With a brand’s target audience floating around somewhere in the two billion monthly active users on Facebook and 700 million on Facebook owned Instagram, utilising Facebook’s Custom Audiences tool is an essential way to reach the right people with relevant content that makes an impact.
The social media juggernaut is constantly testing innovative ways that allow advertisers to talk to their existing and potential customers across its family of apps, to amplify content beyond an ever shrinking ‘organic’ audience.
One of the key tools in a marketers’ armoury is creating Engagement Audiences within Custom Audiences, which allow you to reach people who have already interacted with your business, really honing in on a group that is likely to be more responsive to your messages.
If Custom Audiences is new to you, here’s a quick run-down on the five types that are currently available:
• Customer Files – build audiences from your own data from your CRM, email lists, POS etc
• Website Traffic – uses Facebook Pixel tracking to reach those who have visited your website within a certain time period
• App Activity – engage with people based on their interaction with your app
• Offline Activity – people who interacted with your in-store, by phone etc
• Engagement – target ads to people who have interacted with your Facebook Page or Instagram Business Profile, including videos, lead ads, Canvas or events
It’s an evolving beast with Facebook regularly expanding the options available, using all the data points that it collects. Here’s eights reasons why Engagement Custom Audiences should be a key part of a Paid Advertising strategy:
1. It’s not just Facebook – new and updated features include Instagram! You can create audiences that include people who have engaged with an Instagram business profile. Instagram is now included for video and lead forms too.
2. Choice and flexibility – you can choose to build a broad audience of everyone who engaged with your Page, or you can narrow it down to people who have engaged with a post or even sent a message to your Page.
3. It’s easy to set up – as the Engagement custom audience is based on Facebook data only, you don’t need to add a Pixel/SDK/code to get it set up meaning you can create a campaign in no time.
4. Retargeting for conversions – the more that people engage with a brand on social media, the more likely they are to buy from them. Serving someone content relevant to where they are in the sales funnel can lead to better click-through rates or conversions.
5. Smarter use of video completion rates – you can segment people by the percentage of a video watched. What did they learn from 3 seconds vs 95% of the video? Maybe retarget those who watched for less time with the strong call-to-action that appeared later in the video that they may have missed.
6. Capture the lead – lead forms are useful if you don’t have the resource to create a website landing page or microsite. Don’t let those who have opened a form and not submitted it go! Retarget them and get them to complete it.
7. Do more with events – You’ve created an event and you’ve promoted it to a target audience. Now what? You can now target people who have said they’re going to an event with specific VIP offer or promote a different event, or target those who have said they’re interested with an incentive to make sure they go!
8. It’s not a blank Canvas – a full screen Canvas is a great story telling tool, you can speak to those who have engaged with it and keep pushing them along the funnel
Want to talk to us about developing a social strategy for your brand? Get in touch!
