Marketing Strategies To Reach More Of Your Buyers
Seems like for any “thing” you could want to do there will always come along a new way to do it, or at least a fresh perspective. The “thing” you’re doing doesn’t change, but with a new take it either becomes easier, or you find/learn a way do it more effectively, or both. We spend our lives looking for better ways to do things. It’s part of being successful.
And so while marketing is not new (hardly), new ways to market are dreamed up almost every day.
Staying Ahead Of The Curve
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all the marketing challenges out there these days. Sometimes it seems like staying ahead of the curve is impossible. Just keeping up often becomes the real challenge. The funny thing is a strong marketing strategy can make life easier – if you only knew, with certainty, what to do.
Part of the marketing puzzle is the sheer volume of access points; the places and ways to reach your audience. It’s almost like, the very technologies that have made it so easy to connect with your customers have, at the same time, raised the difficulty level. Everyone has a voice, including the customers themselves. Where to focus? Where to invest your energy? The entire world is open to you.
Direct emailing has long been a staple of any marketing plan, but if you have the real email address for your customers there are now several other great, perhaps even better ways to reach them. In particular Facebook marketing has been coming into its own, and in fact Facebook, in and of itself, can no longer really be considered new. Actually, Facebook marketing could probably be considered its own “thing”. That said, like every other thing, new ways to do it better are constantly being discovered. Winning on Facebook can mean the difference between great success and mediocrity, we all know this, and you’ve surely been doing some Facebook marketing, but have you had any success in that arena? Ironically, many haven’t. Not to any great degree.
But it’s huge. Billions use Facebook (close to 2 billion). Tapping that potential is important. Only … how? Believe it or not it’s getting easier. Not only has Facebook been refining its machine, users have been finding better, more effective strategies for maximizing results. There’s hope. Social media of all kinds is essential for any modern marketing strategy, and Facebook is the undisputed king. Knowing a few key strategies for Facebook can take you a long way.
Reach Your Best Opportunities
Building a Lookalike Audience in Facebook is one of the best ways to target the sorts of customers you want to reach. Customers that are like your own, and will therefore be most likely to buy your product. A Lookalike Audience gives you pretty much what it sounds like; a very large sampling of potential customers who share interest with your core audience. There are a few ways to build a Lookalike Audience:
- From customers you upload (Custom Audience)
- From data gathered from visitors to your website
- Using your existing Facebook page fans
These are your seeds. Not all seeds, however, are created equal. Page fans may or may not be customers that have made a purchase or otherwise shown direct, explicit interest. The same is true with website visitors. Your own customers, as you may imagine, will be your most valuable resource.
Facebook has made it even easier to create audiences. Take a look in your Facebook business account. Search Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences for info on how to create each. Match rates for Custom Audiences are highest when you have the most possible info, like phone number and, if possible, email address. More data points mean better results. Email, in particular, is one of the best bits of info for generating audiences, as it’s the one thing that’s most difficult to fudge. When signing up for Facebook users can provide bogus address info, and bogus or no phone number, but email is the one thing that at least has to be real in order to set up an account. Having an email address for your customers will drive your match rate for Facebook audiences to its highest possible levels. At ManageByStats, a suite of Amazon seller software tools, we’ve discovered that many of our Amazon sellers who use phone and email to create their custom audiences see up to—and even over—a 90% success rate.
You can then take that audience and create a Lookalike Audience of potentially millions of people on Facebook who match the profile and likes of your existing customers.
This creates a targeted marketing potential that has never been better.
Become Strong In This Area
Picking an area to focus on can, in itself, be an effective strategy. Become an expert in one thing that works, drive it to high levels of success and become strong in that area. Do your other actions, of course, and once you’ve mastered the chosen area, branch your focus into others. Facebook is a great place to invest energy.
When creating your audience use as much data as possible. In the case of emails, if you don’t have them, ManageByStats can get them. We can also get phone numbers. Many of you who have been with MBS already know this, and in fact many of you have taken advantage of the appends service to get emails and phone numbers for your customers (Email and Phone Appends is one of our most popular service). For those of you new to ManagebyStats you can see more under Customer’s | Email/Phone Appends when logged into your MBS account. MBS also makes it very easy to create the customer lists to upload to Facebook, under Customers | Generate Report.
Once you’ve got your audience, create your Facebook ad, launch your campaign and hold on. This one strategy can be hugely effective, and Facebook has now made it easier than ever to get results.
To Infinity And Beyond
Marketing is a moving target, of that we can all agree. Tried and true principles will always be valid, and do tend to get results, but these days there are few guarantees. To market effectively you need to be on the hunt for the latest strategies and, especially in this day and age, the latest technologies. Building effective Facebook audiences and taking advantage of the latest Facebook tools is one example of a strategy you can adopt to help propel you to the next level.
Dave McDaniel is a senior VP with ManageByStats. ManageByStats is a suite of online software tools for Amazon sellers that includes tools for sales, customer and inventory management, automated email notifications, email campaigns and review, feedback and keyword features. ManageByStats also provides an email and phone appends service, and offers an appends option that does not require an Amazon account.