How to Advertise to Custom Audiences on Facebook

How to Advertise to Custom Audiences on Facebook

According to relationship marketing theory, advertising efforts should be focused on developing long-lasting and honest relationships with your customers. This form of marketing is multi-directional, using authentic communication to interact with consumers. As of October 2015, there were 1.5 billion active monthly users on Facebook. Using custom audiences for advertising makes Facebook one of the best ways to connect with consumers.

Custom and Lookalike Audiences

You can create a custom audience by using the network of people you already know and are connected with on Facebook. Then you can upload email addresses of your existing contacts, and the Facebook advertising algorithm will use them to place ads on their feeds.

Similar to custom audiences are lookalike audiences. For these, the same emails are used to expand your network to friends of friends. Using a combination of these two audience lists, you can exponentially increase your business' exposure and create real conversations about your product or service.

Creating Audience Advertising

There are a few ways to create a custom audience, but the easiest is through the Facebook Ads Manager app. Under the Tools tab, click through the Create Audience links to the upload portal. The custom audience database can use emails, phone numbers or Facebook IDs.

After you have created your custom audience, you need to develop a solid Facebook advertisement. Because your audience will already be familiar with your business, your marketing campaign should ask customers to share information, offer incentives for loyalty or ask questions that establish a dialogue. Whatever direction you choose to go, remember that you want to start a relationship with consumers, old or new.

Programmatic Marketing

It can be an easy mistake to see Facebook advertising as its own little world within your marketing campaign. To get the best out of your marketing, however, your Facebook advertising needs to be part of your larger marketing program. Programmatic marketing incorporates integrated marketing communication in which the central message is consistent over every marketing channel. It also should flow over time, so there is continuity while your message evolves.

Making the Sale

Although the theory is that a relationship is the goal of good marketing, business logic tells us that, at the end of the day, a sale needs to be made to keep the doors open. To do this, every page of your advertising needs to have an online payment processing system that enhances the consumer’s experience and an accounting software for you to keep track of your sales. For example, Sage One provides simple accounting and invoicing that lets you skip the spreadsheets, get paid faster with online invoices and figure out your taxes all in one system. Used with custom audiences, this may be a method of offering benefits to existing customers.

Feedback and Responses

Every marketing campaign should have a feedback loop, and Facebook’s custom audience ads are no exception. Facebook comes with a built-in response with its like and comment functions. These functions cost nothing and can be added to your custom audience advertising. They also have the added benefit of opening up opportunities to speak directly to your audience, which lends itself to further consumer interactions. Use custom audiences to expand your network, the like function to monitor the ad’s reach and comments to keep the conversation going.

source