How To Locate Your Ideal Audience
Let’s be honest, ignoring Facebook marketing isn’t really an option for most marketers today. In fact, more than 1.2 billion people, who all happen to be consumers, are currently registered on the social media website. If you’re an entrepreneur, you will want to take advantage of this marketing opportunity, but you need to know how to reach your audience.
Although online marketing platform’s are indispensable in the business world, you may feel slightly intimidated by the thought of trying to target your ideal audience in a pool of one billion people. This is not necessary, however, and can be as simple as utilizing and understanding a few key steps.
Know Who Uses Facebook
If you’re new to Facebook, it’s crucial for you to understand who will be viewing your advertisements. According to www.pewinternet.org, the highest concentration of Facebook users are between 18 and 29 years old. Nonetheless, there are still a large amount of users within the 30 to 65 year age group, and they’re still very reachable from a marketing standpoint. As reported by Pew, households that earn more than $75,000 a year are more likely to use Facebook than those who earn under $50,000 a year. Furthermore, the majority of Facebook users are female, and on average tend to live in cities or urban areas opposed to rural regions.
Use Power Editor And Create A Custom Audience
Created by Facebook, Power Editor is a bulk ads management tool that provides advertisers precise control over their campaign. The function of Power Editor is to allow marketers the opportunity to create, edit, manage, and optimize advertisements across a large number of various ad accounts.Do you own a list of customer email addresses and contact information?
If so, now you can load their contact information and have an instant connection with your customers on Facebook. Not all of the email addresses that you’ve collected over the years will match the same address of the Facebook user, but that won’t matter. You can still launch your social media marketing campaign immediately, and you’ll see quick results. Lastly, create an advertisement that’s targeted at current customers who have not yet found your business page. They’re familiar with your brand; when your customers see your ad, you can surely expect them to “like” your page. The more likes that your business receives, the more credible your company appears to outside consumers, who will more than likely choose the brand that appears to be more established and credible.
If you are new to the entrepreneurial world, and do not have a database of customer contact information stored on your hard drive, the same advice applies: Use Power Editor. Facebook Ads Manager is okay, but you’ll find that Power Editor is more advanced and is better suited for managing specific, tailor-made advertisements that are more likely to translate into sales.
Now that you understand a few pivotal techniques on how to identify and locate your audience, it’s now time to move on to how you are going to reach your customer base.
Proven Facebook Marketing Options
Facebook is working for you, not against you.
Over the years, Facebook has made excellent changes to the way advertisers can target their ads to Facebook users. Fortunately for you, they are currently bringing more data into its interest-based ad targeting – specifically data from non-Facebook websites and mobile apps.
So even if your profile doesn’t mention that you love Seinfeld, and even if you haven’t “liked” any Seinfeld-related pages, Facebook can still see that you enjoy watching your favorite episodes from the sitcom on other websites and pinpoint ads accordingly.
To the advertiser, this is great news. Having such a powerful and multidimensional platform at your disposal makes for an excellent marketing tool. With that being said, you shouldn’t solely rely on the social media website to locate an audience for you, and in order to properly monetize, you should become familiar with a couple of solid Facebook marketing options.
Marketing With Pages
Facebook pages are extremely simple to operate, and are a quick, easy way to start marketing your campaign. In addition, pages are free of cost, and they offer high flexibility. Many companies use them incorrectly, however, and end up damaging the brand that they have been working so hard to establish. By following these simple guidelines, you can learn how to properly utilize your company’s Facebook page.
Upload a cover photo: It’s the first thing that anyone looks at. You can use your company’s logo or something that will capture the attention of your audience, but do yourself a favor and don’t leave it blank. Potential customers that visit your business page and see the gray outline of a bald man will most likely click the back button. For branding purposes, I like to use a logo for my company’s profile picture. This is because consumers who make a visual connection and have familiarity with a logo are more likely to become loyalists to that brand opposed to a brand they don’t recognize.
Add a brief summary: Directly under your business photo, you’ll see an “about” section. Be sure that your audience and potential customers know what it is that you do. Be casual, and make sure you keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Also, it’s a good idea to use this section to list your company’s hours of operation and contact information. That way, when someone views your page, they know exactly when they can reach you on any given day.
Don’t Spam: Period. Spamming your audience is probably the fastest, guaranteed way to lose fans. Before you post to your fans, ask yourself if what you’re posting is valuable and relevant to your customer base. You operate a business; leave the silly kitten videos out of your marketing campaign.
Post useful information to your wall: Now that you’ve connected with an audience, your fan base will be able to read the information that you post in their personal newsfeed. You can use this tip to educate consumers on new products, sale details, links to articles related to your company or industry, links to coupons, or anything business related. Do not abuse this, however, as customers may view your relentless posting as a form of spam. As long as you limit your posting to a few times a day, you will be in good shape.
Targeting Advertisements
As already mentioned, you can not only target advertisements listed on a users profile, but you may also target a user based off of web browsing data that Facebook has collected. What’s good for you, the advertiser, is that there are several places for you to start. You can choose by city, zip code, state or country, or you can choose to focus on basic demographics.
These choices are probably the more obvious targets that a marketer will look, but how about targeting those who have recently moved? For example, if you own a gym in Seattle and wish to find individuals who recently moved to the area, you can target your ads and ad copy to those individuals.
Learn to customize your advertisements
Fact: Better targeted ads are going to yield better results. If you’re targeting basketball fans, then it would be in your interest to design custom ads for popular basketball teams. You could have one ad aimed at Lakers fans, another for Spurs fans, and yet another for Heat fans. Or, for example, let’s say that you’ve targeted a group of people based off of their love for a specific band. You could mention that band in the ad in order to increase the likeliness that it will grasp their attention.
Promote Your Posts
This function is available for both profiles and pages, and allows you to push your most important posts higher in the news feed. By promoting your posts, you are increasing the likelihood that your brand loyalists will see important information in regards to your business.
Since Facebook puts a limit on the “organic reach” of business pages, you’re going to have to shell out a couple of bucks in order to ensure that a post has definitely been viewed in your customer’s news feed. It is not necessary to pay to promote all of your posts, however. You should only choose to promote posts that are going to have more of an impact on your audience.
This may sound obvious, but you should only promote your own content, making sure to be mindful of the source of the content that you’re sharing. Let’s say, for example, that you received an excellent tip that you’d like to share with your audience. The only issue is, this tip is linked to another website, and by sharing it, you are essentially paying to send traffic to someone else. You can easily avoid this by paying close attention to the content that you’re about to promote.
Lastly, if you are offering something for free with an opt-in, you should make it a priority to promote that content so you can transfer as many fans to your email list as possible. The larger your customer database is, the more people that you can reach directly.
Conclusion
Ultimately, be clear with what you want to achieve as an entrepreneur or business manager. Fortunately for you, no matter what type of company you run, Facebook has enough advertising options that you can tailor your marketing efforts to fit your company, your time restraints, and your budget.
By practicing the aforementioned marketing tips, you will be able to establish yourself as a brand, grow a fan base, and most importantly, convert your efforts into sales. Not only is Facebook powerful, but it is extremely flexible as well. Exploring these options fully will ensure that your advertisements are delivered to the right people who will promote, share, and buy from your brand. Yes, it will take some time to become familiar with all of its features, but it will be well worth the effort in the long haul.
Sarah is an aspiring copywriter with an obsession for SEO, Passionate for exploring the new marketing tactics and enjoys reading fiction and contemporary.