COMING AT YOU WEEK OF 9.7.21
Useful news from this week
ONE
TikTok released their Promote ad option to all business accounts. The Promote button works similarly to Facebook’s Boost feature by allowing accounts to turn an organic post into an ad.
TWO
We can’t be the only marketers who hear all the rumors and opinions wondering if—or asserting that—Siri uses audio data for ad-targeting. Well, a lawsuit alleging that Siri did this with a personal conversation was given the green light to proceed by a federal judge. (This doesn’t mean Siri does this, it means they’ll investigating it in the lawsuit).
THREE
Twitter launched their Super Follow option which lets certain creators charge a monthly fee (for those who opt-in) for access to exclusive content.
Paid Advertising
For people to believe your product is right for them, there need to be people your product is wrong for
In the book Essentialism, the author Greg McKeown, tells a surprising tale about Southwest Airlines. While they are one of the most well-known airlines, you might not think of them as one of the most successful, not to mention one of the most successful companies for a few decades.
Southwest’s CEO once explained that part of that success came from many trade offs they made. Instead of trying to fly to most destinations, they chose certain flights to offer and stuck to those. While most airlines offered meals on certain flights, Southwest decided not to offer meals on any flights. The company had decided they were a low-cost airline. So over and over again they had to trade certain offerings in favor of their low-cost approach.
Surely there were hundreds, thousands, of potential customers who chose a competitor over them because of what they didn’t offer. But for their target audience, those who wanted a low-cost flight, they were the easy option. And the company’s profits grew to prove that their strategy was the real deal.
This is a killer example of essentialism and the business power it can have. Ad targeting is one clear-cut place to apply audience essentialism. When creating ad campaigns on Facebook, you create parameters that determine who qualifies to see your ad. Broad audiences are often expensive and less successful.
So let’s talk about how to use FB’s Detailed Targeting to create a refined ad audience
Let’s say you work for a premier life insurance company. You know that your target audience are married people, 50+, interested in retirement planning who are either business owners or have a household income of $100,000+.
You go to add those criteria into Facebook and it looks like this
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Do you see that number labeled “potential reach”? Well, it starts at 74 million, then once you add the condition of household income it goes down to 2.8 million, but after adding the other conditions, it ends at 26 million.
That’s because adding conditions this way is “or” targeting. You’re telling FB that your audience should have that income OR be a business owner OR be married OR be interested in retirement planning.
What you need to do is use the Narrow Down button, like this.
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With this configuration the potential reach ends at 20 thousand (a BIG difference compared to 20 million). And with this audience we’re telling FB to target people:
- who fit the income bracket OR who own a business (we we chose not to hit the Narrow Down button before adding the ‘business owner’ criteria)
- AND who are married
- AND who are interested in retirement planning
This means someone who owns a business but doesn’t fit that income bracket can be targeted if they are married and are interested in retirement planning. And alternately, someone who fits that income bracket, but doesn’t own a business, can also be targeted as long as they are married and are interested in retirement planning.
Playing around with “or” vs “and” targeting, can make a big difference in getting a nice, refined FB ad audience.
So be brave and recognize that in the process of getting the right people to really click with your marketing, you’ll inevitably be telling many people, “what I offer isn’t right for you.” And that is actually what you want. We can’t help feeling like there might be a life-lesson in here or….nah, you’re right. No life lesson to be found.
Well, keep killing it out there, marketer!
Your complimentary positive vibes
