AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here, and welcome to another edition of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. As always, I'm honored that you're here, so thanks so much for tuning in.
I just got back last night from Moab, Utah. It was a GORGEOUS place, we went hiking, white-water rafting, we took a jeep tour…it was so much fun! I went there with my family and my dad and my sister's family as well. And we had a bunch of kids with us so they loved the entire experience.
I thought it was gorgeous there, but i have to say, it was REALLY hot. I've realized that I am a complete wimp when it comes to extremes. So, extreme heat, and extreme cold, I really can't handle it. I remember last winter I went to Nashville to visit Michael Hyatt, we did a little mastermind thing, and it was so cold I thought my face was going to freeze off. I was FREEZING and I realized I'm just kind of a wimp. Growing up in California, you don't get extremes, so I have an excuse.
Anyway, Moab, Utah was a lot of fun so I'm glad I went, and tomorrow we're turning around and going to Pittsburgh to visit my husband's family. We've been traveling like crazy, but I'm really looking forward to coming home from Pittsburgh and not traveling the rest of the summer. I have to tell you, I'm a bit of a homebody.
I really like to be kind of planted somewhere and just not having to get on a plane all the time, so that's what I'm looking forward to, I hope you have some fun plans if it is your summer time right now, I know not everybody's in summer right now, but if you are I hope you're taking some time to spend it with your family and getting some downtime as well.
Let's transition here into today's episode. It's an Ask Amy episode, and this one's about Facebook ads. I'll let you hear the question and then I'll dive in.
Loren: Hello Amy, this is Loren Shade, and I had a question about Episode #29. In the episode you talk about how to hyper target your audience using Facebook ads, and specifically at the end you talk about creating a web audience, and particularly using a retargeting pixel for that. What my question is, is–in the retargeting, can you use ads that are on the right-hand side, or can you also use ads that show up in the news feed on the left-hand side? Just out of curiosity, so when you're retargeting ads using the pixel, do they always have to be on the right-hand side, or on the left-hand side, or actually, which one works better if you can do both? Thanks!
Amy: Okay, so the reason I chose this question is I think it's a really important one, and it's important that we understand how to really get the most from our Facebook ads. So, I encourage you, if you haven't yet, go back and listen to episode 29, so it's just AmyPorterfield.com/29, and Loren references it in his question because that was an episode I did with Rick Mulready where we talked all about Facebook ad targeting. It was a great episode, one of my most popular, so I encourage you to go check it out.
But Loren's question is specifically about retargeting ads. So for those of you who aren't familiar with retargeting ads, basically you can actually put some pixel on your website, and Facebook will track who visits your website on a daily basis. They can track it for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever you want, and that means you can then run ads to people that have just visited your website. Of course, the person that visited your website has to be a member on Facebook as well, but these days most people are, so you have a really good chance of making that connection.
Retargeting ads are fantastic, because you want to get in front of people that really, genuinely care about your brand or what you're promoting or where you're adding value. So, getting in front of people that just visited your website, now they're seeing you on Facebook? Really important!
But Loren’s question was about when you're retargeting your website traffic, can you retarget in the News Feed, as well as the right-hand column? The answer is YES. You can choose your ad placement in either spot.
I encourage you, Loren, to set up your ads in the Power Editor, which I talked about in episode 29, and when you do that you will see that you have the opportunity to choose the placement. Now, if I were you I would run a test. I would run one ad where I'm placing that ad in the news feed, and I'm using the audience of my retargeting website audience, and then I would actually run another ad where I'm placing that ad in the right-hand column on Facebook, and I would compare the two. My experience is that I tend to play less per click and less per lead when I place the ad in the News Feed.
I also have a higher conversion rate. I've heard from many of my peers, and they agree, they're seeing the same results, but sometimes it's different. It kind of varies by niche, but we're not exactly sure how much it varies. So what I encourage you to do, Loren, is to run two ads–same exact target audience, same exact ad, place one in the News Feed, one in the side bar column, and see which one converts better for you.
Again, to answer your question, yes, you can place a retargeting ad in either location. I tend to think that the News Feed ad converts better, but I want you to experiment with both.
Another question that came up, that I'm not going to play the recording, but I just want to touch upon, is that a lot of people in episode 29 were really interested in those lookalike audiences. The lookalike audience is the audience you can create from, let's say, your website traffic.
Facebook will track your website traffic and then they'll make a lookalike audience that's very similar to the likes, interests, behaviors of your existing website traffic. Lookalike audiences on Facebook tend to be really valuable, but when you get the results back from Facebook and they give you a lookalike audience, it tends to be REALLY big. Sometimes one to two million people.
So, here's what I suggest–when you're going to target your lookalike audience, when you're setting it up in the Power Editor, you'll see a tab that says “Audience,” and I'll use the show notes to show you an image of this so you know where I'm talking about inside the Power Editor, but what you'll do is under the Audience tab, you'll choose your Lookalike Audience, and then you can choose age, location, other details about your audience and specifically you'll see a field for interest.
You can take that Lookalike Audience–let's pretend it's two million people, and you can refine it even more. So you can say, okay, I want that lookalike audience, but I also want to make sure they're between this age range, they're male or female or both, you
get to choose, or maybe they're in a certain location, or in the interest section you can say they also need to like one of these Facebook pages. So, I want them to be a fan of at least one of these Facebook Pages, and you can type in 5, 6, 10, however many Facebook pages you want to type in there.
That means that you have this really great Lookalike audience that's very similar to your website traffic, BUT you'll also refine it even more to make sure that they have a common interest based on whatever you're going to be promoting.
For me, if I had a lookalike audience of 2 million, I would also probably put in an age range and I would add some Facebook pages in that interest section. So I would say Social Media Examiner, or Social Fresh, or other Facebook pages where I know if they're spending time there, they're likely going to be interested in my promotion as well.
So, that's something to do to make that list even more hyper targeted, and not so large. Because I think over a million, we're kind of pushing it. I think that audience is a bit too big, so I would probably pare it down a bit. That's how I would do it–I would add interest, which are Facebook Pages that people have liked, on top of the Lookalike Audience that I already have.
So, that's just one trick to get even more hyper targeted.
Thank you so much, Lauren, for calling in and leaving your question, I really appreciate it, and again if you have a question I would really love to hear from you, so you can go to AmyPorterfield.com/askamy and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Thanks so much for tuning in, and I will see you next time! Take care!
