March 9, 2017 By Crystal 4 Comments

Ad Targeting and Finding Your Perfect Customer Groups

You’ve heard it before, but it’s important enough to repeat: When you market to everyone, you market to no one. In our previous post, “3 Things You’re Doing Wrong with Facebook Ads,” we talked about why failing to target your ads can lead to less-than-stellar results. One of the biggest factors that decides whether your Facebook ads will perform great or terribly is the audience you choose to target. Before we dive a little deeper into targeting capabilities within Facebook, let’s talk about who’s going to see these ads.

When marketing your business, all the content you put out needs to be targeted, in my opinion. How many people you’ll target will depend on your business, and to reach all your targeted users, you may need to create several advertising pieces with diverse messaging to make sure your content resonates with them.

I call these groups our Perfect Customer Groups, or PCGs. These are the people, whether they are familiar with your business or not, who love the things you sell. They’re people who are easy to work with. When they leave your store, you smile and think, “I wish all my customers were like that customer.” They’re loyal, booking appointments to shop at your store, or coming in anytime they need something new for their home, closet, pet, or a gift. They might be a “sneezer” who spreads the word about your store to all their friends and always bring someone new in.

Do you know who your PCGs are? Can you think of an actual customer? Hopefully you can, because I want you to think of that person while you read this post and while you set up future marketing pieces and ads.

If you haven’t figured out your perfect customer yet, pause and take a moment to define them. Where do they live and work? How old are they? Do they have kids or pets? What are their hobbies? What keeps them up at night? What do they Google? What magazines, books or blogs do they read? These are just a few of the questions I ask marketers to research and fill out in the Customer Profiling Worksheet found in our Facebook and Instagram Ads Course and within Social Edge.

I cannot express how important knowing who your PCGs are and what drives them to shop is to your marketing and growth of your business. Failing to recognize your PCGs can make the difference between open for business and closed for good. We live in a digital world where it’s incredibly easy for businesses to get in front of today’s consumer. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get them to buy from you.

Seeing your ads are one thing, while acting on them is another, especially when users are being inundated by ads from your competition. Creating content – including social posts, emails, commercials, newspaper and radio ads, billboards and – that appeals to your PCGs will help your brand stand out to the consumer, increasing the chances that they choose you over the competition.

Your business may have one core customer group or have more varied products that many types of customers buy. Sit down and identify how many groups your business has, and create an example customer to represent each group. This real, or fictional, person should have a name and personality, and possibly even a photo! Create as complete a profile for this person as possible. When you’re writing any kind of customer-facing content, you’ll write to this person or these people.

Alright, do you have your PCGs in mind? Have you created, named and written a profile for your sample customers? Ready to start connecting with them online and building a relationship? Heck yes you are! The next step is figuring out where to find these people.

With print marketing, it’s much harder to target a very specific group of people than it is using online tools. For this reason, we’re going to focus on Facebook and Instagram ads here.

Let’s say you’re a jeweler. You’ve done your homework and you’ve identified a perfect customer you call Jennifer. Jennifer loves fashion, accessorizing, follows fashion bloggers and influencers and loves being on-trend. She also loves to travel and decorate her home. She’s a girly-girl who loves pink, loud colors, lipstick and bling. She’s 36 and makes $75,000/year as a marketing director for a small boutique firm run by women and lives within 10 miles of your store. Knowing more about Jennifer helps us create content for her, and makes it easier to find her through ads.

Here’s an example from Elizabeth Cole Jewelry. They’ve done a great job with their content, connecting with Jennifer.

The above example has a blend of content, some showing people, some showing products in the “flat lay” position, one showcasing a stylish living room and one from beautiful Anegada in the British Virgin Islands. Jennifer would love to follow this brand because the content fits her personality and lifestyle.

