Most Facebook page managers still rely on the Boost Post button to increase reach and get their posts in front of new or even existing audience members. While Facebook has increased the targeting options available using the Boost Post button, it’s still just scratching the surface in terms of targeting opportunities and it offers nothing in terms of campaign optimization.
To truly benefit from Facebook’s vast data pool and targeting options you can either use a third party Facebook advertising platform, which can be quite pricey, or Facebook’s free Power Editor. This two-part blog series will give you a brief outline of the advantages Power Editor has over the Boost Post button.
Increased Targeting Options
Target Website Visitors with Website Custom Audiences
This is probably my favorite targeting feature. To use website custom audiences you’ll first have to add tracking code to your website. (Before that you should first make sure your website privacy policy informs your visitors that Facebook is collecting data while they are browsing your site.) If installed correctly, Facebook will monitor which of its users are visiting your website. Facebook stores this data for up to 180 days. You can then target your website visitors with ads or promote other website content to them while they are on Facebook. There are many applications for using this feature. I will write more about this in a future post. Stay tuned…
Target Users Based on Their Email Address or Phone Number
Do you have an email list or do you use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software managing your customers or clients? If so, you can upload this data to Power Editor and target Facebook users associated with the matching email address or phone number. This is definitely a useful targeting tool. It also has its disadvantages, as most people have multiple email addresses (work and personal), and the email address you have on file might not match the one associated with the user’s Facebook account. Same goes for phone numbers. You can expect a much higher match rate when your data consists mainly of B2C contacts rather than B2B contacts, as most Facebook users have their personal email address associated with their accounts. B2B data can still be very useful when it comes to creating lookalike audiences.
Tap into Facebook’s Data Pool by Creating Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences are a very nice way to tap into a new audience pool. This is where you’ll find new appreciation for Facebook’s effort to collect user data. Let’s say you created a website custom audience or uploaded a list of email addresses or phone numbers to Power Editor. You can then ask Facebook to create a Lookalike audience based on these audiences. The idea behind this is that Facebook will then identify Facebook users who have similar interests and online behavior as the users within your website custom audience, email list, etc. You can create Lookalike audiences based on your Facebook page audience or any custom audience you set up in Power Editor.
Behavioral Targeting
Facebook explains this targeting feature with Reach people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more. I believe this should read “and a lot more.” Here’s a partial list of targeting options which can be found in this section: charitable donations to specific causes, residential profiles, buyer personas, owners of a specific car brand, small business owners and many more.
Life Events
Yes, this is the feature that has probably freaked you out in the past. Did you get engaged recently and now you’re seeing ads from wedding photographers, wedding venues in your town, florists and maybe even weight loss products? You might have seen timely ads after you started a new job, had an anniversary come up or while you were in a long distance relationship. Well, Facebook is quite aware of what’s going on in your life, and it’s making this knowledge available to advertisers who are quite eager to get in front of you at the right time.
Exclude Audiences
A lot of times the best way to get a really targeted audience is to exclude certain users based on their interests or actions taken online. Let’s say you want to target users who have visited a specific product page on your website but left without making a purchase. You could serve ads to these users by creating a custom audience including users who visited your product page while excluding users who have also visited the Order Confirmation page. Or let’s say your company is selling one of those huge gas guzzling trucks. You might want to exclude users who have expressed interest in renewable energies, Green Peace, or other green topics.
This is just a glimpse of the many targeting options within Power Editor. You can get really creative using all kinds of targeting combinations when it comes to building a niche or a highly targeted custom audience you want to reach.
In part two of my Advanced Facebook Advertising in a Nutshell blog series, I covered the topics of visuals & copy, flexible bidding strategies and goal and conversion tracking.
