If you have any experience running multiple ads on Facebook or Instagram through business manager, you probably think the process is standard and straightforward.
The truth is, it can be. You can duplicate your old ads and change up the creative or targeting slightly, and get a whole new audience for your advertisements. You can save tons of custom audiences in your ad account and reuse them for various ad campaigns. The process is quite easy to get a hang of.
But the tools that business manager provides you with can allow for some creative ways to market your business and find a valuable audience online.
I’ll run through some of the more unique and useful hacks for Facebook Advertising through business manager.
Unicorn Ad Targeting
This hack goes against conventional advertising wisdom, at first glance. But depending on your business, it could lead to stronger customer acquisition and retention.
The idea of unicorn ad targeting is that you can combine unrelated interests to get such unique targeting that the customer can’t help but pay attention. Audiences have become very used to seeing advertisements that target one of their interests. But they aren’t used to seeing ads that target multiple of their unique interests.
For example, you can target someone who has an interest in boating and sunflowers. Your ad can sell them a boat flag that features a sunflower. The people who fall into this audience and see this ad will be very surprised to see this overlap and will think something like, “wow, this ad really was made for me.”
The goal here isn’t to shy away from the public’s aversion to data tracking. The goal is to lean into it so that the viewer stops in their tracks and strongly remembers your ad. You’re not hiding anything here, when it comes to customer targeting.
The reason why I said this goes against conventional wisdom, is because this might feel like a weaker use of your money. Why spend $50 to target such a small group of people? Surely your estimated reach numbers will be higher if you were to align related interests in your targeting. This is true, but through unicorn targeting, your ad will catch attention much better and customers will naturally remember you more.
Create a Web Traffic Bomb
Facebook ads can be used to send a rush of users to your product or web page. This is especially useful if your business benefits from being listed on any page that shows trending products, pages, or articles.
The idea here is that you can use business manager to serve ads to the widest and cheapest audience possible. This tends to be by using audience network as your placement, since this tends to be very cheap and reaches a large number of users.
You can also expand your location targeting wider than you typically would want to. It doesn’t matter so much if the users end up purchasing your product or service. You just want the clicks.
Once this traffic bomb starts occurring on your page, aggregate or other “trending now” type of services or websites will lift you to the top and people will find you that way. This creates a stronger impression with the user than your original paid ad would have. They are being told by a trusted service that your business is valuable among their peers.
Utilize Messenger Ads
One of the more underutilized placements in business manager is Facebook Messenger ads. These ads appear like traditional ads in the users feed, but the clickthrough takes them into facebook direct messaging, rather than a landing page you provided.
These ads can create a conversational relationship between your business and your potential customers. And the approach you should take to make the best of these ads is to use them for customer segmentation.
You have the unique advantage through messenger of finding out more about your customer lead. You can make note of what the users actually says their interests or traits are. And you can ultimately send them into applicable funnels for further marketing.
But how should you converse with the user once you have permission to message them? One good way is to apply active listening. You can set up a default initial message, when they click through, that asks them if they are a novice or expert at your industry service or product. And then you can make note of their experience level in your reply.
You don’t actually have to come up with a new product to sell them based on their experience level, if you don’t already have one. But you can acknowledge their answer and present them the product in a way that addresses their experience level.
As an example, lets figure you’re selling a standing desk product. When the customer clicks on your messenger ad, they get a message from you asking if they are a first-time standing desk user, or an experience user looking for a better desk.
If they respond saying they are a new user, you can reply saying “our desk is great for new users and is easy to swap between standing and sitting, as you get used to standing at work!”
If the user is an experienced user, you can craft a response saying “our desk outperforms the competition by using advanced hydraulics to achieve a smooth and fast lift into standing mode!”
Both responses fluff up the value of your product, but don’t’ distinctly state that your product is either only for beginners or experts. You sell these audiences the same product, but you make them feel listened to and acknowledged. The path to conversion then becomes much easier for you.
Skip Straight to Remarketing Ads
This hack says that remarketing is so much more valuable than regular marketing that you should skip the first step entirely.
Traditionally, you would set up an ad to run on facebook networks and then capture the info of the people who interact with your ad and then remarket to them. You create a second impression on the user after they already have brand recognition with you. They are now much more likely to make a final purchase.
The truth is that remarketed ads are 10 times more effective than regular display ads. The click through rate for retargeted ads averages at 0.7% compared to the average of 0.07% for traditional ads.
If your business spends $100 of your marketing budget on targeted ads, but only $10 on remarketed ads after running your initial campaign, you’re doing it backwards. Even if you don’t skip out on the initial ad campaign, as I suggested in the header of this segment, you should at least spend the heavier portion of your budget on retargeting.
The cost per click for remarketed audiences is significantly lower and you’ll end up with more conversions, under the same ad budget.