So, you have made the decision to get involved with the power of Facebook advertising. 92% of social marketers are using Facebook advertising and it accounts for 9% of all digital ad spending each day.
But before you steam ahead with crafting your great new promotional ad or video that will storm Facebook’s crowded marketplace, there are a few things to take care of. Chief amongst these is making sure that your audience is targeted and focused.
If you don’t target your advertising efforts at the right audience then you are going to see fewer conversions than you want to, your sales are going to stall and you might as well be setting fire to the money that you are spending on it.
Targeting your ads on Facebook may seem like a daunting prospect to the uninitiated. However, once you have learned a few tips and tricks, you will find that it is actually pretty simple.
What tips and tricks? I hear you say. Well, I’m glad you asked.
Take a look at these.
#1. Find Your Ideal Customer and What They Like
The first thing to do is look at your existing network on Facebook. Chances are that you are friends with at least one other person whom you would consider to be your ideal customer. Use their profile(s) to get an idea of where to target your advertising efforts.
Head to their profile and have a look at the pages that they have liked. Go through their liked pages and find ones that are relevant to your business. Repeat the process for as many “ideal customers” as you have in your friend list and you should be able to generate a substantial list of pages on which to focus your efforts – especially if you get the same page(s) coming up over and over again.
#2. Harness the Power of Power Editor
Power Editor is Facebook’s bespoke tool that allows larger advertisers to create lots of ads at the same time and gives them additional control over their campaigns. Power Editor is a powerful and very useful tool and can actually help you with targeting the right audience as well.
When you are setting up your parameters for targeting, you’ll use the list that we created in tip one to enter the pages that you want to target. As you do this, Power Editor will actually recommend other pages that are related to the ones that you are entering.
You don’t want to be barraging multiple pages with a single ad, but you can add these additional pages to your list and keep building it as you go along. Then you can target them as you create more advertisements.
#3. Influence the Influencers
Chances are there are a few names in your industry that you turn to for inspiration and guidance. Influencers are the movers and shakers of business, and usually have a large following of people such as yourself who look up to them.
Make a list of the influencers in your field and go seek out their social media pages. These ages are also often worth targeting in the Power Editor as long as their following is the same target audience as yours. Find out who inspire your target audience, who they follow, who they look up to, and use that information to sharpen your targeting on Facebook.
#4. Test and Retest
When you set up an ad, you are likely going to be targeting several pages. Ten is a nice round number and good starting point – so set up your ad accordingly.
The best way to make sure that you are targeting your efforts correctly is to do your research, as already discussed, but also to experiment. By targeting several pages at once you can leave the ad to run for a few days and then see which pages are generating the best conversions.
If you had only targeted a single page with your ad this process would take a lot longer, so spread your efforts across pages and separate the wheat from the chaff in an effective and efficient manner. Remember, ABA/BT – Always Be A/B Testing.
#5. Stay on Target
You know the way that bigger companies constantly change your suggested products and targeted advertising based on the items that you have viewed recently? Well, that is because they understand that their existing audience/customers are the best people to target with their advertising.
After all, it takes a lot less convincing to bring existing customers back (assuming that they had a pleasant experience) than it does to draw in new ones.
You can leverage this by configuring the ad manager to allow you to target your audience based on the pages that they have already visited. You can also separate this by factors such as people who visited pages but didn’t make a purchase. To do this you need to install the Facebook pixel.
Retarget your existing audience correctly and you may find them to be some of the most responsive and profitable ads that you run.
So, there you have our top five Facebook targeting hacks. Please let us know in the comments below if you have any neat hacks to add to our list.
Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community(35)
