Facebook is the ideal platform for nurturing existing customers and gaining new prospects. If you’re using Facebook ads, or you plan to use them in the future, we’ve got some tried-and-tested ways to reach your target audiences on the platform.
First things first, though. You need to know who your target audiences are before you can effectively home in on them. Creating Facebook buyer personas can help. Buyer personas are fictitious representations of your buyers. They are:
- Current buyers (people who already buy your products)
- Ideal buyers (people you want to buy your products)
Defining buyer personas helps you understand what your customers are interested in—what makes them tick. This should help you create better ads and messaging that resonate with them and (hopefully) boost conversions and ROI.
How do you create personas? Think about who your ideal customers are or could be (e.g., 40-something, upper middle-class soccer moms with plenty of disposable income). Think about their needs. Think about their attitudes, aspirations, and behavioral traits. Use all this information to construct your buyer personas.
You may need more information. To get it, you can:
- Call your customers and conduct interviews/surveys.
- Interview prospective customers.
- Read industry blogs (gleaning additional insights from comments sections).
- Review comments on social media related to your industry.
- Analyze your existing customer data.
Once you’ve determined who you really want to reach on Facebook (or if you already have reached), follow these tips.
1.) Use Interest-Based Facebook Targeting
Facebook allows you to target people interested in a subject related to your product. If you sell dog treats and accessories, for example, you can specifically target people who like dogs, based on their past likes and interests and pages they’ve liked.
Before you launch an ad campaign, you need to decide on an objective. Is yours an “awareness” campaign, designed to generate awareness for your brand? Is it a “consideration” campaign, designed to get your audience to engage with your ads and take some action (whether it’s commenting on your post or viewing your website)? Or is it a “conversion” campaign, designed to produce a lead, sale, or download?
Once you’ve determined your objective you can get to work creating a campaign. It can be as broad or as granular as needed to meet your goal.
Keep in mind, the more specific you are, the smaller your audience will become. If you have a small budget or you’re a local business targeting a very specific demographic, getting granular may be your best strategy.
If, on the other hand, you’re an online retailer targeting a larger audience, you may have a wider range of parameters such as more age ranges and more locations. Learn more about the kinds of Facebook interest targeting you can use to create a successful campaign.
2.) Install a Facebook Pixel
The Facebook pixel tracks users by placing and triggering cookies as users interact with your Facebook ads. You can use this data to track conversions, remarket to people who have taken some kind of action on your site (more on remarketing ahead), and build targeted audiences for future ads.
A Facebook pixel can help you reach current and new customers by showing people ads based on actions they take on your website. And it can improve advertising returns by delivering ads people are more likely to act on, based on data from your website.
Even if you’re not ready to tackle ads on Facebook just yet, you should still install a Facebook pixel now. It will start collecting visitor data immediately, which you can use in your campaigns when you are ready.
How to get a Facebook pixel? Your programmer creates the code and uses Facebook’s guide for installing it on your website.
3.) Create Video Ads
Video performs better than all other types of content on Facebook. Video posts get 59% more engagement than other posts on Facebook. An analysis of the top 500 Facebook posts of 2018 revealed that 81% were videos.
Bottom line: Video is incredibly effective on Facebook, which is why your business—regardless of size or industry—should be doing it.
Here are some tips for creating video on Facebook:
- Keep videos short—no more than 90-120 seconds (engagement starts to plummet after the two-minute mark).
- Create several variations of a single video and see which one performs best on free channels (e.g., YouTube, your website or blog, etc.). You can do this by analyzing key metrics, including play rate, average length of viewing, and number of leads/conversions generated.
- Always be mindful that people use Facebook to see what their friends are doing and posting, not necessarily to make an impulse purchase. Your best bet is to create video ads that promote your brand/product/service in a not (overly) promotional way. Use humor, free downloads, branded storytelling, or teach viewers something useful they can use. Even if you are advertising, providing some up-front value will be more effective.
4.) Use Remarketing Tactics
Remarketing can help. It uses advertising to bring customers back after they’ve interacted with your site in some way by adding a cookie or pixel to the user’s browser, which follows them as they browse the web. It’s an effective tactic because it targets users who are already familiar with your brand but just need an extra nudge to seal the deal.
Facebook allows you to create custom audiences for remarketing ads. Learn more here and here.
5.) Gain Insights from Your Competitors
There’s no rule that forbids observing what your competitors do. It’s a tactic as old as marketing itself.
To see how your competitors’ ads are performing on Facebook, go to their page and click “Info and Ads” on the sidebar menu. Now you’ll be able to see all the live ads they’re running. You can change regions in the drop-down menu to see ads from around the world, or simply choose “Global” to see everything.
Look for ads your competitors are running on an ongoing basis. It’s a safe bet these are performing well. Why reinvent the wheel? If it’s working for someone else, a similar ad could work for your business, too.
Another way to gain insights is to “spy” on your competitors’ visitor posts to see what people are commenting on—good and bad. This is an especially useful tactic if activity and feedback on your Facebook page is sparse.
Get Expert Help
Read more about how to make your Facebook ads perform better, then get help from the experts. Our social media and influencer marketing teams will create a dynamic campaign to help you build your online community, promote your brand, and foster trust.
National Positions is a full-service SEO agency committed to your success. We’re constantly researching and finding new ways to empower your campaign with the most innovative technology to drive traffic, leads, and sales to your website. We use an array of tools, licensed through strategic partnerships, as well as proprietary technology developed in-house.
Call us today at (877) 866-6699 to get started on your Facebook ad campaign or use our contact form.