Targeting in Your Facebook Lead Ads for Rapid List Growth

Targeting in Your Facebook Lead Ads for Rapid List Growth

One of the reasons online marketing has been so successful is because it can be so highly targeted if you know enough about your ideal customer to be able to connect with them through your content and ads. Through targeting, you can then grow your marketing list quickly because you will be presenting the right people with the right offer.

Many online marketers argue that email is dead and social media is the best way to spread the word about your products and services. Nothing could be further from the truth. An email marketing list is still effective because it helps you build a relationship with your customers in a way that is difficult to do on the social networks.

People on Smartphones regularly use them to check their emails. Sending an email gives your content a better chance of sticking around and being read than spotted on sites like Facebook. This is because only around 20% of your followers will see your posts at any one given time.

Where social media can really come into its own is as a place to grow your list. Many marketers try to make a sale right away. But this is a bit like saying, “Hello, nice to meet you, will you marry me?” In most cases, a smart consumer is going to want to learn more about you before making a commitment, that is, spending money with you. A marketing list can help them answer their most important questions, so they will feel confident about hitting the “Buy” button.

Facebook offers different types of ads in their system, but the best one for growing a list rapidly is the Facebook Lead Ads option. As the name suggests, the whole goal of the ad is to collect leads to grow your list. The sign up or subscribe button will be right inside the ad, making it easy for your target audience to register.

But who exactly is your target audience, and how can you reach them effectively?Let’s look at niche marketing in the first section to help you get started.

Know Your Niche

One of the most important marketing skills you can master is niche research. A niche, or topic, helps narrow down your target audience to a very specific subset of people who are most likely to buy.

For example, imagine you are working in the pet industry. Pet supplies is far too broad a category. To sell successfully, you would then narrow it down to dog, cat, rabbit supplies, and so on.In terms of dogs, there are still many sub-niches you could drill down to, such as food, treats, clothes, toys and so on. Large and small breed dogs have different needs, so that could be a consideration as well when you are trying to understand the needs of your target audience.

Smart marketers create an avatar, or marketing persona, a mini biography of their ideal customer.Based on what they know from their current customer base, they will list age, gender, income, interests and hobbies, and other important data. They will then use the avatar as a guideline when it comes to creating their ads.

The main components of the ads are an attention-grabbing image, a strong headline and interesting text that speaks to the needs of the target audience

Once your ad is created, you will select who sees the ad.

If you own a brick and mortar store, geotargeting via city or zip codes will help you put your ad in front of the right people, with no wasted impressions.

If you sell items digitally, you could sell to anyone in the world, but chances are it is more effective to sell in English-speaking countries, if your products are written or recorded in English.

If you are expanding your brick and mortar business to include digital items, you should keep two separate lists, one local, one global. In this way you can get people in the door of your store, while still offering something to everyone who visits.

Getting Them on Your List

Once you know who they are and what they want, it’s time to consider ways to get them on your list. This will usually mean some sort of free incentive. Ebooks, templates, case studies and so on are easy to create and should offer real value to your target audience. Just because it is free does not mean it should be junk. Think of it as a free sample of what you have to offer and make it useful.

Present it nicely, such as in a PDF with an attention grabbing cover.Make it look like it is worth reading.

Other incentives businesses can offer to grow their lists will depend on the nature of the business. For a car dealership, they will be trying to get people to sign up for a test drive. For car insurance quote, they will need people to enter some data such as age and zip code to help pinpoint the right offer.For companies selling services, they might offer a 15-minute free consultation over the phone or via Skype to help determine needs.

Collecting the Right Data

Once you have your incentive, you can start planning which fields you will include on your Lead Ad to get the right data for your purposes. Name and email are essential. Other fields will depend on the nature of your business.If you have a brick and mortar business, collect zip codes to determine who is local. For the 15-minute consultation, you might ask for their phone number. In this way you can follow up with them more easily than relying on them to contact you.

