The social media giant Facebook is a platform with over 2 billion users; a significant portion of the whole of humanity. It is no surprise, therefore, that marketing through Facebook is an incredibly valuable tool for businesses of all sizes, specifically Facebook ads. Since in 2022, people on average spend over two hours a day on social media, it would be a wasted opportunity to not promote eCommerce over this medium, the extent of which cannot be matched in other places. Indeed, 92% of social marketing companies use Facebook as a marketing tool, as it is less expensive than other marketing media to begin with, and when done right, can be guaranteed success.
Why Do Facebook Ads Work?
Since people are already on their personal social media account, personalized ads simply make sense. Meta itself is aware of this, as they recently launched the “Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found” campaign, where they highlighted the importance of personalized ads. It allows businesses, no matter the size, to find an audience relevant and specific to them.
Since many small businesses don’t have the budget to spend huge sums of money on marketing, Facebook Ads allow these businesses to use the available budget they do have to advertise only to an audience that actually will be interested in the products shown. This means that no penny is wasted; the personalization means the eyes viewing the ads are the right ones to create conversion potential.
So what do Facebook ads have the power to do?
- Target: they can reach the people who will like the products
- Locate: they can connect customers around the world
- Save: personalized ads are cost-effective and easy to measure
The eCommerce market is currently saturated, leaving no room for personalization mistakes. Ads need to stand out, and brands that create content that doesn’t resonate with consumers will unfortunately pay a high price.
What Makes A Good Ad?
Creating a good Facebook ad is an art in itself; it’s not just about ‘trying something out and hoping for the best’. Shoppers expect experiences that align with their interests, behaviors and preferences. In fact, 44% of consumers feel frustrated when companies do not deliver relevant, personalized shopping experiences. So putting forward an ad campaign that leaves the shopper feeling valued or engaged is really important.
When done well, a Facebook Ad can really create great customer satisfaction and enjoyment. This is because the Facebook user will see online ads regardless. By ensuring that they see ads that actually interest and help them, you have already generated customer support and satisfaction- you’re off to a great start!
Customers should feel engaged by the advertisement they are seeing. A necessary element to this is to use intelligent targeting, which is what Fast Simon can offer. It is crucial to make sure that the consumers viewing the post are the right ones; ones that are actually interested in the products they are shown.
Who Will See The Ads?
So once you’ve got the basics sorted about how to make sure your ad is a good one, the next step is making sure the right people see your ad. After all, what’s the good in an amazing advert for summer clothes if the only people who end up seeing it are in winter? Exactly, not much good at all!
A Clever Solution
Personalized ads can be shown based on people’s interests and behaviors. This means that the people who end up seeing the ad, are people who are actually interested in what is being sold. This technique is cost effective and direct; as the people who have no chance of purchasing are just completely skipped; no money is sent towards campaigning in their direction.
This is a win-win situation for the merchant and the consumer:
- The audiences have more meaningful experiences that actually help them rather than bother them.
- The merchants are able to target the people that actually have potential to buy what they are selling.
Finding The Audience
So how does Meta find the audience? Well Facebook has the opportunity to advertise for segments, called Segment Asset Customization. This means they can slice any audience into any combination of demographic, location, life event, interest or behavioral groups. This is so useful for creating targeted ads, as Facebook will try its hardest to match you with the right audience for you.
Meta can use the following information to help create these segments:
- Meta pages, places, and profile information
- Activity on other websites and apps
- Activity with other businesses
- Device or profile location
Obviously, a lot of this information is dependent on other websites and businesses sharing the data and information that it has with Facebook. The more information Facebook can gather, the more it can use to help target the ads in the most beneficial direction for the merchants.
The Purchase Funnel
One targeting strategy used can be to use a purchase funnel to create specific campaigns to reach people according to their level of interaction with the brand who creates the ad.
The top of the funnel (so the most broad) consists of people who may not be aware of the brand, but seem likely to be interested. These can be sourced through lookalike audience targeting, interest-based targeting and broad audience targeting. These are the less sure-fire of the methods, but can yield results.
