Facebook Customer Audience Targeting

By Jack Monson, Director of Digital Strategy, QiigoIt’s been said over and over that Content Is King. Sure. But if the content is never read, viewed, or heard by anyone, then it’s not very royal.If content drops but no one sees it, does it make any impact?You must spend some dollars on advertising to promote your content or no one will ever see it. But what’s the best way to throw some money at this problem? Advertise to only to targeted demographics or geography? No.Take one step back – do you have email addresses of your current or recent clients? Let’s start there. Facebook’s Custom Audience Targeting allows you to serve up that ad to a specific group of people for whom you already have an email address.Facebook won’t let you pick and choose specific people by name to whom an ad will be served but we can serve up ads to people whose email addresses match! In Facebook’s view, if you’ve already got an email address, then there’s a reason to speak to these people in specific voices.Here’s for whom it works:Business to Consumer – Create targets ads for:

• Your current customers
• Specific customers part of your loyalty program
• Potential customers who have signed up for specials or info

Business to Business – Create targeted ads for:

• Prospects and candidates

Here’s how it works:1. Go to Manage Ads on Facebook and click Create Audience button (far left)2. Choose Customer List3. Click Upload File and select your spreadsheet with your email databaseOne issue to watch is the percentage of your email database that matches with Facebook users. One large franchise system with whom I spoke at last year’s FranTech has seen a match of between 60 – 70%. And an even larger global brand client of mine saw only about 50% match. Why the discrepancy? Consumers are signing up for your offerings with a different email address than what they used to sign up for Facebook. But still, specifically targeting half or more of the people in your email database is a fantastic and economical way to reach your customers.[author] About the Author: Jack Monson is the Director of Digital Strategy at Qiigo. He has been helping global brands, enterprises, and franchise systems with Digital Marketing for nearly two decades. He blogs at Social Media Workbench and is the co-host of the weekly Social Geek Radio program and podcast. Reach him on Twitter at @jackmonson.  [/author]