Custom Audiences for all: Facebook’s heat-seeking marketing missile
Facebook has announced that its highly-targeted advertising function Custom Audiences will be available to all advertisers by the end of November.
What is Custom Audiences?
This ad-buying tool allows you to use your contact and email subscriber lists to tailor campaigns and reach targeted customers with your Facebook ads. All you need to do is upload your lists, (which now also includes compatibility with MailChimp!), and you can begin targeting users who meet the criteria you set with ads for your website, Facebook Page or mobile app.
Why is it so powerful (and exciting)?
Firstly, you have to remember that whether we like it or not, with its data collection, collation and insights, Facebook could probably answer more questions correctly about our personal, social and purchasing behaviour than a parent, best friend or even partner. It knows (and remembers!) what we like, what we don’t like, where we live, where we work, where we’ve been, what type of products and events we’re interested in, what music and movies we like. It knows our friends and can answer the same questions about all of them too.
It’s not hard to appreciate how powerful a marketing tool that can be. Now, add to that the ability to blend all that data with your specific mailing and contact lists.
Are you starting to get a picture of the awesomeness? Here are a couple more examples that might help:
- You can reach people with a particular interest in a certain location in a certain age bracket, but you can target only new people by triangulating those criteria against your contact list to exclude anyone already on it (giving you greater bang for your buck).
- You can target only certain people on your contact list with a facebook ad campaign that will show up in their feed or ad bar (instead of hoping they’ll open that email you sent them). Facebook gives the example of a local auto dealer reaching people who bought a car a year ago with an ad for a free oil change.
It’s exciting, because instead of only being available through the Facebook API or Power Editor, the functions will be available through any Facebook ad interface.
All of a sudden you have a marketing weapon akin to a heat-seeking missile.
All you need to do is guide it.
If this sounds really exciting and something you want to do, but you’re not sure where to start, contact us here. We love this stuff, we know how to use it and we’d love to help you make it work for you and your business.
