Facebook Ads is a great platform to reach your prospects and build buzz around your product, service or offer without incurring huge costs.
The platform is cheap to get started with compared to other PPC networks like Google Adwords, Yahoo! and Bing Ads. The power of Facebook advertising lies in the ability to reach millions of users segmented based on specific attributions that are important to your business. You can start your Facebook campaign for as little as $30 and get clicks from as low as just $25 cents.
The success of your Facebook PPC campaign will depend on how well you target your audience, your ad copy and offer. Let’s look at the various ways in which you can target your prospects.
1. Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting is also referred to as location targeting and involves breaking down your target audience by country, state, city or zip code. For B2B companies, location targeting can have a significant impact on the click-through-rate (CTR) and ROI.
For instance, a potential client in Ottawa is more likely to view or click an ad with the word “Ottawa” in it compared to an ad targeting the whole country.
With geo-targeting, you can increase your CTR by including images of the city you are targeting. For instance, you can have a picture of the CN Tower if you are targeting businesses in Toronto rather than using a generalized image.
2. Demographics
You can also target your ads based on the demographic information of your market. For example, you can target users based on their gender, age range, education level, marital status, work position and so on.
Demographic targeting allows you to be as precise as possible with your campaign, which means higher quality clicks and leads. As a result, you can also optimize the ads for the lowest click costs and the highest ROI.
3. Interests
Most Facebook users indicate their favorite activities and hobbies on their profiles. This information is crucial for marketers looking to understand what their audiences like.
For B2B companies, targeting users based on interests can ensure provide you with high quality leads. When setting up your advertising campaign, you can put as many interests as you would want. For example, if you are selling financial software, you may target people whose interests revolve around accounting, CPA, finance, and so on.
PROTIP: You can also target users based on the brands that they like. For example, you can target fans who have liked your competitor’s page. Some of these fans may be unsatisfied with what they are offered, and are likely to want to see how your product compares to that of the competitor.
4. Behaviors
Behavior targeting is about taking advantage of a user’s actions on the Internet to influence their future decisions.
Behavioral data is compiled from different sources and includes everything that a user searches on the Internet, the websites visited, products purchased, ads engaged with, how long they stayed on a website and so on. The behavior is provided by Epsilon, Datalogix and Acxiom.
Facebook uses the data to create a digital profile of each user and then offers them to advertisers. For example, you may have found some ads on Facebook that relate to things you have recently searched for online. That is a form of behavioral targeting.
With behavioral targeting, personalized and helpful ad content leads to higher clicks and ROI.
5. Custom Audiences
If you have an email list of your customers or prospects, perhaps one that you have collected on your blog or webinars, you can advertise to the audience on Facebook.
But it’s not just email addresses, you can also tailor your ad to reach people based on their phone numbers and physical addresses. This strategy will work if you have collected data from your customers fairly recently.
Another way you can use custom targeting is by using Facebook pixels to track users visiting different websites, what ads they clicked, and what they have in common with other users.
Facebook pixel targeting allows you to know which audiences engage with ads and the types of ads that lead to the highest conversions.
6. Look-alike Combination
Look-alike audiences are similar to custom audiences. However, instead of you targeting your ads to a custom audience based on the data you have, you let Facebook build an audience that fits your profile customers.
Facebook will show you ads to users who have common traits with your target audience. This can result to new prospects and leads for your business.
The key takeaway is be as specific as possible when targeting users on Facebook. The more focused you are, the lower your cost per click will be and the higher the ROI is likely to be.