So, how do we find Jennifer? We can plug some of her demographics in Facebook Ads, choosing women, 34-38 who live within 20 miles of your store, and have an interest in shopping and fashion, fashion accessories, jewelry and fashion blogs. Depending on the size of the audience group, this could be all you need. With the right image (or video) and copy, you may start to drive all sorts of Jennifers into your store. But if you try to advertise to this audience and the ad isn’t performing well, or the audience is large (over 150,000), you’ll want to add in some more details.

Let’s take it a step further to find Jennifer on Facebook and Instagram. In addition to all the demographics and interests listed above, lets also target brands that are similar to Elizabeth Cole Jewelry. Let’s pretend you carry this brand in your store, and you know Jennifer would love it. If Jennifer loves Elizabeth Cole, she’ll also love Elizabeth and James, Elke Kramer, Ella + Mila and Ella Moss, for example.

Because you’re a jeweler, you’re an expert and are familiar with these similar brands. But because my expertise is social media, I turned to my friend Google and typed in “brands similar to Elizabeth Cole.” From this search, I also learned that Anthropologie carries Elizabeth Cole. Anthropologie is a brand of its own, so it’s safe for me to assume that Jennifer may shop at Anthropologie as well.

Now, we take these brands over to Facebook Ads and plug them in under detailed targeting to see which how many fans follow them on Facebook and Instagram and if we can advertise to them. Of the brands above, I could advertise to fans of Ella Moss and Anthropologie.

Do you see how we’re tying it all together, learning who our perfect customer is, using content (image, video and/or copy) that resonates with that person, and creating incredibly targeted ads to reach our perfect customer?

We’ve done this with many retailers we work with at Crystal Media, and the results have been incredible. We’ve seen results like selling out of items in just two days and helping the store achieve their highest sales month in the store’s 15-year history. It’s been awesome to watch and be a part of. And we did it using the tactics in this article:

We understood our clients’ PCGs
We gave them direction on what kind of content to post to resonate with their PCGs
We advertised to these people using detailed targeting
We monitored the ads’ performance and made changes when we needed to

Excited by the opportunity to reach your PCGs today and drive them into your store… but don’t have much (or any) experience with Facebook Ads? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Click here to learn more about our step-by-step training, “ Click Your Way to Customers: Facebook and Instagram Ads Training.

Tell me who your PCGs are! Comment below, and maybe I can help you zero in on them further. Or, list some content ideas that this article has helped you brainstorm for your social media and ads. I can’t wait to hear what you came up with!

February 27, 2017 By Crystal Leave a Comment

3 Things You’re Doing Wrong with Facebook Ads

Running ads on Facebook is one of the best ways to ensure your posts are being seen by your audience in order to grow your local exposure and increase store traffic and sales. But with so many ad types and targeting capabilities, we’re consistently seeing retailers miss opportunities to significantly increase their results.

Here are the three things retailers are doing wrong when it comes to Facebook ads.

1. Not Targeting.

One of the main reasons Facebook ads are so incredibly powerful are the targeting capabilities. You can not only target current customers, but there are several ways to target new customers as well. However, if you don’t target or if you’re not running ads that are relevant to the audience you’re choosing (Your perfect customer group(s)), you’re wasting money.

We have a Social Edge member who ran an ad for $20 that received over 10,000 impressions, which seems like a lot for just $20. However, only two people clicked on her ad. This tells me that only a couple of people were interested in the content she was advertising. She asked me if her results were good, and I said, “It’s a lot of impressions for just $20, but what was the goal of the ad? If it was to get more people to your website, and you only had two clicks, then $10/click is not a good result. That’s pretty high for a website click.” I learned that she advertised to anyone 18-65+ in a 20-mile radius of her store, which is located just outside of a major city. In the end, she wasted money advertising to people who will not shop with her and who are not interested in her products.

Get familiar with the targeting options available, and strategically plan who you want to see your ad, as well as what you want them to do. Then make the ad relevant to them using an image or video that relates and copy that connects. Some examples of the targeting capabilities inside of Facebook:

Target users who:

Are on your email list
Are similar to the people who currently like your business page
Have been to your website
Purchase luxury items
Purchase dog food and are a pet owner
Have engaged with your Facebook Page in the past 7 days
Have watched your video on Facebook

These are only a few examples. There are many more options out there, with the ability to combine exclude audiences, improving targeting even further.

