Swift 6 – 6 ways to target your Facebook ads
It’s time for another 123 Reg Swift Six. In this video, I’ll be helping you get to grips with a thorny issue – targeting your Facebook ads. Now Facebook adverts can be fantastic, but if you don’t target them properly you’re not going to see the full benefit. So if you’ve struggled with making Facebook advertising work for you, then hopefully you’ll be on the right track after this. If you haven’t tried Faccebook ads yet, then check out this guide. I also mention custom Facebook audiences in the video. If you want to learn more about those, then this is the place to go.
As always, I’ve included my script below the video so you can read that if you don’t want to watch the video.
When Facebook advertising launched, there was plenty of excitement in the digital marketing world. With so many eyeballs and so much data, this was a potential sales goldmine.
But it turned to disappointed pretty quickly as advertisers saw derisory click through and conversion rates. Products that would sell like hotcakes on Google didn’t get a look in on Facebook.
And then a few things happened. People started using Facebook on their mobile devices. Facebook changed the format to allow you to place ads in the newsfeed. And advertisers decided to promote content ahead of products. The results? Awesome. For many industries Facebook continues to deliver the highest ROI of any advertising platform.
So what are the specific ways you can target your ad?
First, there’s some very basic targeting that you need to choose. This is functional, but get it wrong and you’ll get nothing for your investment. You can target people on where they are – either by country or town or district. You can also reach them based on their age, their gender and the language they speak. Again, very functional but a necessary choice to make sure you’re hitting the correct audience.
2nd: You can target people based on what they’re interested in, and by the way they behave. On top of filling out your Facebook profile, there’s lots of ways that Facebook can find out what you’re into. Whether you like a Facebook page or product, or browse a site and comment on a brand, you’re sending out signals about your interests. Facebook makes those available to advertisers. If you’re selling garden equipment then it makes sense to focus your ads at people who are into gardening, or who have liked a gardening brand’s Facebook page.
3rd: Connections. This is an often overlooked targeting featured. You can of course reach people who have liked your page. But you can also target their friends. People talk about the brands they like. There’s a significant chance that if you’re doing the right things then your fans will have mentioned your brand. When your ad shows up in the timeline of your fans friends, they’re already receptive to you message.
4th – this is where it gets really interesting. Via the Custom audiences feature you can target people who have visited your website. We’ll link below to where you can read more about how to do that. Targeting people who have visited you before is called remarketing, and it’s a highly successful way to make sales. This group is already warm to your brand. You can also specifically target people who are existing customers, or people who haven’t yet bought for you, or even people who looked like they were going to buy, but for some reason didn’t. Perhaps they got distracted. All these groups are worth trying.
5th – you can target people whose email address you have. Because people tend to sign up to everything with the same email address, the chances are that they’ve signed up to Facebook with the same email they gave you, when they bought from you or signed up to your newsletter. Just like targeting people who have visited your website before, this is a very powerful technique.
6th and last – you can target digital lookalikes of any of these groups of people. This works best when targeting lookalikes of your existing customers, the ones whose email addresses you uploaded as a ‘custom audience’. Rather than you guessing at the best interests and locations to target, Facebook automatically selects those whose behaviour, preferences, interests and locations match those of your current customers.
And that’s your Swift Six – ways you can target your ads on Facebook. I’ll see you next time.
