Welcome to episode 349 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Today I want to talk about the newest option for custom audiences on Facebook. I’m ridiculously excited about this. These are some really cool options and we’re going to talk about what they are, when to use them, and the one that I want you to implement right away. First things first, what are these new choices? I want to take a step back, because I realize I’ve mentioned these briefly in past episodes and we’ve talked about them in Backstage, but in case you haven’t watched the video of Inside Hit the Mic Backstage about custom audiences, let me just briefly say what custom audiences are.
What are Custom Audiences
Custom audiences allow you to save a group of people that you want to target as a demographic for your ad. These could be from an email or from a lead magnet or from a look alike audience, or they could be a saved audience that you’ve built with your targeting that you have figured out. Basically it’s just sort of your little library of audiences. You can build these audiences a few ways. What we’re going to talk about today is the newest ways. These ways are really based on engagement with your page. In fact, one of them is somebody, one of the options, is literally people who have engaged with your page in the last however long you want it to be. It defaults to I think 365, as in 365 days. But it’s a really powerful way for you talk to exactly who you want to be talking to with your ads. You need to, need to, need to get clear on what custom audiences are. That’s why I’m saying if you have not yet watched the video in Backstage about custom audiences, now really is a good time to do that because it pairs very well with this episode.
Custom audiences. Also in the forum area of the membership site, there is another video specifically about these custom audiences. I’ll actually add that to the training library before this episode goes live. Just you know, ignore that. Let’s talk about the ones based on engagement. Again, people who’ve engaged with your page. Also you can do people who have opened your canvas, people who have opened or completed a lead ads form, and as well as video. We’re going to talk mostly about video a little bit later in the episode. But I absolutely love these, because these are the people who are engaging with you on Facebook and maybe they just haven’t gone that next step. They haven’t opted into your email list or bought in at that level, so to speak. This is a really great way to target those people and really get in front of those people. Again, the new choices are all around engagement with your page, so people who have actually interacted with your page, people who have opened your canvas or canvases, people who’ve opened or completed a lead ad. We’re going to talk about that again in just a second. Then people who have spent any amount of time watching one of your videos.
When to Use Custom Audiences
Let’s talk about when to use these custom audiences. These are great for a, what I’m going to call sort of a soft re-targeting. Especially when you’re talking about that lead ad option. Maybe somebody opened the form and started completing it, but didn’t actually finish completing the form and submitting the information. You can re target the ad to them and say, “Hey. You were halfway there, make sure you submit your information to get your x, y, z.” Whatever it is that that promise was. Whatever that thing you promised was, it cold be a video or a report of some kind, or whatever it is. It’s just saying, “Hey, I know you want to get this because it’s fantastic and I’m wonderful.” Don’t ever write that in your ad copy, by the way. But you can re target those people who did not complete the form. On the flip side, you can also target people who did submit the form, saying, “Hey, now you’ve got x, y, z training, here’s your next step.” Again, that’s super powerful because we can get in front of these people who have already engaged. Especially when you’re talking about lead ads, where literally the entire interaction with you happened on Facebook. Cool? All right. That’s a really great example of when to use that.
Engagement with your page. I really like this one, if you’re trying to up engagement on the page. In fact, one of the things we tested recently was I boosted a post targeting people who had engaged with the page in the last 60 days, just to see if I could get them to engage more. Guess what? It was an entirely engagement driven post. There was no call to action as far as hopping off of Facebook and opting in for anything, or buying anything. It was all about creating conversation, and it did. I had a great time connecting with people who I already knew were prone to engage because they have engaged in some way in the past. It was a really cool option to connect with them again. Now, when you are using this option, you have a couple of choices as far as specificity. You can do anyone who has visited the page, so just literally anybody who has been on your Facebook page. People who have engaged with a post or an ad, people who have clicked any call to action button, people who have sent a message to your page, or people who have saved your page or any post. I chose people who have engaged with any post or ad. Again, that allowed me to target people who had spent some amount of time engaging with me in the past.
The other really cool place might be your call to action, targeting a follow up to people who engage with that call to action button on your page. Especially if you’re somebody who keeps the same thing there fairly consistently. For example, mine is a link to Hit the Mic Backstage like 97% of the time. A great follow up would be people who click that button. I have not used the sent a message to your page, because we’ve put in a place a messenger bot set up on the o side, so I kind of have those subscribers and I can target those people through those tools. But this might be a really great way to engage them, if that’s not something you have in place yet.