2. Not Testing.

Most of the retailers we work with are incredibly busy. They’re trying to run their business, purchase, stock and sell inventory, train and manage staff, clean the store and market it; just to name a few tasks. 🙂 Because they’re so busy, they don’t have much time to test the ads they’re running and analyze the posts and ads that are successful to understand why or make changes to see if it performs even better.

WIthin Facebook Ads, you can test things like images or videos, copy, audiences, placement and ad types. For example: You’re trying to raise awareness and increase sales for a new product line you just brought in. You’re advertising to a targeted group of people who would love the new line (like we discussed earlier), but you’re not sure which image of the product will capture the audience the best. So, you test three images: One from the manufacturer that’s more of a lifestyle shot of someone using or wearing the item, one from the manufacturer that’s on a white background and one that you took in store. You keep everything else the same, using the same ad type, placement, audience and copy. Let the ad run for at least 48 hours and check to see which image is getting the most activity, for the lowest cost. You can then pause the other two ads that are not performing as well.

When we test, we have a better understanding of the content our audience responds to best on Facebook, which saves us time in the long run as we know what type of content, ad or audience will perform the best. This will optimize our budget so that we spend less for better results.

Testing tip! As I’m writing this blog post, Facebook LOVES video and puts a heavier weight on video posts, meaning this type of content is typically shown to more people than other content types, like images or text posts. If your ads are not performing well, or ad cost is high, try advertising a video instead. We’ve seen ad costs drop by up to ⅔ by changing a product image to a video.

3. Only Boosting.

I get the opportunity to travel the world and speak to retailers about how to successfully use social media to market their stores and products. I often ask my audience, “Raise your hand if you’re advertising on Facebook.” A few people out of 100 will raise their hand. Then I ask, “Raise your hand if you’re boosting posts on Facebook,” and half the room raises their hand. Boosting IS advertising, but there are several other ad types available to help support your business goals.

If you’re only boosting, you’re missing out on other opportunities to reach people near your store and build local awareness, get people on your email list to like you on Facebook, build website traffic or increase attendance at your event. Boosting is the fastest and easiest way to advertise, which is a major reason retailers are only boosting. But to have more of a well-rounded ads strategy, you should be using other ad types to support goals.

Boosting can also add up if you’re not planning boost spends. For example, if you don’t have an allocated Facebook ads budget, and you’re just boosting a post here and boosting a post there, you might add up the cost to see you’ve spent over $400 this month boosting some posts. You may not be sure if this is high or low, or what the results were (Can I get an “Amen!” in the comment below if you know what I’m talking about?!). When you set an ads budget based on your current marketing budget, goals and audience size, and allocate it appropriately to goals (For ex: Building foot traffic, increasing web traffic, selling items online), you’ll know if what you spent was worth the result.

A lot of the retailers we work with have a $250-$500 a month Facebook Ad budget, seeing results like more store traffic (One retailer is seeing an additional six new customers a day in her store since starting Facebook Ads at a $350/month budget), busiest events they’ve had and some are selling out of items within days after the ad goes live. These results were achieved with a few ad types, and none were by boosting. So, familiarize yourself with what types of ads are available to support your goals. Then, combine the right ad types with the right audience, test your ads and start tracking the results.

New to ads, or need to know how to leverage what you’re currently doing to see better results? We’ve got you covered in the “Click Your Way to Customers: Facebook and Instagram Ads” training course, which is now available!

Click here to learn more about what’s inside, and email info@heycrystalmedia.com if you have any questions about this being a good fit for your business.

Leave a comment below: Are you running ads? If so, successfully? Do you have some room to grow, or are you feeling like you’re wasting money?

