10 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR FACEBOOK ADS WITH BETTER TARGETING

29th Jan 2021 Posted By Faheem Ahmed


Considering a Facebook Ad for your new campaign? Got mixed feelings about your current one? Read on, we can simplify Facebook Ads for you. The world of digital marketing can be overwhelming with all its jargons and technicalities. The key, as in the case of traditional marketing, is to keep the focus on the customers and their needs. To ensure the right message is communicated to the right audience to arrive at the desired objective.

Facebook Ads and Digital Marketing in general, enables us to take better decisions related to the message, audience and objectives, using the innumerable tools that leverage the data available at their disposal. Needless to say, identifying and narrowing down our target audience – the people we speak to is crucial.

Facebook targeting system is all about finding the ideal customer profile. This calls for understanding not only of the customer needs but also knowing who the customer is, their likes, dislikes, birthdays, interests, work, education and other parameters that go into defining an individual. The key factor to remember about Facebook Ads is that, the more we define our customer and target a suitable message at them, the more ROI on the ads. Here are a few ways to up your game in the targeting strategy.

1. Choosing between Existing and Prospective Customers
When an ad is ready for release, it is pertinent to understand the objective or CTA (Call to Action) of the Ad. An ad that calls for the customer to buy a product should be ideally targeted at a person who is familiar with the product. Similarly a customer who experiences the brand for the first time is unlikely to purchase the product in response to the first ad. However, this initial interaction is crucial to create awareness about the brand and the benefits the customer can take from it. In this case, the CTA will be to visit the website or claim a discount voucher.

The message in both the cases will be different and intended for different purposes. While planning Facebook Ads the customer profiles may be sorted as ‘Hot’, ‘Warm’ and ‘Cold’ based on their familiarity with the brand, in order to create separate campaigns for each segment.

Eg: A Departmental store curates an ad highlighting its price benefit for its warm audience and another prompting to purchase monthly coupons for the Hot audience.

2. Basic Demographic Targeting

This is the first stage in filtration of Facebook users and the very foundation of the targeting strategy. As simple as it may seem, it is important as it defines the sample that will be used to run the other behavioral parameters. Basic Demographic targeting involves defining a broad customer base in terms of Gender, Age and Location,

Of course, it helps to remember that members of that gender alone need not purchase a product meant for one specific gender. Such decisions about the market segmentation should precede the Ad creation. Similarly, when it comes to location, it is best to keep it to where the product is easily available instead of choosing to create awareness across the whole country or state.

E.g.: A women’s salon in Bangalore targets women in the age group of 40 to 60 living in Bangalore for the launch of a specific facial treatment through Facebook Ads.

3. Targeting based on Education

Featuring under the Demographics section, Education is a valuable element to the target persona. Education can help define a person’s preference to certain products or their need for particular information. It can also influence the language and tone of the message.

It can be further narrowed down to the field of study to understand the customer especially when the product is educational, like higher education or specialised online courses. Options are also available to sort choosing the year of graduation, the school or college they went to etc.

E.g.: A university in Australia targets recent graduates of commerce stream in the state of Tamil Nadu, India to promote their MBA programme.

4. Targeting based on the Gadget / Device

This feature enables us to deliver ads to a specific device or OS version. It serves as an ideal option for app developers and mobile accessory dealers who can target people with devices that are compatible with their products. When used cleverly, the feature can also be used to target customers for lifestyle products; mobile phones these days being synonymous with style, affluence and purchasing power.

Needless to say, the ads have to be mobile friendly and designed for palm top viewing. Mobile accessories are known to do better when the ads carry a picture of the device model.
Another way to maximise the benefits from this feature is to target device groups based on revenue generated from them. Suppose, 60% of the sales occurred through midrange android devices, it can be considered a lucrative segment to boost revenue.

E.g.: Ads for a video-editing app on Android is targeted to be sent to Android devices known for their camera features.

5. Targeting based on Work

The Demographic section provides the option to sort audience based on work categories. There are sub folders that allow us to choose a particular Employer, Job Title, Industry or Office type. To simply choose one category may not be sufficient for a good sample size. Layering the categories using Job Title, Industry and Technology will create distinct audience persona.

