Let’s be honest. We’ve all been here. Your content team has written up some excellent content that doesn’t look like it just came straight out of ChatGPT. Your design team has delivered creatives that perfectly match the messaging. And you’ve written some pretty good ad copy if you do say so yourself. You hit publish, pop a bag of popcorn, and sit back to watch the leads pour in.
Nothing. Zero engagement whatsoever.
But what went wrong?
There are plenty of potential diagnoses for this common problem, but when it comes to Facebook Ads for Senior Living, the culprit more often than not is a poorly defined audience.
As we can see in the totally 100%, purely hypothetical scenario I mentioned in the opening paragraph, creating an effective Facebook ad campaign for senior living communities goes beyond just using high-quality visuals and writing engaging ad copy. You can have all the right elements of a great ad and still fail if your ads are being shown to the wrong audience.
So what can you do?
When it comes to Facebook Ads, there are four levers at your disposal to increase the quality of your leads: Identifying your customer persona, leveraging location targeting, optimizing ad placement, and making sure your ad itself comes across as relevant to the prospect. Let’s dig into each one now.
Lever #1: Identify Your Customer Profile
Before we do anything, we have to understand who we’re targeting. And before we even get into it, let me say this: If you take the time to think about this first lever, you’ll be doing better than probably 80% of other marketers in this space who just leave everything up to Facebook.
Who are your actual target customers? Seniors aged 65 and older are a diverse group with varied interests, needs, and browsing habits. For instance, active seniors might have interests that fall in line with their active lifestyle. Some examples of these interests could be community events, fitness classes, and social activities. Seniors with more significant health concerns may be interested in health & wellness or in-home caregivers.
Ideally, you would set up ad sets for each of these buckets of interests to gauge performance, but most of the time, communities do not have large marketing budgets set aside for paid social, so you’ll need to be strategic in what options you include.
And don’t forget that for some senior living options such as memory care or assisted living, you may also be targeting family members and loved ones, requiring a separate marketing strategy.
If you want to drive more qualified leads with your Facebook Ads, this is the first step.
Lever #2: Location Targeting
You know what they say: Location, location, location. We’ve talked about audience interests and prospect demographics, but don’t forget to also leverage Facebook’s advanced location targeting tools to reach your desired audience. You can use Facebook location targeting to focus the reach of your advertising on specific regions or neighborhoods where potential residents are likely to live. Looking at your existing resident data could uncover that most of your residents previously lived in a small number of nearby suburbs. If those residents are deemed as quality leads, why not run targeted ads to those locations to try and drive more leads? Here are two additional examples of location targeting ideas in action:
If you are running direct mail campaigns or local newsletter ads, why not try running a small Reach campaign in the same area? Your prospects might throw away the flyer or newsletter when they’re walking back from the mailbox but could give you a second thought when they stumble on your ad later while sitting in their favorite chair.
Maybe there’s an in-person conference coming up for seniors at a local community center? Why not run some ads around the community center for the day showcasing some of the fun events your community puts on every month with an option for prospects to download an event calendar?
Lever #3: Ad Placements
Another lever that could potentially be a great help, based on your level of data, is where your ads are shown. We’ve got to be honest here. Facebook is not a charity and does not have your best interest in mind. They get paid when you get clicks so they will push ad spend where it is most likely to get spent, but they are focused on spending your money, NOT on what it generates for you.
I highly recommend that anyone launching a new account or campaign run it with “All Placements” (or “Advantage Placements”) ON. Typically, I’d never recommend you give the control to Facebook, but as I said above, Facebook gets paid when you get clicks, so they will show your ads more where they are most likely to get the most amount of clicks.
After you’ve let that campaign run for a good amount of time and spent a few hundred dollars, it’s time for data analysis. (Of course, it’s ideal for you to give this plenty of time to collect as much data as possible, but trends are trends.) I recommend going into Facebook Ads Reporting and setting up a custom report that looks at clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and conversions if possible; all broken out by platform and placement. With this data, you will be armed to go back into your ad set and only show your ads in the placements that get the most engagement or most conversions.
Hint: It’s probably going to be Feeds and Stories. 😉
BONUS: If your community has quality analytics in place or is using a CRM, you could add a dynamic UTM parameter to your Facebook that would pass the placement name into your marketing performance report. After all, if you’re really trying to understand what ad placements drive the most qualified leads, why not look at what’s already worked?
Lever #4: Carefully Crafted Content
Bet you liked that alliteration, didn’t you? I thought you’d appreciate it.
When it comes to driving qualified leads from Facebook Ads, this is the final touchpoint you have control over. And like I said at the beginning: if you’ve looked at the other three and thought through them, you’re ahead of 80% of the rest of the pack because most people start here. They don’t take the time to focus their audience, they don’t narrow down location targeting (or even set any!), and they don’t think about what ad placements will bring them the most return. But you, my friend, are a professional.
Okay, soapbox over.
Alright, it’s no surprise that the final place for reaching your target audience is in your content and ad copy. At this stage, everything should be working in unison. Your image creatives should be relevant to your audience. Your copy should be relevant to your audience and the image. Your headline should be relevant to your audience and be a call to action that reflects the copy. Your description lines (if you use them) should be relevant to your audience and should support your call to action. And last but certainly not least, your landing page should be relevant to whatever your ad is about!
Let’s run through a quick example. Let’s say your audience’s interest bucket is Health and Wellness.
Your image creative could feature a picture of one of your on-site yoga instructors with a class mid-Warrior pose or some of your residents on a walk outside on a nature path or doing exercises in the pool.
Your ad copy could talk about how your community focuses more than on just keeping residents healthy, but on helping them thrive with active wellness programs centered around movement and longevity.
Your headline could encourage them to book a time to sit in on one of your upcoming classes.
Your landing page could be your community’s amenities page or a booking form to request a personalized tour.
You know the way. Don’t just tell your prospects to take action, invite them into a story.
Limitations
Now before we go, I know what you’re thinking, “Wow…They make it sound so easy…but what about the Special Ad Category?!” Don’t worry, I hear you. We will soon have an entire blog post dedicated to Facebook’s Special Ad Category for Ads related to Housing and how it affects our Facebook Ads for Senior Living Marketing efforts, but for right now, just know that Facebook’s Special Ad Category can limit your use of the platform and might require you to use a little more imagination. More on these limitations and some strategies to combat it soon.
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