During the past eight months Facebook has been quietly re-designing its Ad Platform. While media attention has been focused on changes in privacy settings and changes in organic reach, the biggest change on Facebook for small businesses during the past year has been the transformation of Ad Manager. Because these changes were often small adjustments or additions made over time, they went unreported or overlooked, but the cumulative effect is huge.
Facebook is a serious marketing platform and set to dominate online paid advertising. To be successful on Facebook, you must understand some basics of Ad Manager.
Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads
Anyone advertising online today is familiar with Google AdWords. Often marketers fail miserably with Facebook Ads because they approach them with the same mentality as AdWords. The only similarity between the two is that you are charged only when someone completes the objective of the ad. With Google AdWords that objective is a click through to your website. This is why they are often called Pay Per Click ads or PPC for short. With Facebook Ads you can select from a number of different types of Ad Objectives.
Google AdWords is all about keywords and search considerations. In order for someone to see your ad they must take action first by preforming a search for a keyword you selected. The potential customer must first have in mind to purchase your product and do a search for it to see your ad. While few men purchase a diamond engagement ring without first performing online searches, most products purchased in brick-and-mortar stores are done so without a prior search. Just think about how many times you have purchased something without first running to Google to study all about it.
In addition, people searching for a related item will not see your ad and be enticed to change their mind to purchase your jewelry. For example, someone searching for candy or flowers to buy for a Valentine’s Day present will not see your ad for jewelry.
Facebook Ads are completely different. Instead of selecting keywords for someone to search, you define your ideal target audience for your ad. Facebook then shows your ad to people in that audience whether or not they have taken a previous action. So now that man thinking about buying candy or flowers for Valentine’s, even though he had not previously thought about jewelry, seeing your ad he may decide it would be a better gift and come to your store to purchase.
Facebook has a wealth of information about its members from the Personal Profiles that everyone on Facebook fills out. Facebook also has purchased advanced demographic metrics and add it to the information they already have compiled.
In addition, Facebook monitors all the actions taken on its pages and stores that information in their database. When you ‘Like’ a picture or post, Facebook makes note of your interest in that subject matter. When you click on a link to another page, the subject of that page is recorded. All your interests and behaviors are compiled together in their databases.
While you may feel this is very ‘Orson Wells/Big Brother’ of them, it provides even the smallest of businesses unbelievable resources to target their advertising. In the past, only the largest corporations could afford such advanced demographic and psychographic information. Today, thanks to Facebook, any business can use these advanced hyper-targeting metrics for pennies per action.
Here is a list of some of the targeting objectives Facebook offers:
Advanced Demographics
Facebook ads have always been centered on basic demographics such as geographic location, gender, age, and relationship status. But now you have so much more that you can target your ads to including Annual Household Income, Net Worth, Ethnic Affinity, Home Ownership, Politics, and Life Events.
Psychographics
You can now target your ads based on the interests and behaviors of the customers. These interests and behaviors can be based on values, opinions and attitudes of the consumer, or targeted to purchasing behaviors and interests. You can target general behaviors and interests or very specific, such as if they purchased jewelry in the past 6 months.
Do you sell licensed jewelry? If so you can target fans of specific sports teams, those interested in a specific movie, or whomever the product would interest. For example you can target your ad specifically to the 1,094,000 people who have identified themselves on Facebook as fans of Alabama Crimson Tide Football.
Custom & Lookalike Audiences
You can create custom audiences for anyone for which you have an e-mail address. You can upload your entire customer list, or specific groups of customers, such as those who bought an engagement ring in the past 6 months. You can also personalize ads by creating lists of e-mail addresses for common first names. Then create an ad that begins with their name such as “Hey John …” and target only that list. You will need a new ad for each name you create a list for.
Lookalike audiences allows you to target a group of people that exhibit the same psychographics as your Page Fans or any custom audience you create. Once you create a custom audience of your e-mail customer list you can then create a Lookalike audience having Facebook find everyone who has the same interests and behaviors as the people on your customer list. When you create the ad you can further define the Lookalike audience with demographic information such as geographical proximity to your store, etc.
Re-targeting
Re-targeting is a powerful new tool that you can use with your ads. First you create a Tracking Pixel, also known as a Conversion Pixel. The Tracking Pixel is a piece of code that you add to your webpage that you send traffic from the Ad. Facebook then tracks everyone that clicks on your ad and stores them in a database. Then you can re-target this group with a new ad having it shown to only those people in your tracking database.
Brad Simon is co-owner of Internet 4 Jewelers and specializes in Social Media Marketing, and Mobile Message Marketing exclusively for retail jewelry stores. They are dedicated to making Social Media simple and affordable for every jeweler, and provide Facebook Ad Campaign Management, Content Packages for jewelry stores doing their own marketing, as well as affordable full-service Social Media Management. For more information go to www.Internet4Jewelers.com.