The other one that I want to test, and I just haven’t figured out how I’m going to test it, is again that same kind of concept with the engagement, but targeting people who have saved a page or a post. Again I haven’t found out where I want to do it, and I haven’t even looked to see if my audience would actually be big enough to do anything with. But these are really cool options to re engage your audience, or follow them up. You know, if somebody has ever in the last 30 days engaged with a post, whether it’s an ad or not on your page, it’s a great time for you to follow up with, “Hey, can I offer you this?” Realize that you can also exclude people from Facebook ads.
One of the things you might do if you want to run one of those ads to people who have engaged with the page, is exclude people who were on your custom audience of your email list. You’re not targeting an ad to people who are already on your email list. I tend not to exclude them from that because often whenever I’m offering might be something that they didn’t get. Depending on how well you have your list segmented, what I would do probably is exclude a custom audience built on the segment that already has that opt in. For example, if I did, we’ve got the Facebook ads checklist and guide as sort of the standard opt in for my website. I could exclude people who are already have that checklist and target an ad to get that checklist. Just pay attention to that segmentation and that targeting, because obviously we don’t want to spend a lot of money targeting an ad to people who already have something that we’re trying to get them to do. That’s not going to make a ton of sense. Figure out how that works for your segmentation. But again, that’s where your custom audiences come in really handy when you have those custom audiences built, you can include and exclude those things really really simply.
Custom Audiences for Facebook Live
Okay, so next up I want to talk about my favorite one. This is where we’re going to close it up. We’re going to talk about video. With the rise and popularity of Facebook live, the ability to target people who are watching your videos is absolutely phenomenal. I’m so obsessed with this idea because it’s going to allow us to actually put in front of the people who are watching a certain percentage of our video a follow up offer. One of the things we are doing, is as we do ads or a video where we’re talking about something that’s inside of the membership site, Hit the Mic Backstage, I can actually then target people who have watched a certain percentage of that video. Just to give you an idea of the options, it’s people who have watched at least three seconds, people who watched at least ten seconds, people who have watched 25%, 50%, 75 or 90% of your video.
Those are your six choices. I am going to be re targeting people who watch 50% of a video talking about something I’m doing in Backstage and video which I am sort of promoting Backstage through adding value and talk about Backstage. I’m going to re target people that watch a certain percentage of that with an ad for the backstage membership package. I could even re target them with a special trial offer. Some of you may have seen from time to time we’ll run a one dollar trial for seven days inside of Backstage. It’s a really cool way for people who aren’t super familiar with me to get a look at what is Backstage and what’s in there, and sort of the value in it. It’s a great way to sort of try it on.
I really love having that option to offer people who again, are maybe not super familiar with me yet. Maybe they don’t listen to the show. They don’t realize what value is in there. We could re target them, “Hey, you watched 75% of x, y, z, video, awesome. You’re a perfect candidate for this.” I can run an ad talking about specifically about the training that goes with that video. Maybe I do a video on, to keep the theme going, Facebook ads. Maybe I’m talking about this. I’m straight up talking about custom audiences. I’m basically doing this podcast in Facebook live form. Maybe so, right? Fantastic. It’s easy for me to re target them with an ad saying, “If you’re interested in Facebook ads, here’s what we can do.” Obviously I’d have better ad copy than that, but for the sake of my example here, I can very very quickly re target them with that offer because I know they’re invested because they watched a certain percentage of the video.
When you’ve got people watching 50, 75, 95% of a Facebook live, they’re worth re targeting. It’s ridiculously simple now, because literally the whole thing exists inside of Facebook. You don’t have to import anything, you don’t have to export something out of your mailing list and import it into Facebook, and name it, and build it. No. No. No. All you have to do is build a custom audience based on their engagement with the video and run the ad to them. That’s amazing. For those of you who have jumped on board of Facebook lives, congratulations. Be sure that you are following up those call to actions that you’re doing on Facebook lives with these ads. Re targeting people based on their engagement with you on Facebook.
I’m stupid excited about this guys. If you are still a little confused, be sure to check out the training in Backstage. It’s all of this plus, and of course you can ask me questions inside the private community. That’s really the best place to connect with me because I’m in there all the time. Of course, I mean if you want to show me an ad or a follow up sequence, you can get feedback from me and the other members right there. Check out hitthemicbackstage.com for all of that stuff. That really is going to be your best place to get feedback on this kind of stuff. Otherwise, I will see you next week. Have a good one, bye.
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