Today we’re going deeper in the labyrinth called Facebook advertising. Stay with me, I’ll be your golden thread and lead you through the complicated pathways and crossroads that any beginning marketer must face alone in the quest for an efficient lead-generating ad campaign.
What we will focus now on is targeting tactics. Without targeting, you will be spending your life savings on Facebook ads and never get the desired result. Why is that? If you remember our previous discussion about Facebook advertising cost options, you do not buy advertising space on Facebook, you bid for it. Everyone vies for the same amount of space, placed in the same spot on the Facebook page.
This means that if you are choosing to show your ads to every man and woman walking under the sun, you will have to enter a bidding war with major companies like Nike, Coca Cola, Apple or Walmart. And you don’t need me to paint you a picture of how that will end…
This tedious but necessary introduction being done, let us show you how to get the most of your Facebook ad campaigns without paying an arm and a leg for them. Ready, steady, target!
Facebook Ad Campaign Targeting Tactics
1. Target people who Like your competitors’ pages
All is fair in love, war, and advertising. If you have direct competitors who offer the same products and services as you do, add their company names to the interest list of your target audience. Brand loyalty is not what it used to be a decade or two ago. People are willing to try other products from other companies, hoping to get similar or better quality for a lower price.
This is how it works: a person who liked a pet food page sees your ad about discounts on pet food (of course). It is unlikely that their pet is addicted to one food brand specifically, so the word “discount” will raise the person’s interest. You have high chances to get a sale from that person and if Fluffy or Lassie really likes your pet food, you’ve got a new customer. Don’t feel bad about your competitor, he’s probably doing the same thing to your customers…
2. Use Custom Audiences
If you’ve been in business for a while, you certainly have an opt-in mailing list. You can use this list to your advantage for Facebook advertising. How does it work? You securely upload your mailing list into Facebook and create a custom audience group which you will use for targeting emails. Every time one of those emails is used as a Facebook login, the person will see your ad displayed on their Timeline. While it is not guaranteed that all your opt-ins use the same email address for Facebook, you still get better targeting than by randomly selecting audiences based on demographics and interests.
3. Use the Location Factor
This tactic works wonders if you happen to provide your products and services in a specific area. It works greater wonders if that area is not a large urban agglomeration with many competitors (some of them big brands). Nevertheless, targeting people who are most likely to be within driving distance to your place of business is very effective. It does you no good if you repair computers in Melbourne and your ads are displayed to people living in Perth, does it?
4. Use Look-alike Audiences
This is a sort of piggyback audience of your Custom Audience. Once you have uploaded your list and people use the respective email address to log in to Facebook, you can tell Facebook to create a list of people with similar interests and demographics as your custom one. It’s not a perfect way to target people, but then we still have the saying that birds of a feather flock together, don’t we? You still have great chances to target likely customers in this manner.