Let us delve deeper today into what Facebook advertising is all about. And let me reiterate something I hold as a mantra: you should not aim to reach as many people as possible on Facebook, but rather the right kind of people. Today we will focus on this “right” kind of people and try to define them, to put a face to them, so to speak.
The most adequate type of audience for your Facebook ads is formed of people who have already interacted with you. “What? I should spend money to target my customers? What about new ones?” Please note that I did not say customers. I said people who have interacted with you. Interactions in the World Wide Web are very complex and varied, from a simple browsing of a website, to adding products to a shopping cart but not completing the purchase.
All these people, who somehow interacted with your business outside Facebook are defined as “website custom audiences” in the tab where you select your audience for the Facebook ad. This is a powerful audience group for four main reasons which I will explain below in detail in order to help you understand its importance.
1. Your Can Increase Customer ROI
If you display relevant ads to people who are already familiar with your business and products, chances are much higher that they will buy… again, and again, and yet again. Re-marketing to the existing customer base is something that large companies are doing on a huge scale. You will see them, for example, promoting an end-of-year sale and then their “welcome to the New Year” collections to the same clients. Or they will give a loyalty discount on a client’s birthday even though they have already sent another marketing email in the same month.
For Facebook advertising, this means that you should take advantage of the initial enthusiasm after a purchase and try to initiate another through a well timed ad on the customer’s Facebook page. When you add up the numbers, you will realise that website customer audiences bring you a higher ROI than any other type of customers.
2. You Can Encourage the Completion of the Conversion Cycle
With website custom audiences, you can get data on people who are just on the brink of conversion: they browsed your discounted products, they clicked on an ad before, they subscribed but did not complete a purchase, or they browsed your loyalty program terms and conditions. All these people usually need just one extra intervention from you to complete the conversion cycle.
The right ad at the right moment in time on their Facebook page will do the trick. Faced with a great offer from a company they are already familiar with, they are at the ideal point of conversion.
3. You Can Adjust the Precision of Targeting
Website custom audience is determined by installing a little Javascript code on your website page, called the WCA pixel. Through this little code, you can obtain data on visitors’ behaviour on your website and set the exact type of targeting you wish: people who simply browsed your online store, people who clicked on a product to view details, or people who added a product to their wish list or to the shopping cart. It all depends on what type of behaviour you expect to get from your ad.
4. Expanding Your Targeted Audience
You can use your existing website custom audience to create a lookalike audience group – people who have not interacted with your business, but like products similar to yours and have a behaviour similar to that of your website custom audience. This gives you a brand new audience to advertise to, with high chances of success.
These four reasons alone should be enough to help you understand the importance of knowing and using website custom audiences adequately.