Once you have made these decisions, it will be time for the most important one: setting your targeting for your Facebook Lead Ads campaign. Let’s look at your targeting options next.

Your Targeting Options

Facebook ads offers an incredible range of targeting options compared with other Pay Per Click (PPC) networks. Select the targets you know are relevant to your business, or which you would like to experiment with to learn more about. The experimentation could lead to a fuller picture of your customer and a better avatar to use going forward.

If you have never used Facebook ads before, it can be a little confusing to make your way through so many target selections, but stay focused on your goal, list building, and what data you need most to market to your audience effectively both via the ad, and once they are on your list.

• Location. Often referred to as geolocation, this will be important if you have a brick and mortar store and need to get customers in the door. Enter city, postal or zip code, and so on.Enter countries and cities as needed. Precise geotargeting isn’t available in all countries yet, but if you are sticking to larger countries, this should not be an issue.

There are three options for this section; in this location, recentlyin this location and travelingin this location. The last one can be very useful to attract new customers to come in. They are wandering outside their home with their Smartphone and bound to be looking for food, drink, and things to do.

• Age. Select the minimum and maximum age of the people who willfind your ad relevant. If you are not sure of this, check your insights on your Facebook page to see which age groups are most prominent.However, note that while they may visit, they might not act to sign up for an email list the way an older age group would.

• Gender.You should know this from Insights and your avatar. Choose All to cast the widest net, or women only if you have a cute pet site and can see that 96% of your visitors are women, for example.

• Languages. Insert your main language. This will cut down on wasted impressions. This will be a very important field if you deal in any language other than English, to really pinpoint your target audience.

• Relationship. People in relationships, and looking for relationships, will have different needs and interests. For example, an engaged woman is likely to be very interested in a range of good and services designed to help her have the perfect wedding. Those who are single will not usually be interested in back to school items for children compared with fun and fashion.

When selecting relationships, avoid choosing “unspecified”, because it does not give you enough clues as to what they might be really interested in.

• Education might be an important field if you are offering educational courses designed to get people to start college who might have missed out when they were younger, or to finish the degree they started.It can also help if you are recruiting for graduate school. Test prep is another product and service that would benefit from targeting education levels.

Targeting education level might also help you reach a well-informed audience, rather than the general-public, which can be useful for things like books, magazines,and other materials the general-public might not understand.

You can also specify a college if you wish; this could help these institutions connect with their present and past students, to sell memorabilia, invite them to upcoming events, fundraise, and so on.

Avoid selecting high school because of the sensitivity of dealing with children under 18 years of age.

• Employers. When targeting employers, you can select job titles such as administration or IT, you can choose types of employers based on the service they provide like healthcare, arts, retain, militaryand entertainment or by the office type; home office, small office, small business.

Using the employer options can help you pinpoint exactly what people are working in your industry, which would be valuable for business to business sales. In terms of consumers, they might want to learn more about a topicto boost their career or change careers completely.

Office type will tell you how entrepreneurial these people are. They might be interested in courses and other information, products and services that could help them make the most of their working hours and space and could take their business to the next level.

• Financial.There are several financial aspects to consider, including various income brackets, liquid assets, net worth and so forth. The important thing to note here is that while it might be tempting to aim for the people with the highest salaries, they are usually looking for high-end, luxury and prestigious goods. A $7 ebook will not be of much interest to them. A $7,000 course on expanding their business might be.

• Home.One’s home is not just one’s castle, but an entire lifestyle which requires products and services.There are quite a few options here including by type of dwelling such as apartment or multi-family home and by type of homeowner like renter, new parent, family-based household, etc. Select based on what you are trying to sell, of course, but also what these people realistically need.

Obviously, a household with children will have different needs than one with none, or which has become an “empty nest” because the children have grown up and gone off to college. Remember, somepeople want to down-size as they get older, not accumulate increasingly. They also tend to be interested in things like self-help and personal growth, and experiences such as trips to the spa, or traveling, rather than lots of material possessions.

