Sales and Marketing has evolved significantly over time going from the Barter System of 1000 years ago to Traditional Marketplaces, Seller’s Marketplaces, Conventional Mass-media Marketing, Fragmented New-age Marketing to today where Internet enabled business models have helped marketing evolved further.
In the past through our blogs, we’ve touched upon this evolution. In this blog, we will focus on the internet enabled modes of marketing specifically Facebook Marketing. With most customers now continuously spending their time online, businesses globally have understood the value of targeting them through the online mode. While the traditional methods of targeting i.e. TV, Radio, Newspapers etc. help is reaching to a larger audience fast, they are ineffective in terms of targeting a specific segment of the audience.
If a business wants to target a specific audience segment, you need to create a customer persona and then set-up filters to target and find the relevant audience. To target relevant audiences, Facebook helps you segment your audiences using these filters:
- Location: Reach customers by City, Country, even Postcode
- Demographics: Target people based on demographics like age, gender, relationship status, education, workplace and more
- Interests: Define your ideal audience by their interests, hobbies and Pages they like on Facebook. This may be based on their listed interests, activities, education, job titles, Pages they like or groups to which they belong.
- Behaviours: Reach people based on their purchasing behaviour, device usage and other activities
Besides these regular segments, Facebook has two advanced filters known as Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.
Custom Audiences: Custom Audiences let you reach customers you already know with ads on Facebook. If you have a customer list or data from your site, such as purchaser email addresses, you can upload a list of email addresses or phone numbers of at least 100 people to get started. You can also build audiences from the people that visit your website or from people who use your mobile app. You can create a maximum of 10,000 Custom Audiences for those from your website or mobile app.
Lookalike Audiences: Lookalike Audiences helps you create new audiences based on traits from one of the following sources:
- Custom Audiences: Upload a list of your existing customers using Custom Audiences. Then use Lookalike Audiences to find people who resemble that audience.
- Website visitors: Install a Facebook Pixel on your site. Then create Lookalike Audiences based on people who've visited specific pages on your website.
- Page fans: Use Lookalike Audiences to create an audience based on people who like your Page.
