Over the next few months, well, the foreseeable future really, I will be on a mission. This mission is one that has had a lot of thought and planning, and one that has been forced upon me by the world of social media advertising. The mission at hand: ending the terrible boosted post, which has the look of a small novel, the image quality of a Polaroid, and that has been randomly sent to anyone in that geographical location. We have all seen them, and chances are, we may have even clicked on one or two before. The fact of the matter is, as someone who has created and learned from countless ads, it pains me to see these companies wasting money. This blog cycle is intended to educate not only the small novel writing, Polaroid picture boosters, but everyone who runs social media ads in general. Hopefully all of the information is valuable to you, and we can start having better looking, higher converting ads!
This Week’s Topic: Creating The Audience
Times have come and gone, and it is not beneficial to your business anymore to simply boost a post to your Facebook followers and their friends. Creating the right audience to send your ads to will ensure that your ad has the highest chance of achieving the conversion you have set.
Step 1: Research (USE THE TOOLS!)
Facebook has invested millions of dollars and thousand of hours in making their audience building platform top of the line, and there is no excuse that every ad ran is not utilizing that feature. Besides the basic offerings of Location, Age, Gender, and Language, Facebook allows you to even further dive into detailed targeting. The three catch all targeting options for Facebook are Demographics, Interests, and Behaviors. Their definitions are as follows:
Demographics: Reach people based on education, employment, household and lifestyle details, which have been compiled from their page information, and census information as well.
Interests: Reach specific audiences by looking at their interests, activities, the Pages they have liked and closely related topics. Simply put, target people based on things that they have show interest in/engaged with on the Internet.
Behaviors: Reach people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more. (This data bracket seems to be the most powerful, as there is a direct action that can be tied from the consumer to this category)
“So Cruz, how do I use these features to find people I want to target?”
Step 2: Search your Core Audience Terms
Lets build an example here so everyone will understand. If I were a company that was looking to run an ad for running shoes, I would obviously want to target people who I thought were runners, and would be interested in my running shoes. With my target audience in mind, I can start searching core terms in the detailed targeting bar, and finding matching Facebook options. For example:
- Term—→Facebook Targeting Option
- Running→ Running (Interests), Running (Behaviors)
- (The Behavior option here indicates people who have purchased fitness and running products)
- Competitions→Marathon (Interests), Half Marathon (Interests)
- Running Shoes→Running Shoes (Interests)
- Fitness→ Fitness and Wellness (Interests) Nutrition (Interests) Yoga (Interests)(The List can go on as Specific as you would like it to)
You get where I am going with this? Use the search bar to input a key term of the audience you are trying to reach, and match it with the best Facebook options that you see. If you want to get really specific, you can only target one gender, exclude incomes that you don’t think apply to your product/service in the ad, or even target people who have liked competitor pages (this can be really beneficial).
The more research you do, the better your audience is going to be, and the higher chance of reaching a converting audience you will have. From here, you have a defined audience, which will be genuinely interested in your ad, because you are pairing them to things they have identified with in the past. We are out to end the age where my Grandma receives ads for a new local gym membership deal, and my sister getting an ad for a high paying construction job! Time is money, and money is money, lets not waste any of it.
I will get into more specifics for building ads as this series continues, but for now, I want to throw in a few easy tips that will help you create an efficient ad as well.
Choose Your Placements:
Facebook gives you the option to send your ad to the Mobile News Feed, Instagram, Audience Network, Desktop News Feed, and Desktop Right Column. If you don’t have a good reason to send it to one of these placements, then don’t!
Tips:
- Don’t use Audience Networks. This means it will send the ad to a mobile app, such as Candy Crush, and the Results from this ad will be skewed. How many times have you accidentally clicked on an ad while playing a game?
- If your mobile website isn’t good, then don’t send ads to mobile devices. You want to play to your strengths, so if you think your desktop version of your site is the best, send the ads to the desktop options.
- Match your budget with your reach. If you only have $20 to spend, then you are not going to reach a large percentage of a broad audience. So target that audience down, to where you are getting the best chance to reach a converting user. If you have $1000 to spend, try and match that to an audience you could reach 50 to 75% of.
This is just the first installment of a long road of education for our beloved Facebook advertisers. Keep checking back for the second installment, as these tips are not only free, but they will also help you and your business make more money from ads where you could potentially be spending less. Want to know what hacks Facebook has for creating ads, what the best methods for ad copy are, how to create higher converting ads, and how to set up good campaigns? Check back for the second installment on how to enhance your Facebook advertisements.