathan Gallagher, Marketing Officer, East Staffordshire Council
Facebook Ad webinar
If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Facebook Ads to engage inactive people from hard-to-reach groups then you can sign up for our free webinar. In it we’ll cover these steps in more detail and give you a step-by-step guide to setting your ads up.