• Ethnic affinity.Using this as a target will depend on what you are selling, such as beauty and hair products or certain types of groceries.

• Generation. Marketers tend to classify consumers in blocks, such as:
  • Baby Boomers, born 1945 to 1964
  • Generation X, born 1965 to 1981
  • Millennials, those coming of age around the year 2000
  • Gen Y, are like Millennials
  • Gen Z, are currently 18 to 24 yearsold striking out on their own and starting to manage their discretionary income. They could be in college and might also perhaps have graduated and are working in their first job.Gen Z, more than any other, loves gadgets and gizmos. They are the first generation who has grown up with the Internet and are native technology users. They are therefore much more savvy about marketing messages and smart shopping.

• Parents’ life events.Becoming a parent is one of life’s major events in terms of emotional and monetary expense. There is so much to do, get ready for, worry about. As the child grows, the parents face all new challenges.Knowing what they are can help you target them successfully to help build your list.

You have a lot of options with the parental group; new parents, parents with toddlers all the way through parents of adult children. You can select big-city parents, fit parents, green parents, and a whole lot more.

• Politics [U.S.]Unless the items you are selling are related to politics, this might be a section you want to skip. It really doesn’t matter what political viewpoint a buyer has if they’re needing or wanting to purchase a home, car, beauty product or some other product from you.

• Interests.These should match up with you’re the interests of your niche as closely as possible. There are so many options in this category, it’s impossible to include them all in this report but suffice it to say you have a lot of options to choose from. You can click on the category to select all within it or check individual parts of it based on your niche (the best option).

• Marketing/Remarketing/Connections. When people visit your Facebook page they leave a breadcrumb saying they were there. You can target these people to continue to show them your ads. Alternately, you can choose to target only those who have not previously visited your Facebook page.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of targeting options in Facebook.The goal is to use Facebook targeting to get your message in front of your ideal audience.

Not sure which will be the most meaningful data? Your Insights can help. Let’s look next at the data we can find there.

Using your insights for targeting

The Insights tab of your Facebook account holds a wealth of information. It is divided into a series of tabs to help you quickly and easily find the data you’re looking for. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

• Overview. On this tab you will find the activity on your account in the last 7 days. You will find Page Views, Previews, Likes, Reach, Engagements, Videos and Followers.You will also see any promotions you have run, and your 5 most recent posts. You should also see a list of pages to watch. These are pages like your own. Consider them your main competitors. Look at your performance in comparison to each.

For Likes, Views and so on, you will see a number, and a percentage up or down. Up will be in green, and down in red. For Boosted posts, you will see the number of people reached, the number of clicks, and the amount spent.

For your 5 most recent posts, you will see the type (photo or video), target (shared with public), Reach, Engagement, and a Promote button if you want to Boost the post into an ad.Videos are becoming increasingly popular on Facebook, so you might attract a larger audience by offering them, or more of them.

• Promotions. Here you will see your most recent promotion again. This page also has a useful button so you can create a new promotion, and a link that will take you to your Ad Manager. Ad Manager is where you will be able to create ads, see your results, and fine-tune your campaigns.

• Followers. This report shows you how many followers you have this month, and the current trends for unfollows, organic, paid, and net followers. It can show patterns of gaining and losing followers over time.

You can also see where the page follows are happening such as desktop, on your page, search mobile. A lot of follows on mobile, for example, would demonstrate that this is the tech your audience favors, and you would optimize your ads for mobile.Click on the tabs on the right to separate out the data into 4 reports.

• Likes. The likes page shows your total number of likes in the last month. You can view unlikes, organic likes, paid and net likes. If you are running a promotion, you would pay attention to paid likes. Also check to see which content is getting Unliked.

There’s a second report that shows where the likes are coming from such as your page, reactivated accounts, search box and other places.