The middle of the funnel is about re-engaging with shoppers who have expressed interest or are maybe in the consideration period. These are people who we already know are willing to become involved, if they are targeted correctly.
Then there is the bottom of the funnel audience, and these are previous customers. Targeting them is about increasing the customers’ lifetime value and ensuring that they return.
So, there are a range of ways Facebook can try and find the right people to market towards. These are all depending on varying things, but when done right, can produce great results. But what about if we want to go even further?
Fast Simon’s Approach
Facebook has clearly understood the assignment when it comes to personalized ads, but there are ways its method can fall short. Facebook needs to be allowed to access data from other websites to use anything other than its own information, and its own information alone may not be enough. For example, just because a woman is in summer and going on holiday, she may not be looking for elegant dresses, she may be looking for beach-wear. There is no way to know this without more detailed information.
On top of that, setting up a Facebook targeting campaign can be complicated and expensive. It requires knowledge about how best to put your investment to good use, and it requires effort on the part of the merchant. Sometimes this can be inaccessible or difficult to plan without in-depth prior knowledge of how the system works.
Fast Simon’s Data Information
The more specific the knowledge about the people you’re trying to target, the more luck you will have with your advertising campaign. This is where Fast Simon can help. Through an integration with Facebook, Fast Simon can help create personalized ads for a specific audience; namely through data regarding your site, from the people who have been on it. In terms of merchant sales, this is as useful as it can get, as the data is being used directly from eCommerce; to eCommerce.
Let us explain. Facebook has its own audience segments, as we’ve looked at, but these are based on broad information, or on data that Meta has been allowed to access from other third parties. These may be helpful, but there is the chance that these will fall short of the mark as they may not be specific enough. Fast Simon can create an audience specific to people that have looked at your eCommerce site, as long as your site is one that uses Fast Simon’s Search and Collections page. Using the data it has gathered here, it can be used to provide customer clients with highly relevant personalized ads. This will be according to what customers have already shopped for.
Direct and Effective
The data that Fast Simon uses is the traffic volume to a website; so people who are interested. And one step further; the conversion rate, so it will only use traffic data that is known to produce good conversions, which will translate to positive ad content. By using specific data with little room for error, Fast Simon is ensuring that the ad campaigns you employ will be relevant to the customers viewing it. Why waste money on ads that won’t generate the results needed, when Fast Simon is here to help you target the people that actually make the difference?
Fast Simon’s unique upsell and cross-sell algorithm, otherwise known as the recommendation AI, is already trained in finding the most appropriate products to share with the shopper, so applying this to Facebook ads just simply makes perfect sense. Why not take advantage of some intelligent machine learning potential that can help target your ads perfectly?
Unique and Diverse Product Set
Furthermore, Fast Simon’s system creates a unique and diverse product set, enriching the ad in a monumental way. It is able to generate a product set that is incredibly relevant to the viewers; not just based on products according to intent, but also complimentary items that other customers have bought. Combining its broad knowledge together, it will surprise customers with a varied and exciting set of item products to choose from. The engaging element of the adverts Fast Simon has the potential to create, is what helps it really stand out.
Setting up the Fast Simon Facebook Ad campaign is very easy, as all of the work is done by us. After clicking ‘create campaign’, you can just sit back and watch the results. The machine algorithm will use the crowd wisdom big data to create the best audiences with the best products for the campaign, and each individual business will have access to make any edits to this they see fit.
Extra Personalization
There is the option to edit the ad copy; using personalized text according to the audience or specific campaign. And all of these changes can be monitored, as the Fast Simon analytics dashboard will demonstrate how successful each campaign eventually ends up being.
With Fast Simon’s help, creating engaging personalized ads has never been easier. This is definitely an integration worth sinking your teeth into. Since it is clear how important it is that ads reach the right people, it’s not worth taking a risk and seeing if you can make it on your own. Reach out to Fast Simon for help and we will be more than happy to ensure that your ads are being seen in all the right places by the right people, and watch your conversions boost.