Welcome to the final post of a three part series, which concentrates on helping business owners learn how to use Facebook Ads to dominate their competition.
The other two posts include:
I’m a Successful Entrepreneur, Where are my Clients?
Target Marketing: Define the WHO after the WHY
The first post focused on defining your WHY.
The second examined the WHO your WHY resonates with.
This post will concentrate on HOW to reach the WHO—your TARGET MARKET. These are the consumers likely to purchase your product or service.
In previous posts, I have outlined WHY you MUST invest in digital marketing. To summarize:
- Technology is ubiquitous.
- With mobile technology, we are connected 24/7.
- Billions of people are active daily on social media.
- Digital marketing is cheaper and more effective than traditional marketing.
The Power of Social Media
What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
…Check your phone?
…Check social media?
…Check email?
Social Media Today suggests the average person will spend nearly 2 hours on social media everyday! This presents tremendous potential for you, a business owner, to tap into a new market by meeting people where they are.
To cultivate a successful marketing strategy, you have to consider where you will invest your hard earned dollars. Statistics indicate that a large percentage of your marketing budget should be allocated to digital marketing—specifically through social media. To figure out how much and where to invest these dollars, you have to determine exactly where people are spending their time on social media.
According to Sprout Social Facebook Has More Than 2 Billion daily active users.
To add context to this statistic, TechCrunch shares data comparing the amount of Facebook’s monthly users to their primary competitors:
- YouTube has 1.5 billion monthly active users
- Instagram has 700 million monthly active users
- Twitter has 328 million monthly active users
- Snapchat has an estimated 255 million monthly active users
Take a look at this infographic from a MediaKix that illustrates how long users spend on these social media outlets each day.
Depending on the audience you have identified as your WHO, the outlined statistics will help you determine which social media channel you should invest in. At the moment, Facebook is the industry leader; however you have to be aware of trends, and emerging markets. Although Facebook is the current champion, Millennials are spending most of their time on Instagram and Snapchat. Despite the fact that Facebook offers the most potential NOW, business owners have to keep an eye on the future to get ahead of the competition.
Today, Facebook presents you with the ability to gain unmatched ROI through as little as $1 per day using Facebook ads.
Facebook Ads
At VujaDay Creative Digital Agency, we recently have had the good fortune to design websites for several amazingly talented photographers who have had tremendous success with their businesses. Yet, given the market saturation for photographers in their respective locations, they are seeking a way to gain an advantage over their competitors.
…ENTER FACEBOOK ADS!
In collaboration with these photographers, we’ve built campaigns with considerations to the fact that MANY people are getting married…having children…or perhaps just want to capture a precious memory through the lens of a camera. As such, it makes sense for photographers looking to attract new clients for such occasions to implement a marketing funnel involving a website and Facebook Ads as key components to a powerful digital marketing strategy.
While photographers can rely on word of mouth, send out flyers, or pay for radio / TV ads (see this post for the costs associated with these options) to gain new clients, Facebook Ads provide them with a cheap, effective, marketing strategy to get very precise with who their ads reach. Furthermore, you only pay when your ad reaches, and makes an impression on exactly who you are targeting. Facebook makes it easy to target specific age ranges, behaviors, interests, gender and more!
Detailed Targeting
Who knows your clients better than you do?
Nobody!!
However, as you’re searching for ways to grow your brand, unfortunately there’s no exact science to crafting the perfect audience. Ultimately, a key goal of Facebook Ads is to generate brand awareness for potential clients who need your services now as well as those who may need them in the future. One of the benefits of using Facebook Ads is that they allow you to refine your audience over time.
Facebook Detailed Targeting section helps you get started on your journey to creating that perfect audience. You’ll be able to browse through the following sections:
- Demographics
- Interests
- Behaviors
- Other categories
In terms of location, you can be very precise through Geo-targeting specific cities, zip codes, counties, etc.
Given the impending wedding season, let’s look at an example Facebook Ad campaign aimed to help photographers gain new business through by targeting people who are Newly Engaged.
Yes, Facebook knows when people are Newly Engaged! Have you ever wondered how Facebook knows that you are in the market for a new car, new shoes, children’s clothes, etc.? The next section of this post will outline exactly how Facebook does this.
At any rate, using Facebook Ads, photographers can Geo-target men/women (or both) in a specific location (cities, zip codes, etc.) who are recently engaged.
As such, for this example, we will craft our target audience to concentrate on:
Women, between the ages of 26-50, residing in Marlton, New Jersey, plus a 25 mile radius, who are newly engaged for 3 months OR 6 months OR, 1 year, AND are interested in Wedding Rings.
Watch this quick video to see how this is done.
Within Facebook Ad Manager, the process is not difficult to set up once you are familiar with how to configure campaigns, including generating user personas and campaign goals/objectives. On the other hand, business owners have to make the decision to either learn how to effectively create and launch a digital marketing strategy involving Facebook Ads, or partner up with an agency that has the knowledge and expertise to handle this work for them. To fully evaluate whether hiring an agency will offer a high return on investment, we recommend the following four metrics to determine the success of such a partnership:
- Cost reduction
- Resource quality
- Increased flexibility
- Service quality
Ultimately the goal is to build a partnership with an agency who provide high ROI while also presenting a collaborative effort which can be measured by high levels of:
- Trust
- Performance
- Cooperation
- Solutions to existing problems
How Does Facebook Know That?!
Facebook knows which ads to put in front of you based on your past activity. To see how they do this, go to “Settings,” then “Ads,” or click here to check your personal preferences.
This is where you will find what Facebook knows about you, including your interests, advertisers you’ve interacted with, posts you’ve liked, links you’ve clicked and more.
Here is an interesting example from the recent Time Magazine article I Found Out Everything Facebook Knows About Me — And You Can Too, where the author tests out what Facebook knows about her.
Most of mine made sense, or I could at least figure out why Facebook predicts I like them. Origami, while not one of my actual interests, shows up probably because I took an origami class in college. Adventure travel probably comes up because I recently checked in at a brunch restaurant in Montreal. Versace is there not because I like the brand’s clothes but probably because I’ve been binge-watching American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace and frequently Googling the facts of the case.
Although Facebook claims it doesn’t sell user data (see recent Facebook privacy scandal), it does help advertisers target their ads based on data from your activity.
All of the tools are there for you, the business owner, to use Facebook as a proven, cost effective strategy to gain new clients. It is now up to you to decide if you want do this in-house, or hire a team to help you develop a digital marketing strategy involving Facebook Ads.
At VujaDay Creative Digital Agency, we can do both!
We will spend time training you how to develop a creative plan of action or we can craft and implement that plan of action for you.
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