Customising Your Facebook Audiences

Facebook is great, right? It’s a free platform to spread the word of your brand, allowing you to reach your target audiences. But it’s not that simple. You can’t just create a Facebook page and expect the people you’re targeting to gravitate towards your posts.

Like other social media platforms, the challenge is to make sure your target audience is exposed to your brand and your messages. This is about making connections with people you haven’t previously had a connection with.

As much as Facebook can seemingly be all about likes, at the end of the day, we must keep in mind that it is a social platform. This means that people turn to Facebook for more than just likes. People use Facebook for a social connection.

There are ways to ensure that you connect with your target audience. First and foremost, brands must:

  • Understand the target customer

  • Be clear about the value you bring

  • Create offers that solve the target customers’ challenges

  • Be able to communicate clearly your position to your audience

  • Playing the long game... build relationships and trust with people.

To define your custom audiences, discover which people have engaged with your brand. Use these to retarget for email lists, website visitors, and for social media.

Must haves for custom audiences for:

  • Email lists

  • Website traffic

  • Video engagement

  • Facebook engagement

Bonus – dynamic product ads (for eCommerce).

EMAIL LISTS- these are warm traffic, these people know you, and are therefore more likely to take action. Target your ads to people who are on your email list. This gives you another touch point to be in front of your ideal audience.

  • Email open rates are 15-30%

  • When you upload the list, the match rate is going to be 30-70%

  • Segment your list

  • Your customers can cross-promote/ up-sell

  • Target buyers who have bought from you in the past but not recently

  • Event registrants

  • Webinar registrations (attendees/ non-attendees etc) and then create ‘look-a-like’ audiences of all these audiences.

TIP – create a segment of your bounces and unsubscribes and exclude this list. Facebook has announced it has done away with positive/ negative feedback, and they are solely going with relevance. You can only create custom audiences with data you have permission to use. Cover yourself in your privacy policy/ terms of use on your website.

WEBSITE TRAFFIC- monitor all website visitors.

  • People who visit particular pages or categories of pages

  • People who visit specific pages but not others

  • Based on how long they spend on your site

  • Based on events you have set (like add to cart button but didn’t buy)

  • Test different day windows– the more recent, the warmer the audience

  • Retarget with Messenger for ‘Bottom Of The Funnel’.

VIDEO ENGAGEMENT- Facebook users love video, and it has a higher reach than other content. Grow your engagement audiences so you can retarget them with an offer based on how long they watch. If they watch for longer, they are more engaged, and should be retarget with an offer. If they watch for a shorter amount of time, it is likely that they need more warming up with more value in content. Create ‘look-a-like’ audiences of the more engaged audiences!

  • Utilise Facebook live videos

  • Create a video engagement audience

  • Amplify this to your Facebook followers

  • Gauge the reaction

  • Turn your Facebook live into an ad using your audience.

Grow your engagement audiences so you can retarget them with an offer based on how long they watch. As a guide, 75% on a shorter video shows good engagement (<60 sec). 50% on a longer video (>90 sec) is good. This depends on your own circumstances.

DYNAMIC PRODUCT ADS-

  • If you’re in e-commerce and have multiple products, get it on Dynamic Product

  • Pixel your product pages

  • Upload your catalogue to Facebook or use Shopify

  • Set up your catalogue sales campaign

  • Your campaign will automatically build an audience.

FACEBOOK MESSENGER- test Messenger ads. They allow you have more personalised conversations with customers and potential customers and are very helpful in building trust.

Think of Messenger lists as another custom audience that you want to grow. Keep in mind that this is permission-based marketing.

Build engagement through warm audiences and then use those same ads to target cold traffic. This will get you noticed because the Facebook algorithm likes growth in engagement.

Jacqui Thebes1 Comment