Social media offers businesses an amazing way to reach new customers. Here are our top three ways to use targeting to benefit paid-for social campaigns.
Targeting based on interest and location
If your company sells products through a physical store or you offer services in specific areas then geolocation targeting will ensure you reach people in the right place. Location-based marketing is one of the best low-cost ways to attract and convert traffic into custom.
Instead of a blanket campaign, identify people with related interests in your products and services, and target them directly with a geolocated campaign, to generate quality leads and make conversions on ecommerce websites. For example, if you are selling pet accessories and grooming services, you can specifically target social media users who have expressed an interest in pets in your local area. People who may never have heard of you, or may never have considered using your product, can be persuaded to try your business for the first time.
Social Media remarketing tactics
Remarketing reconnects your brand with people who have already looked at your website, and promotes relevant content or offers based on their visit. By nurturing this relationship with targeted messaging reminds those who are already interested in your product or services, converting their interest into a sale or lead.
Facebook allows you to target visitors using website cookies, offering the ability to create specific product related adverts that can be tailored to different audience segments. This allows brands to be visible in the Facebook feeds of those who have visited a website by advertising the products or services they have already seen, through installing a Facebook Pixel.
Facebook has also developed an audience feature which supports email targeting, enabling you to upload customer emails and target Facebook users with tailored ads. Creating targeted feature audiences provides micro-segments based on your existing customer database, and enables you to promote offers to high-value users via Facebook ads.
Using lookalike audiences to target new customers
You know your customer profile, but how can you find more people that fit this demographic online? Simple. Advertise to a lookalike audience using social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
To put it simply, a lookalike audience is a tailored customer profile modelled on your current data and is based on the idea that people who are most similar to your existing users are most likely to convert. These lookalike models can be based on current customer lists, page likes and followers, and custom website audiences.
Let’s look at Facebook as an example. One way to create a lookalike audience is by uploading customer lists and creating new targeted groups that closely matches existing customers’ traits. By tapping into audience profiles that resemble existing converting customers and investing in campaigns that appeal to others that match those criteria, you’ll spend less on advertising and reach the people who will be most receptive to your ads.
You can also expand your targeted social strategy by creating lookalike audiences using website visitor data to advertise to people who are similar to those who have already purchased via your website. Creating a lookalike audience instead of using interest-based targeting, results in better-quality new audiences that are almost identical to your existing ones, so in turn are more likely to convert.
Know your audience. For remarketing and lookalike audience models to be most effective you need to understand who you’re talking to and what they want to see and hear. By implementing a good CRM database and data management system, and conducting profiling and segmentation of your data, you can create highly targeted lists which can be used for highly effective social media advertising.
