Social media is a great marketing medium as it allows business owners to reach millions of people and spread their influence. Facebook is still the biggest social media platform with billions of active monthly users. Most marketers and business owners are eager to utilise this platform and ensure their business is visible to their large target audience. They plan the ad copy, create content to post on social media, think of the pictures and profile design, etc. but fail to focus enough on targeting. Here are some ways in which you can target the right audience on Facebook:
#1 Your Customers
This is the best and easiest ways to improve sales because you’re targeting people who have already converted and are interested in what you offer. Facebook allows business owners to create a specific target list called a “custom audience”. You can upload your customer database to Facebook and allow the platform to find them based on the information on the database like name, email address, date of birth, gender, etc.
The ad campaigns can then target these customers exclusively and no one else. Many business owners focus on new audiences before they think of targeting existing customers. That can be a mistake..
#2 Lookalikes
If you have an established customer database and have uploaded it to Facebook, you know what the ideal converting customer profile looks like. It’s a good idea to seek out new audiences that have similar profiles, interests, and demographics to the existing customers. This is very easy to do as you just need to tell Facebook to find prospects with similar traits. The platform will profile all the customers in the previously uploaded customer database and find lookalikes amongst its active users.
You can ask the platform to isolate the top 1% to 5% of the lookalike audience and start from there. The sample size can be very big so it’s a good idea to start off small. For example, the top 1% of the target audience could be anywhere from 100,000 to 120,000 people, which is a large sample to target. As the business grows, you can easily target bigger audiences based on their marketing budget.
#3 Facebook fans
Facebook fans are users who like your business pages, content, profiles; respond to comments, or share your content. These people already like your business, products, and services well enough to pay attention to you on a crowded social media platform. You can target these audiences based on Facebook engagement tools. It’s easy to limit the target audience to active users as well, which decreases the advertisement expenditure by a considerable margin. These users are familiar with the brand and don’t require as much motivation to convert, which leads to lower acquisition costs.
#4 Retargeting
Retargeting is different from targeting customer audience because it doesn’t require a dedicated customer database to work. Website owners need to install a small Facebook pixel (code) in their website coding. This allows Facebook to identify people who visited your website and target them with ads.
Retargeting has shown to provide excellent conversion rates. It’s effective in targeting people who showed interest in a purchase or who left behind a full cart instead of completing the transaction. If business owners don’t target them, all the money spent on acquiring them goes to waste. Facebook can show ads that say “Hey, you forgot something, you didn’t finish checking out,” or “would you like to finish your transaction?” Some people will complete the transaction, which has a positive impact on your revenue.
#5 Email audience
You can upload your email database consisting of users that have subscribed to newsletters, blog posts, etc to Facebook. Facebook will find users based on the email addresses and start targeting them as well. This has a low cost per acquisition, but can bring in a lot of conversions if you use the right ads and campaigns.
#6 Audiences that watch videos
Videos are time-consuming and require focus so users who watch the videos are easier to convert. You can develop a list of users that watch the entire video and those that watch a percentage of it. For example, you might find people who watch more than 25% of the videos are actively engaged and are more likely to convert.
You can target them with specific marketing and ads to convince them to make a purchase. The ads can be connected to the subject discussed in the video so if the video discussed make-up products, the business can direct make-up products related ads to the user. If it discussed skincare products, the business can direct skincare products-related ads to the user.
#7 Cold targeting
This is the final step of the Facebook targeting process as you look at Analytics data, create target audience profiles, set targeting parameters on Facebook and reach out to cold audiences that have never interacted with you. This process requires the highest investment and provides the lowest returns, but is effective in bringing more visibility to the brand and building an audience.
Targeting is one of the most essential aspects of marketing on social media. The tips mentioned above can help convert a larger number of prospects.
