In the U.S., we spend an average of 50-60 minutes daily on Facebook. That’s a lot of time, and oftentimes we’re in a state-of-mind to be influenced by effective and relevant marketing.
As Facebook users, we can probably recall the last few Sponsored Ads and Posts that absolutely resonated with us. As Facebook marketers, however, it can sometimes be challenging to build the perfect audiences that will be positively influenced by our ads and content. With so many targeting capabilities available to us, we can sometimes experience paralysis through analysis.
If we take it back to the basics, however, and build upon fundamentals, we can efficiently target audiences in a way that drives a positive response without breaking the bank. Here are a few audiences we can explore to jumpstart our Facebook marketing strategies.
1. Retargeting Website VisitorsA staple of most Facebook marketing strategies is retargeting users who visited our websites, because it works! In an era when we’re paying a premium in paid search and site optimizations to attract qualified visitors, we need to put as many strategies in place to re-engage those mid-to-high funnel visitors who don’t convert during their first visit.
This tactic is highly effective for emerging retailers and established retailers alike. And, not only is retargeting website visitors effective, it’s also incredibly easy. Simply install your Facebook Pixel on all pages of your website and allow Facebook at least a week to build your audience of website visitors. You’ve now unlocked the opportunity to reach a very specific audience with many types of Facebook ads. If you’ve already taken this step, but it has been a while since you’ve looked at your Facebook Pixel code, we recommend making sure you’re using the most current version. A few older Facebook tracking features will be discontinued this Fall.
While you are likely familiar with this audience type, here are a few key things to consider:
Second to website retargeting, this is one of the lowest hanging fruits for us to grab. Our goal here is to use our first-party lists to move identified users to an opted-in status or drive a purchase. This group comprises visitors who expressed a very high level of purchase intent by adding items to their cart or abandoning without subscribing. This group also comprises purchasers who may not have subscribed at the time of purchase. Reaching this audience with a small offer on Facebook is a great way to re-engage them and convert them into purchasers and/or subscribers. This tactic nicely complements your existing Shopping Cart Abandonment and Browse Abandonment email campaigns.
Some retailers we’ve tested Facebook Lead Ads with have seen costs as low as $.40 per acquisition. This is a small price to pay for such a valuable subscriber’s consent. Now we can reach these subscribers within our ad channels as well as our most efficient channel, email.
These are three tips to remember when targeting this audience:
This is one of the best kept secrets in Facebook’s Ads Manager. While Facebook power-advertisers likely already leverage this targeting feature, this capability might be a surprise to novice advertisers. For good reason, too, because this less-obvious feature can be easily overlooked during the Ad Set creation process. Most of us know that we can target audiences by Interests, Job Titles and Employers but did you know that the Behaviors category is based on propensity to purchase from any given product category? This is an excellent way to narrow down a very broad audience, for example a lookalike audience based on your best repeat purchasers.
The other best kept secret of Detailed Targeting is Life Events. You’ve most likely seen Life Events show up in your news feed when friends’ relationship status changes or when their employment changes. Normally, as Facebook users, we see these Life Events as an opportunity to share a quick “congrats”, but when we put on our Facebook marketer hat, we should do our best to leverage these Life Events in a way that benefits our audience.
A real-world example of this is when I began seeing highly targeted mobile ads that focused on my upcoming one-year wedding anniversary (whew, thanks for the reminder). While I didn’t purchase from this advertiser, it wasn’t due to lack of ad relevancy. It was an effective series of ads that I’ve remembered for years.
Here are two ideas to keep in mind when you use Facebook’s Detailed Targeting:
The key takeaway here is that our imagination is our only limit when it comes to targeting audiences on Facebook. These are three common audience targeting tactics that have proven to be successful for many Facebook advertisers, but there are countless more.
As always, test these ideas and your own to see if they work for you. Keep a close eye on Relevance Score of ads on the ad-level. After an ad reaches 500 impressions, it will be assigned a Relevance Score that is based on positive and negative signals from the Facebook community. This is often an early indicator of how effective your audience/ad combination will be. More on that another day.
If you found this helpful or have other ideas to share, let us know.