Right now it is January 2019, and we are feeling a little whiplashed with just how fast the years seem to be rolling by of late. It seems we’re not the only ones to think so, as this comment can be heard in most cafes or social media feeds this month. While we believe this is a shared feeling, we also suspect that those of us working with social media advertising may feel it with a little more intensity.
As the #10yearchallenge is currently circulating amongst all of your friends on Facebook, it seems appropriate that we do a quick #thenvsnow on the abilities of social media advertising, which pretty quickly highlights just how quickly things are moving.
#then
It may or may not surprise you to learn that in 2009 Facebook was only three years into introducing Facebook advertising as a service on their platform, leading as the first in the social media pack to do so. In 2010 Twitter followed suit. Instagram and Pinterest joined the gang in 2013, and Snapchat bit the bullet in 2014.
It’s worth noting that in 2009, two platforms that have taken over our culture, Instagram and Snapchat, weren’t even on the market yet.
#now
In the last decade, the information captured on social media has helped the platforms to pinpoint the users most likely to enjoy your products or services, and given you advanced technology to engage with this audience in a more niche and targeted way; yielding far stronger results.
Today it is common knowledge amongst users that if you use social media, you will be advertised to and all of the information you have input into your profile is helping the platform in question to better profile you, thus offering customers more accurate targeting, and most users love this!
Targeting your ideal customers
Social media is today an almighty force giving you greater insights into your audience, which, leveraged appropriately, allows you to interact in a more meaningful way with your customers.
Here are our top tips to best target your ideal customers on social media:
1. Know your audience
Understanding your audience personas means gaining knowledge about the attributes of the people you’ll be advertising to. If you don’t already have this, you will need to create them before you can get started on your ad. To do this, you should brainstorm what your ideal customer looks like. What are their challenges, what demographic, age, location, gender or interests do they have? This will all help you to build the persona.
2. Remarketing
Any good salesperson knows how to look for the “low hanging fruit”. Think of remarketing as your low hanging fruit strategy. The best targets are those that you know have already been browsing what you have to offer. Remarketing allows you to target offers to users who have previously visited your business’s website.
3. Look-a-like Audiences
Lookalike Audiences is a great strategy when you know your audience but want to expand it and reach people with highly specific profiles. This is achieved by creating audiences that look like your existing targets.
If you don’t have an existing list or enough Facebook fans, you can create a Lookalike Audience using a tracking pixel to create a Website Custom Audience to mirror. From here you can make your audience smaller or larger, more or less specific to either narrow or expand your reach.
AdVisible is a Sydney based Social Media advertising Agency helping clients to find their target audience, increase traffic, and convert targets to customers. Get in touch with us today to discuss how we can help you target and convert the right customers.
