Facebook has changed our lives socially, and it’s also changing how we do business, or for this articles purpose, it’s giving us an added tool to the marketing toolbox.
Ever heard of the custom audience option within the Facebook advertising dashboard? It’s been an option in more advanced Facebook advertising platforms for a while, but they are now bringing it to their standard advertising dashboard.
Why is the custom audience option important to you? It allows you to target individuals by using data such as email addresses and phone numbers.
Are the bells and whistles going off yet?
If not, here are three examples to get you thinking:
1. You are selling X widget and you have a prospect list of 200 people. You have their name, phone number, email address and other data sets. In the past you may send them a mailing, you may call them, you may email… you know, the normal stuff. Now you can use their email address to target an ad specifically to the individual. If you do the math I’m sure you’ll find that it’s much less expensive than the traditional mailer you’re sending out.
2. You work in public relations and are set to kickoff a new media campaign. Just like the first example, you call, email, heck, you may even tweet to the reporter. Sometimes they ignore you, and other times they simply overlook the message. But what do you think would happen when they saw an ad in Facebook that correlated to a subject line they saw in their Inbox? I think there’s a high likelihood that they’d click the ad to learn more, especially if it’s targeted at them.
3. Have an existing customer base and want them to know about an exciting new product? Now you can enhance your marketing campaign by also targeting them specifically on Facebook by using their email address.
There are plenty of other examples, but the three above show you how you can use Facebook’s custom audience advertising feature to target specific individuals.
Don’t just advertise on Facebook. Target with a laser focus.
