Advertising to reach your audience is as important now as it was fifteen years ago. However, the market has changed, and caused us to shift the way we advertise. Facebook has given small business owners the power of advertising to their niche markets at a fraction of the cost of what it used to be.
Small business owners in the past could only get their names out by radio, print, or if they had a large enough budget, local television. Today, with the power of Facebook you can reach your segmented market with only few dollars a day. Knowing WHO your audience is half the battle.
Below we are going to walk you through ten tips to creating your first Facebook audience.
The very first question you need to ask yourself is, if you can, who is my audience when I really break it down. What is your customer interested in, what type of places do they hang out? A lot of businesses believe their customers are 'everyone', but when they break it down the majority of them find that their customers have similar characteristics. If you do not know your customers yet, do more research about your industry and your speciality.
If you need help with your audience and your Facebook page has 30 or more "likes", you’ll be able to view Page Insights. It will provide information about the people who like your Page. This is a Great place to start.
One way to help define your audience is to know who the influencers are in your field. If they have a large enough of a (typically a couple hundred thousand) following you can actually advertise to their consumers. Yes, this is an option. For our audience, we could target Social Media Examiner as they have a lot of small and local business owners who are interested in a lot of areas that we work in.
Here is a link to show you how to find/create your Facebook tracking pixel. Once you have created your pixel, or if you had one already, go to the 'head' of your website. If you are having trouble locating the head of your website, contact the person who designed your website. Insert the pixel into the head of your website and click save. That's it. You can also download the Pixel Helper as a chrome extension for free. The helper will allow you to check to see if your pixel is active and working on your site.
You can only currently create 20 custom audiences at one time. For example, I would not create a custom audience based off a short-term sales option, unless I could use the audience again soon. You want to be able to use these audiences for multiple campaigns, if applicable. When you are first starting out, this may not be a major issue for you. Choose custom audiences will help you define your audience and narrow down your niche market.
By targeting your ad to a smaller, more specific group of people, you’ll be able to personalize your text and images to appeal to your demographic. Targeting a smaller audience will also allow you to test what type of copy and images your demographics are more receptive to. Once you are able to define your audience you can then begin to create lookalike audiences and throw out a bigger net. Remember, we don't care to market to just the random masses, we want the customers who would already be interested in your product or service. Creating a lookalike audience takes your existing audiences and searching Facebook for profiles that have similar characteristics of your already existing audience.
We talked in tip number 4 to put a tracking pixel on your website so that anyone who went to your website would be captured. Now that the pixel is set up, we will want to create an ad to drive the right kind of traffic to your website so you can collect the data.
Yes, you can target your already existing email clients. What do you bet they wouldn't mind seeing an ad from your company on their Facebook feed since they have already opted into your list?
If you have done number seven, then you will be able to create a newer audience based off the total traffic to your website. You can target your audience as far back as 180 days. The real power lies here because you know that if they are on your website they are more than likely interested in your services and are a hot lead. This would be a great time to give a discount or send an ad reminder about how you don't want them to miss out on a great deal.
You are only as good as your last campaign. Facebook is constantly adding new features and services to advertising, to stay on top of your market, you must test what worked and did not work. If you want to learn more about your target audience check out Audience Insights.
Like anything, it will take real time to understand the power of Facebook advertising. But our hope is that you are able to walk away with the knowledge to start creating your own custom audiences. If you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below and we will be more than happy to answer them.
We'll take the time to understand your vision and goals, and work with you to develop a customized plan to help you succeed. Let's work together to bring your brand to life and drive success.