• Reach. This section will show your organic and paid reach. You can also view recommendations, reactions, comments, shares, and more.

Reactions are likes, hearts and so on. Comments and shares are the most valuable engagements in the eyes of Facebook.The more you get of these, the more they will show your content to your followers.Pay attention to the things they love and try to create more content like that.

There’s also reports forreactions such as Hide Post, Report as Spam, and Unlikes.Keep track of hides as it’s likely viewers have found the content upsetting in some way. Also, keep an eye on spam. Facebook will show your content less often when spam is present. Track unlikes. Was there anything you published that might have offended people? If so, they will unlike the page and no longer see your content in their newsfeed.

Another report in this area is for Total Reach which shows the reach of your page, rather than the individual posts you have sent. Look at the daily average. If it is quite low, it means few people are seeing your content and you will need to start creating more compelling posts and encouraging more engagement if you are ever to increase your visibility.

• Page Views. On this tab, you will see total views and view by source, such as age and gender, country, city, and device. You will also see top traffic sources, which will be Facebook.

• Page Previews. Tells you the total previews, and previews by age and gender.

• Actions on Page. This is whereyou will see the Total Actions on Page such as website clicks, phone number clicks and more. You should have a button on your page, such as ‘subscribe to your newsletter’, to help develop a closer relationship with your audience.Use this data to help refine your avatar for your ideal customer.

• Posts. The posts report shows the past week of activity. It shows the number of people viewing your content each day, and the peak times. If your usage is highest on certain days of the week, be sure to publish your best content at those times. If your usage is highest at a certain time of the day, that should be the time you post.

The report shows your 15 most recent posts. Click the See More table look at reports for your other posts. Keep track of your best posts and plan to re-use them at a future date.

Look at reach on your post. If the number is quite high in relation to your number of followers, check the Engagement column for shares.Chances are they are passing around the content to others, which you want to encourage.

• Events. Facebook gives you the chance to offer different types of events to bring awareness to a cause, to garner engagement and more. This report shows you how many people you reached and how many views the event page has.

• Videos. This report will show minutes viewed in total, and the number of individual views for each of your most recent videos. Make sure your videos are interesting and speak to the needs of your target audience.

• Stories. Stories are a group of images and videos that only last on your account for 24 hours. If you are not using this format yet, click on the link to get started. Stories get pushed out to all your followers on their feeds or in Facebook Messenger, so it is a fast way to become more visible to your target audience if you are willing to put in the time and effort to create an attractive story.

• Messages. This shows your Messenger activity on Facebook for the week. You may find more followers contacting you through this method.

• People. We have saved the people tab for last because it offers so much information about your followers, you can really dig deep to learn more about your target audience including your fans, followers, people you’ve reached and people who have engaged with you. It’s divided into men and women and various age groups.

It will show percentages for each age group. Chances are you will not have much in the 13-17 age range unless that is what you are specifically targeting. You may find a clear ‘winner’ in terms of age, or your audience divided evenly across 1 to 3 age groups. This information will help you select the right targets for your ads.

Note the People reached tab.If your audience is 96% women, but on this tab, you see 7% men being reached, it is clear someone is sharing your content. Check the age groups as well—those who are most engaged with your content will see it more often on their feeds than those who don’t, so you may end up with a different winner.

Also look at the People engaged tab. You might find some data that bucks the trend. For example, you might not have that many 65+ followers, but then you see that they are sharing your posts more than other age groups.

You will also see country, city, and language results. They will vary depending on the report, so you might find the most engaged audience is in the UK, not the US.

All these insights can help you plan better content, and better ads. Take the time to learn about each report and decide which data is most important as you organize each new campaign.

Final Thoughts

Targeting is what makes Facebookads so successful and can offer a huge return on investment. However, your targeting will only be as accurate as your understanding of your audience. Use Insights to help, and your own targeting selection to fine-tune your ads for a higher conversion rate, so you can grow your email marketing list with Facebook Lead Ads.