Targeted ads on social media, to be effective, need to be guided by a comprehensive strategy. Effective targeted ads combine an intimate knowledge of your target audience demographics and buyer personas with compelling imagery and clever and persuasive copyrighting. They also leverage the power of big data to deliver your carefully crafted message to the right people, at the right time, on the right platform.
Facebook has been collecting user data for many years, and in the last five years, they’ve become masters of how to use that data to drive profits for their firm. When Facebook users sign up to the platform, they’re asked to provide profile data. Not all Facebook users complete all the questions being asked of them, however.
So, Facebook’s algorithms begin to track what you do, in order to complete the picture. What type of people do you interact with? What kinds of product and service ads do you “linger” on? If they serve up 10 ads in your half hour on the platform, and you only slow down to look at the one that has a picture of a cat, they now know something about you. Not only do they know that you like cats, but they also know that they can serve ads to your feeds that feature images of cats. It’s not too far a jump to conclude that if you linger over cat pictures, you might also be a cat owner. Based on this data, they can now provide targeted ads that are based around cat food, cat grooming, pet vacations, articles about how to care for cats, etc.
“Targeted ads on social media, to be really effective, need to be guided by a comprehensive strategy. Effective targeted ads combine an intimate knowledge of your target audience demographics and buyer personas with compelling imagery and persuasive copyrighting. They leverage the power of big data to deliver your carefully crafted message to the right people, at the right time, on the right platform.”
Facebook: The King of Targeted Ads on Social Media
Some people are alarmed by this tracking of data, believing that the social media companies know too much about them. This may be true. However, because they know so much about you, they can tailor your experience while on their platform. The longer you spend there, the more money they make. It makes good business sense for them to best serve their users by providing them what they want to see, help them make connections with people they like or aspire to be, and serve them ads based on their own desires, lifestyles, and preferred experiences.
Regardless of if you are a Facebook user or how you feel about their privacy policies, the fact is, they’ve made their platform and deep data accessible to businesses, both small and great, and this presents a golden opportunity. The potential for small business owners to reach potential customers is not only much easier and cheaper than ever in the history of advertising, it now affords you the ability to deliver your message right into the hands of the people most likely to respond favorably to it. The next question is, what’s the best way to do it?
Boosted Facebook Posts for Targeting
A Boosted Facebook post is the simplest form of Facebook advertising that allows you to take advantage of targeted ad placement without having to delve in to Facebook’s ad manager, which is quite complex. Essentially, the Boosted Post feature allows you to create a post on your timeline or in the back-end of your Facebook business page, select a campaign objective (more views, likes, shares, or driving traffic to your website), and do some basic targeting for your ideal customer. For example, your ad could target people between ages 18-40, who have expressed an interest in Coffee, and live within a 3 mile radius of your coffee shop.
Boosted posts are fairly comprehensive in their uses, and allow the user to achieve some pretty good results, all else being equal (which it generally is NOT). Advertising agency folk like to poo poo Boosted Posts in favor if the much more complex Facebook Business Manager, and while this criticism somewhat justified, it’s actually not for the reasons stated. It is more likely that the noted poor performance of Boosted Posts is due to lack of basic marketing skills on the part of those most likely to use them. You see, ad agencies have people who specialize in targeted imagery, copyrighting, etc., and these skills go a long way in an ad’s effectiveness. If you are savvy at marketing, it indeed does make more sense to use the Facebook Business Manager, as it offers much more power, creativity, targeting capabilities, and ad placement options.
Pro Targeting: The Facebook Business Manager
The Facebook Business Manager is a separate platform offered by Facebook for business marketers who need absolute control of the creative, targeting, and ad placement process. This tool will allow you to not only create more complex ads and ad categories, but will also allow you to carefully pick your ad placement. You might want your ads to ONLY run on Facebook’s news feed, or only as a pre-roll ad before other videos. You might want your ad to ONLY run on Instagram (as Facebook owns Instagram) as it’s the best platform to target your demographic.
The Facebook Business Manager is a rather complicated platform to get familiar with. Frankly, many a marketing professional will complain about the user interface, bugginess, and general lack of forethought that seems to have gone into making it. Nevertheless, it IS a powerful tool for those who get to know its capabilities.
It’s a wonderful thing to work on a platform with billions of users, and be able to delve very deeply into the program to find the EXACT type of individuals you want to market to, create an ad that’s specific to them, and deliver it right to them in the least intrusive way that’s been invented for advertising. The best part is that even the smallest businesses can afford to use it. Many small businesses are able to market to up to 12,000 individuals per week, for not more than $35 in ad costs. That’s simply stunning.
The Most Important Thing? The Actual Ad!
Remember that ultimately, you’ll be burning money on ads if you don’t have the critical components in place. The most effective ads are creative, informative, entertaining, or hopefully, a combination of all these. We’ve found that the very best ads are informational, and offer something that the prospect really wants. This is the power of targeted ads on social media. You get to pick the very best prospects who have already expressed an interest in what you’re selling, but only if you establish trust and credibility. A good takeaway would be to know your buyer personas very well, and build an ad that is tailored to their wants, needs, and interests. If you can do this, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Learn more about targeted ads on social media on our PPC page.
