One of the challenges in Facebook marketing is trying to determine if you’re getting your message in front of the right people. Not only can it waste time, it can also waste money if your ads are not targeted correctly.
If you have installed the Facebook Pixel correctly on your site, then an advanced strategy for audience creation can be utilized. For this example, we are going to use the “Video Views” option.
Facebook loves videos, and they especially love videos encoded and directly uploaded on their site. When done correctly, the following technique can help you create a more focused audience without having to spend large amounts of money.
The Strategy:
- Create a 15-second to one-minute “hook” video that will get your audience’s attention. This could be one that asks questions, is engaging, and/or uses a portion of a testimony or Bible story. There are multiple ways to create videos and it is even possible to create one using still images. This ad should be one that has a link to your landing page where the full video or other content can be viewed.
- Create a separate landing page for the full video or ad content. Make sure that the language, pictures, etc. match as closely as possible to the Facebook ad. Facebook will check your landing page when approving your ad.
- Within the Facebook Business Manager, go to “Audiences” and then “Create Audience” (a blue button).
- Choose “Custom Audience”
- Choose “Engagement”, then “Video”
- Pick “People who have watched 75% of your video”. Pick your “Hook” video that you created. Pick the date range, and then name the audience.
Once that audience has been created and Facebook has time to populate the audience, then you can move on to the next part of the strategy of creating a Lookalike audience. The more people who have watched at least 75% of your “Hook” video the better. Facebook does well in creating a Lookalike audience when it has a lot of data to build from. To get a lot of data, make sure and run your initial “Hook” video ad for at least four or more days and make sure your ad spend is high enough to get at least a few thousand 75% video views. You can see your percentage watched numbers in your ads report within the business.facebook.com Ads Manager.
To create the Lookalike:
- Click on the “Create Audience” button and then select “Lookalike”
- Under “Source” choose your custom audience that you created above.
- Pick which country that you want to create the Lookalike audience for. The audience has to be countrywide, but you can exclude locations later in the ad creation process.
- For higher quality and to keep your ad spend reasonable, pick the “1” audience size.
- Click “Create Audience”. It will take Facebook a while to populate your new audience, but after populated, you now have a new audience that you can refine and target with follow-up ads.
This strategy helps you use the people who have responded favorably to your previous ad(s) to help build new audiences at a larger scale. Questions or success stories? Please share it in the comments below.
