Bob Hutchins — March 2, 2017 Follow @Bobhutchins
Of all the social media platforms, Facebook is still king. When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook is the common denominator whether you sell accounting services or couture clothing. While most Facebook advertisers focus on engagement and cost-effective ads, there’s a very important step in the process that should always come first: audience creation.
High engagement and cost-effective ads are difficult to achieve if you don’t have the right audience in place. A new infographic from visme.co suggests seven questions every Facebook advertiser should ask in order to get the right audience. (By the way, if audience-building and ad-targeting are up your alley, be sure to check out this blog post which shows all of Facebook’s ad targeting options in a single infographic.)
#1 What are the goals of your business?
You’ve got to know yourself before you can expect to draw an audience. First things first: define your business, your goals, the mission behind your company, etc.
#2 Who is your target market?
Next, look outside yourself. Who do you want to reach? Who are these people? What do they do? What do they like? If you don’t know, just ask them.
#3 What is the online behavior of your target market?
Discovering behavior and then creating content that fits that behavior is key. These free tools can help. Also, the content that you create should be of genuine value to your audience. If you’re not sure how to do this, I’ve written extensively about how brands can use marketing and advertising to enrich and empower their audiences in Finally Human.
#4 What pain does your target market have, and how can you solve it?
Let’s say you have a lawn care business. These are three totally different pain points, which could define three completely different types of businesses and customers… which is yours?
- “My lawn care business fixes the problem that you don’t own a lawnmower or room to store one.”
- “My lawn care business will make you feel proud amongst your neighbors.”
- “My lawn care business means you get 2-4 free hours every single weekend.”
different pain points = different marketing content = different audience
#5 What language does your ideal customer use?
Tone is immensely important. I strongly encourage you to find the “human imprint” in your brand’s voice.
#6 What benefits do you offer customers that they can’t get elsewhere?
Product differentiation is key. Again, this is another problem you may be able to solve simply by asking questions. If you don’t know what kind of edge to create over the competition, why not ask your audience what “extras” they’d like to see?
#7 What can you offer customers for free to attract them to your brand?
The “freebie” is a cornerstone of audience-creation and advertising. Take, for example, this landing page, which we use to funnel leads into a sales channel: Discovering the ROI of Social Media. When leads click on the ad to get the free PDF, they move through this contact form, becoming (1) part of our audience and (2) getting some great content – for free!
7 Questions Every Marketer & Brand Should Ask
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