How to target engaged couples using Facebook advertising

The wedding industry is estimated to be worth a staggering £10 billion a year (source: hitched W.I.F.E.) and for wedding businesses, the battle for attention continues as you search for those all-important client bookings.

After speaking to many of our customers, I understand a lot of business is generated through referrals. But in this digital age, you as a business owner face new marketing challenges. I’m sure you’ll agree that a business cannot rely on referrals alone due to its unpredictable nature. So what else can you be doing to showcase your business to newly engaged couples using exciting technological developments? This is where I would like to discuss Facebook adverts. Statistically speaking, one in two people in the UK are active on Facebook. Here is the breakdown of ages and genders from 2016 you may find insightful (source: Statista).

Before you start targeting

Before we begin, you firstly need to create a Facebook advertising account. Here is a video tutorial on how to set one up. It’s important to note that you are required to create your first advert as part of the account setup process. I would recommend you stop watching the video at 1:54 and read the rest of this article before continuing.

Next you are required to establish your objectives. Do you want more website traffic or page likes? Facebook will ask you for this during the first stage of the setup called ‘Campaign’. Each objective is explained if you require further info. After inserting further details such as your currency in the next stage called ‘Advert Account’, you’ll move on to ‘Advert Set’. This is where you detail your targeting. Before we move onto that, you will be required to allocate a budget and schedule. I would recommend you use a lifetime budget so you know exactly how much you will be spending and for how long (be sure to set your start an end dates). There are minimum spending requirements which I detail towards the end whilst offering advice on how much you spend. You also may wish to give your advert set a custom names such as ‘Engaged Couples’.

How to target engaged couples

Now comes the exciting part! Facebook has a ridiculously robust advertising system. You can target users who have recently updated their relationship status to ‘Engaged’ by selected the result Facebook displays after typing ‘engaged’ into the field titled ‘Detailed targeting’. Once done, Facebook will display a estimated target size under the sub title ‘Potential audience:’ that will appear above ‘Audience details:’

I know what you are thinking, “18-65+ years olds?” Yep, believe it or not, the marriage rate for over 65s increased by 56% among women and 41% among men from 2009 to 2014 according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics. Reasons include a longer life expectancy, increases in divorce rates and new dating sites providing more opportunities for divorcees to meet.

On that note, you can tell Facebook what ages you prefer to target. A good place to start is looking back at your list of previous customers and identifying what ages they were at the time of their wedding.

The chances of your business targeting everyone in the UK are slim. The figures above are more of an eye-opener to how many potential customers are out there. The beauty of Facebook is you can narrow down your targeting by location. In the following example, we have dictated that Facebook targets engaged couples within a radius of 40 km around Halesowen, West Midlands where our offices are located.

The total 1.7 million has now reduced to 120,000. What about narrowing your targeting further?

How to narrow your targeting using interests

According to the 2015-2016 Wedding Report by confetti.co.uk, vintage is the most popular wedding theme. You may provide vintage cars in your wedding fleet, create vintage cakes and flower arrangements or stock vintage dresses. Simply select ‘Narrow further’ underneath the first targeting box and start inputting your additional interests in the additional ‘Detailed targeting section’. Once you enter a few interests, Facebook will start suggesting others to include. Here is what a vintage interest collection looks like.

As you can see, the 120,000 has now shrunk to 17,000. You can shrink this down even further using additional interests or reducing the location radius. Don’t forget, if you have more than one site, you can input multiple locations and select individual radius distances.

Facebook also gives you the option to target couples that have been engaged for a certain amount of time and friends of the newly engaged couple!

Remember, whatever you type into the targeting fields, Facebook will always recommend other suitable options called ‘Suggestions’. You can always browse Facebook’s entire targeting directory by selecting ‘Browse’.

The advert creative

After you have finished detailing your targeting in the advert set and clicked continue, Facebook will take you to the advert creative stage where you can select visuals and insert your advert text. This is a good place to carry on watching the video tutorial detailed at the start of the this article from 1:53 onwards.

So what should your advert display? You could showcase your latest products or range.

Or if you have a video of one of your client’s wedding, perhaps you could use it to show off how your services were delivered on the big day. I created the following example using our advert account.

What is the key to success with advertising on Facebook?

Test different images, videos and advert text. Try targeting different interests. Remember, if there was a universally proven method for doing this right, everyone would be raking it in! The biggest takeaway I can give you is think about your existing clientele and use that information to influence the targeting and imagery when creating your adverts.

How much does this cost?

Another big point about this method of marketing is it’s still relatively cheap! You can set fixed budgets so you never overspend, however, there is a daily minimum spend. Expect to pay a minimum of £1 per day if your advert objective is to generate more website traffic, increase page likes or capture lead information such as names and email addresses.

My tip is to start off small; test your different variations of targeting, imagery and text. Once you know what adverts are working well, increase your budget.

I want to know more!

Take to YouTube, it has an amazing collection of tutorials.