An excellent option for B2B advertising, it is sure to make the ad more relevant and less intrusive to the intended people. Office Type denotes the kind of organisation we target. It could be a startup or a small business concern.

E.g.: An ad for a Hotel industry software is targeted at General Managers or CEO for a List of Star Hotels in Chennai.

6. Targeting based on Life Events

Facebook Ads give access to an individual’s birthday, anniversary and upcoming wedding under the category Life Events. These events are likely to push a customer to make a purchase of certain category of products. While jewellers and clothing brands target anniversaries and birthdays, weddings create an opportunity for a whole lot of businesses from reception halls, caterers and wedding clothes. This model of targeting is best suited for hot customers who are most likely to make a purchase responding to the ad CTA (Call For Action).

Life Events like Births, Graduation, Engagement, Marriage, Buying a home, Retirement etc. can be leveraged for relevant sellers. These opportunities are usually time bound and work very well for local businesses.

E.g.: Sending ads for travel packages to people who are recently engaged can prompt them to plan honeymoon travel.

7. Targeting based on Interests

Interest categories are formed from algorithms Facebook collects from its user likes and ad tags. When used accurately to suit the customer persona it can reveal innumerable opportunities for interaction. The downside is that there are more than 200,000 interest options, so choosing a suitable one is not going to be easy. Food & Drink, Shopping Fashion, Sports & Outdoors, Wellness, Entertainment are a few popular options.

Considering the personal nature of the interest individuals may nurture, it calls for an almost psychological approach to lead them to the product we are trying to sell. For eg: An interest in Lamborghini may not directly translate to the individual wanting to buy it. Targeting using the Interest category works best when used with other parameters related to purchasing patterns and income.

E.g.: Serving an Apartment Ad in Chennai that is around Rs. 80 lakhs to an audience who is Interested in Real Estate Investment & also who prefer High Value Goods.

8. Targeting based on Travel

Sorting users based on their travel behaviour can be beneficial to several businesses. The sub categories include a wide range of options covering the purpose of travel, its length, methods of booking, frequency of travel etc. Apart from its apparent benefit to the travel industry, the information of this kind comes in handy to understand the individual’s food choices, disposable income patterns, entertainment and similar patterns that a be deduced from the travel behaviour. Airlines, Hotels and integrated sectors can greatly benefit from seasonal travel patterns of tourists.

E.g.: Business travelers of Petroleum industry traveling for an event in Dubai is targeted for ads of a B2B enterprise dealing in Petrochemical products.

9. Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike Audiences is a term used by Facebook to indicate people who are most similar (look alike) our current set customers. Facebook prompts us to choose an audience size and location before it runs its algorithms to choose audience that best fits into the current profile. What is interesting is they also allow this to be integrated to our own source of contacts from the website or a mobile app (using Facebook Pixel). Since the data takes a while to populate, it is best planned and defined well before the ad is created. The audience bundle can then be chosen from the ‘Asset’ tab during the release of the ad.
The customer data collated through Lookalike audiences goes beyond names and contact numbers and encompasses more ‘quality’ into the customer profiling including details about purchase patterns and personal preferences.
E.g.: Uploading a Database of Profiles of users who purchased baby clothes recently and creating a Lookalike Audience based on them will Make Facebook Scout for Fresh Profiles on the social platform with Similar Persona.

10. Custom Audience Feature

A group of users who are unique to a particular kind of business are grouped under Custom Audience. Similar to Lookalike audience these are defined and filled over a period of time. This feature also allows for exclusion of groups from the main target group of the ad. The Custom Audience feature is attractive due to the value it provides over a period of time.

Custom audience helps a brand in re-engaging with a warm audience. Ideally the source is picked up from a list of visitors to the website or app and further defined to choose people who have exhibited one or several behavioural characteristic. Several lists can be stored in the audience manager that can be used during ad release.

E.g.: An Online Apparel Store creates a Custom Audience of People who added a particular Branded Shirt to their cart but did not purchase and serves ads to this audience with attractive discounts to make them complete the purchase.

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