But, look a little deeper, and you may start to question the real ROI from these ads. The issue is that some social media advertising is just too broad - basically throw it at a wall and see what sticks. Ads that are aimed at - well everyone - will miss the vital mark: conversions. Custom audiences allow you to re-engage with anyone who has given you an email address. In this blog post we will talk you through what custom audiences are, and why they will change your outlook on social media advertising.
The objective is to turn your social media advertising into real sales. In order to do this the advertising needs to be much more targeted and less generalised. This is especially true with you think that 98% of people visiting websites take no action.
While you certainly can create a broad demographic filtering when you create your first Facebook or Twitter advert, it is not as exact as it could be. You may even get a decent number of likes or shares but will that translate into someone spending money in your venue?
Think of your own experiences online. A boosted or promoted post pops up on your feed. Do you really care about what it says or where it comes from? Likely not, and you probably ignore it. In some cases you might click on that post, but the truth is the post is not as targeted as it could be and it is really hit or miss.
To improve your ROI from social media advertising, and drive conversions, the best way forward is to target customers who already know you and have spent money with you before. Custom audiences can target your current customers across different social media platforms. This is done using a customer’s unique digital passport - their email address - the one fairly constant bit of information people use across multiple websites.
In fact, retail stores in the US now routinely ask for email addresses at checkout, regardless of type of payment method, club card status, etc. Using just a few vital pieces of data, retailers can then create custom audiences for their social media advertising.
In some case studies, ROI for custom audiences has been as high as $32 in sales for every one advertising dollar spent. Custom audiences targeting has a 14% lower CPC and a 64% lower cost per conversion rate than category or interest-based targeting alone.
Right now you have hundreds if not thousands of customer email address on your database Why not use them? Upload them into Facebook and Twitter and target your customers. By uploading your database as a custom audience you should see more ROI as you know who your target is, and that they are interested in your venue. There are loads of different ways you can use custom audience, you could create them for lapsed customers, genre specific audiences and so on, the possibilities are endless.
Custom audiences are not just for Facebook either, Google has announced that it too will be launching a similar custom audiences feature. We are going to be growth hacking custom audiences, so keep on the look out for more on how to create different custom audiences soon. If you are not signed up with us you can sign up here to stay up to date on how growth hacking can help your business.
Don’t waste your time (and money) targeting people you don't know anything about, use custom audiences to maximise your ROI and drive conversions.