This means that for every five Facebook users, one user is looking to buy something. Meanwhile, almost 60% of users are on Facebook to fill up their free time. That is three out of every five Malaysian Facebook users who can be persuaded to look at an ad and possibly click on it to know more.
It sounds like a great opportunity, right? Yet for many businesses, especially those new to digital marketing, Facebook targeting can be a frustrating experience and end up costing valuable time and money. Even seasoned users are suffering from low Facebook conversion, as the platform continues to limit organic reach for brands.
Here are some reasons why your Facebook targeting is not getting results and what you can do to fix them.
1.You are not using Facebook Ads Manager
There are marketers who swear by zero-cost marketing, but let’s be honest: it is NOT zero-cost if you must spend time and effort creating a lot of content. While you may not have spent any money this way, the time you have taken to produce the content could have generated more sales if you used it differently.
Facebook already has a powerful tool that helps you to seek and target your audience more accurately. Using Facebook Ads Manager, you can customise your advertising and targeting, including setting specific marketing or sales objectives. In short, it cuts down the time taken to reach an audience, whether to increase brand awareness, grow engagement, or drive traffic to your website.
What You Can Do
While Facebook Ads Manager can be challenging for new users, it will level up your Facebook ad game considerably if you are willing to master it.
To start using Facebook Ads Manager, you need to first set up a Facebook Business Manager account, which you connect to your personal account. You also need to have at least one Facebook Page set up and added to the Business Manager account. Then follow the steps to create an Ad Accountto manage campaigns for the page.
Once you have your billing and payment settings, connected the pages to your Business Manager, and assigned roles to other users managing the pages, you can start creating your campaigns and audiences!
2.You are basing your audience selection on gut feel and guesses
You have probably read countless articles or watch videos that tell you to target your Facebook audience based on their interests. What they don’t tell you is how not to rely on guesses and assumptions when selecting those interests.
Unfortunately, this is too often the case, especially for smaller businesses. As a result, you are likely to set your audience selection either too broadly (and recycling the same limited set of interests and criteria as your competitors) or making it too narrow.
Setting your interests too broadly can cost you unnecessarily because you end up paying for more clicks that don’t lead to conversion. On the other hand, narrowing your audience too much can also push your cost per click higher. You could find yourself going through the segment too quickly while at the same time missing out on other potential leads because you didn’t include some useful criteria.
Big brands and advertising agencies have long used data and consumer research to learn more about their target segments, and they deploy this knowledge effectively in their digital marketing. If you want to see your conversion rates increase, you should, too.
What You Can Do
One of the most effective ways to use consumer data is to create a Customer Persona. This is a representation of your desired target audience, and describes in detail not just their demographic characteristics, but also aspects of their behaviour that you can apply when putting together your Facebook audience.
Dattel’s Persona Analytics dashboard in Voyager helps you to create a comprehensive data-driven Customer Persona of your target market, using behavioural and demographic information collected from consumers. By selecting a small combination of demographic, product, or behavioural criteria, you can generate a detailed report of your target segment and uncover aspects about them which you can incorporate into your targeting.
Using data may sound intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Voyager Persona Analytics is simple enough even for basic users with no experience using consumer data. With a few clicks, you can create multiple Customer Personas and feed your Persona Analytics output directly from Voyager to your Facebook Ads Manager to automatically create target audiences for your ad campaigns.
3. Your messaging and copywriting are not connecting with your target audience
Now that you have created your audience, your marketing efforts should not be wasted on ad content that is too generic or does not connect with them.
Remember, there are many competitors out there trying to grab the attention of the same Facebook audience as you. Not only must your ad stand out visually with colours and creatives, but the message also needs to “speak to” your desired target audience.
What You Can Do
When you create your Customer Persona using the Persona Analytics dashboard on Voyager, your report already includes information on the core values of your target audience, as well as the recommended messaging that affirms those values. This serves as the basis for you to address your audience directly and connect with them better so that they will take the next action.
These message recommendations can be applied throughout your marketing and sales strategy, from branding to ad campaigns, and throughout your entire marketing communications and sales funnel.