Next to the stage is BigWing Interactive’s Senior Manager of Social Media, Sarah Hoffman. Sarah shared her extensive knowledge of social media with us by focusing on how to create and engage with custom audiences on Facebook.
It’s important, she said, to keep your engagement fresh and relevant.
“The last thing you want to be is annoying to your audience. When your audience sees your ads, you want them to say, ‘This is exactly what I need! How did they know?'”
Engaging with your audience is all about “getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time.”
And Facebook, she says, is the way to go.
To create these custom audiences, you must attract them, engage with them, convert them, then nurture them with content so they become advocates for your brand.
But this won’t happen overnight.
“You don’t just go into a bar, meet someone for the first time and ask them to marry you,” she said.
And don’t feel like you have to reach everyone – it’s impossible to do and you don’t need to! Simply reach the most relevant people – these people will be your custom audiences.
Next, she took a look at the four types of custom audiences:
- Email
This is a great tactic if you’re just starting out with Facebook ads. Email can help you increase your Facebook likes. People are already subscribed to your email list – why not invite them to like you on Facebook as well? You can also offer your email audience exclusive offers, which is a great way to promote brand loyalty. In fact, Sarah used this tactic for Confluence, inviting attendees of last year’s conference via an exclusive alumni promotion. Keep your email lists fresh, though, by continuing to provide something valuable to your email subscribers that they’ll enjoy. - Website
On your website, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a Facebook Pixel installed on every page of your site, which is a piece of code that allows you to start collecting data. Once it’s installed, start building your audience and isolate specific visitors. The great thing about using a Facebook Pixel is that it allows you to include and exclude specific visitors. You can also regain lost customers. For Confluence, Sarah created a custom audience of people who had seen the registration page but excluded those who saw the “thank you” page (seen after successful registration.) This allowed her to go back and target customers who for whatever reason hadn’t finished registration.”Just because people don’t convert right away doesn’t mean they’re not interested,” she said. - Engagement
Here you can retarget people who have seen your videos. It’s a great way to connect with people who may have felt a sentimental bond thanks to the sights, sounds, and feels of your videos. - Lookalike
For this approach, you’ll want an audience with a minimum of 100 people. A great advantage here is that you can mix and match custom audiences: maybe you want to mix website audiences with email audiences. With mixed audiences, don’t forget to test different headlines, images, and copy. This is a chance to try out your strongest creative content!
Remember to focus on relevancy scores: what can be measured can ultimately be improved.
Lastly, Sarah left us with some guiding advice when targeting custom audiences and engaging with them:
“Your focus should be on spending the least amount of money for the highest quality fans, period.”
Connect with Sarah:
