3 Hidden Gems of Target Marketing Online

Those of you who are involved in Digital Marketing are very well aware of the generic ad campaigns that consists of proper targeting, planning and budgeting. These fundamental levels of Facebook marketing are by no means inferior and can work wonders if done right.

But at some point, you will need to dig a bit deeper to become an asset as a digital marketer in your company or your own firm.

This article will introduce you with 3 of the most powerful tactics in Digital marketing that many of us Marketers use and many of us ignore just because of mere ignorance. 

Before that if you have missed my previous article of Pixel and SDK, have a peek here.

Today I will talk about creating Custom audience, Lookalike audience and Value based Lookalike audiences.

First lets define what a Custom audience is. A custom audience is the population that you define to Facebook in a more precise way and with more control. Or more easily, it is the list of people that you give Facebook from your database of Phone Numbers, Email Lists, Cities and many more.

A Custom audience is more precise than only interest based targeting. If you have a considerable amount of customer data (f.e. phone numbers) and are confident that they will bring you good results, then working with custom audience can give you magical sales volumes!

Before moving on to more details about custom audience, lets talk about lookalike audiences. Basically the "almost duplicate" audience of your custom audiences are lookalike audiences. In other words, if you have a list of custom audiences, and want to target people who are very similar to them, Lookalike audience is the way to go.

Value based lookalike audience is where your advanced analytical abilities and mathematical aptitude come into action...JK!

Value based lookalike (VBL) audience is the bigger brother of lookalike audience except one single benefit over the other. VBL can target the lookalike audience of those people who are the highest active users of your business. For instance, those who have highest amount of purchase in your website or your app, Facebook can target their lookalikes based on different criteria.

As lookalike and value based lookalike both depend on your custom audience set, we will talk more about the custom audiences in this writing.

What are the types of Custom audiences?

There are literally hundreds of types of custom audiences. And its pretty hard to classify them in certain categories. So lets break down the types of custom audience in some general categories that we all can relate to:

1. Own Sources
2. Sources from Facebook

Fig: Dashboard of Custom Audience in Facebook

Some commonly used Custom Audiences:

Website Traffic:

Remember we talked about Pixel integration in the website? Well, here's where pixel is kind of mandatory for you to create custom audience. Remember we talked about Pixel integration in the website? Well, here's where pixel is kind of mandatory for you to create custom audience.

Case Study:

The data science team of ABC company has found out that people who spend the most time in viewing a closet in the Closet section of the website are more likely to purchase one for themselves. Now the management wants you to target those people who have spent most time in the websites closet sections.

How to:

As a tactical marketer you would need to target those people who have landed on the pages that have closets in them and also have passed a good amount of time in those pages. To do this, go to Business Manager > Audiences > Create Audience > Include people who meet All of the Following > Select the pixel > Select visitors by time spent > Top 25% (There are 10% and 5% options as well) > in the past 30 days (or whatever you prefer) > Add Specific web pages > URL contains > Closet.

I know you're telling yourself "this can't be that easy." I promise you, IT IS!

Now lets move ahead and talk about another most used custom audience:

App Activity:

We talked about SDK (Software Development Kit) and event integration in the past article. This is where this beauty comes in action. By app activity you can literally target anyone doing any action in your app based on different criteria.

Case Study:

Uncle Sam, a leading analyst of "FoodTunda", a leading lifestyle app, has come to a conclusion that the people who ordered any item above 200tk is more likely to make another purchase in 7 days. Sam wants you to take care of the marketing.

How to:

Lets revise the previous step where we selected website traffic. But now we will select App Activity from the menu.

Then follow these steps: Include people who meet All of the following criteria > Select the app > Select the event (Here it is "order placed") > Select Parameter to Currency > is greater than > Put value 200 > Select time frame Past 7 days.

That's it! Now see your orders increasing like magic. If it doesn't contact your Uncle Sam :D

By now I hope you have got a small idea how vast and handful the custom audience options are in Facebook.

Lookalike Audience:

Lets wrap this up with how you can create Lookalike and Value based Lookalike from your custom audience. All what you need to do is create a custom audience, select that from the audiences panel and click the 3 dots above. Select create custom audience from there. Select 0-1% for the most matching lookalike audience.

Value based Lookalike:

Now that we know how to create custom audiences and lookalikes, creating a Value based lookalike will be very much relatable.

But first you need to remember that you have to either have a pixel event or an app event that has value as a parameter in order to target such lookalikes.

The rest is very simple. Go to audiences > Create Audience > Lookalike audience > Select the source of Lookalike (Pixel or App) > Select the event that has a value parameter > Give location. Now you're all set to grow your business!

Fig: Value Based Lookalike Audience creation.

Have questions or suggestions? Ping me on Linkedin or Facebook and let's have a chat!