Great social media advertising, whether it is on Facebook or any other platform, means finding your audience and serving them messages that resonate. If you serve up a message that is beautifully presented and written, but doesn’t solve YOUR audience’s problem, you will quickly find yourself throwing money at ads that don’t convert.
The Wall Street Journal published a revealing piece showing how your feed differs depending on whether you hold blue state values of red state values: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
Political scientists and opinion writers do not like that Facebook only serves views that confirm users’ own biases in their Newsfeed. However, this is really the whole genius of Facebook. They only serve what people want to see. Politics aside, what can businesses learn from the way content is served on Facebook?
- Do your research. Figure out what your customers want to achieve as an outcome from using your product and highlight that.
- Know the difference between features and outcome. Example of an ad that focuses on features of a product – we have lots of t-shirts supporting your favorite political candidate. Outcome focused language – your friends will think you are really cool when you wear this t-shirt and you will get positive attention.
- Know who your customer is. Spend time with your Google Analytics data AND your data from your ads. The people who click are not always the ones who buy.
- Listen to your customers. The customers who share feedback with you are the ones who are passionate about your products, whether it is negative or positive. Use their feedback to build your ads and address their issues quickly.