Audience targeting on Facebook is simple in many ways and complex in others. Whether you’re a small scale advertiser or an international business, paid social campaigns can be tricky to get right.
Here are a few common mistakes to avoid when building your audience strategy for paid social campaigns.
1. Lackluster audience mix
As advertisers, we understand that users who are actively visiting our site and interacting with our brand are the most likely to drive revenue. However, this does not mean that they should be the only audience targeted. Whilst your active user audience will help you keep a consistent sales volume, what it won’t do is help you grow that sales volume over time.
Facebook’s audience options vary from interest-based targeting to online behaviours, demographics and engagement levels. Therefore, having a healthy mix of all the available audience types, and testing which works best for your brand, is key to growing a successful audience strategy.
2. Bidding for the same user twice
Another mistake commonly made by advertisers is using various target audiences and then forgetting to add in the necessary audience exclusions.
Say you’re a sneaker brand, it is likely that some of your site visitors will not only fall into your site’s retargeting audiences but also into an interest group for specific sneakers. Without the right exclusions in place, you’ll end up bidding against yourself in the auction for space on that user’s timeline.
So, it’s important to ensure that, by using exclusions, you’re grouping targeted users into the right stage of the consumer journey. This will enable you to influence more efficient CPMs without the added competition.
3. Confusing consumer journeys
You have been going to the same coffee shop every morning for the past year. One day, your favorite barista forgets your usual order. Frustrating, isn’t it? Your barista, the one you had a good rapport with, has completely forgotten your relationship with them.
This is what the experience can be like to online users when we do not tailor the messaging to their consumer journey. So when developing an audience strategy, in addition to implementing the right targeting and exclusions, you’ll also need to use creatives that are tailored to the user’s current relationship with the brand, in order to maximize effectiveness.
Now you’ve built an audience strategy that finally ticks all the boxes, it doesn’t all end there. To ensure you’re keeping up with audience trends and continuously targeting the right users efficiently, make sure you’re constantly testing new ideas and refining your strategy.
To find out more about our Paid Social services or about Croud, get in touch.