February 9, 2017 By Crystal Leave a Comment

mADness: How Two Retailers Boosted Their Social Media Results with Facebook Ads

It seems like we never stop talking about Facebook Ads, right?

That’s because they are such an important part of being successful on Facebook. But as much as we bring them up, you may be wondering, “What kind of results can I see if I improve my ad strategy?”

We’ve got two examples today from retailers we worked with 1-on-1. Though they are different from one another in both location and product selection, both were able to see great results from smart posts and videos promoted with Facebook Ads.

Skirt

Skirt is a high-end women’s clothing boutique in Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia.

Maureen, Skirt’s owner, really wanted to promote a sale that the store was having, and she wanted to make sure that shoppers in her local area knew it was happening. We helped her create a Page Post Engagement Ad, the ad with a main objective to get users to engage – via sharing, liking, clicking or commenting – with the ad. We targeted her page’s Lookalike Audience and people who like the brands she carries on Facebook and set the radius to 25 miles from the store.

For the ad image, we used a slideshow of the looks that were on sale in the store, and completed the ad with copy that said, “Shop our Spring Sale now! Tag a friend and save 30%-75% OFF!”

We had a $50 budget for this ad, which ran for 3 weeks.

How did the ad perform? The first two days of the promotion broke store sales records, and the ad engaged customers who had not been to the store for a while:

“I noticed an old customer had liked my video,” Maureen said. “I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She came in with her daughter later that same day and said that she was not a ‘fan’ of our page, but it showed up in her feed and she watched the video and had to come in. She spent $4,800!”

Summary:

We ran an ad to Facebook users in a 25-mile radius of Skirt who already liked brands that they carry on Facebook
The ad ran for 3 weeks with a $50 budget
In just ONE transaction, the store covered their ads budget and made an additional $4,750

Coriander

Coriander is a gift, jewelry, home and clothing store with locations in Guelph and Collingwood, Ontario.

They were prepping for a big 12 Days of Christmas promotion and really wanted to get the word out. We suggested that they announce each deal the night before it premiered on Facebook Live. Each night before a new deal premiered, they would go live with their latest announcement, and promote that video with a Video View Ad to local users who had interests related to store products and brands.

They had a $45 budget and ran for 12 days.

In the end, the store had consistently good sales numbers throughout the promotional period. They sold out of several items and had customers calling or commenting on videos asking to put products aside for them to come in and get later.

Summary:

We ran a Video View Ad for Coriander’s Facebook Live announcements
The ad ran for 12 days and had a $45 budget
The store ended up selling out of multiple items and had a record number of people asking to put products aside for them

What can these case studies tell you about your own ads strategy?

Ad success is attainable no matter your location or product selection
You don’t need an outrageous budget in order to see results
Ads can revolutionize the way you sell online

If you have questions about ads, you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve created the most comprehensive Facebook and Instagram ads course just for retailers. In fact, the latest version of our course is scheduled to launch at the end of the month! Retailers who are members of Social Edge get additional support as they can ask any of their ad questions in our private Facebook group and get responses from fellow retailers as well as the Crystal Media team.

If you’re already a Social Edge member, be on the lookout for more information on our updated ads course, and be sure to ask your questions in our Facebook group, which can be easily accessed under “Community” in your Social Edge dashboard. If not, consider joining the Social Edge community!

December 16, 2014 By Crystal 4 Comments

Important Facebook Changes Coming in 2015

There’s never a dull moment when it comes to Facebook. They’ve once again added new features and announced a change to posts for business pages in 2015. A big announcement.
You need to know these changes and adapt your strategy otherwise to be honest, you’ll be wasting your time marketing on Facebook if you don’t. This post starts with the most important change, but there are more so be sure to read the entire post. Here’s what you need to know –

Starting in 2015 (however it seems this has already started to roll out) Facebook will no longer show posts in fan’s News Feed that are 100% promotional, for free. That means if you want a promotional post to be seen on Facebook, you’ll need to pay for it.

I’m a member of an advanced Facebook marketing group and last week I asked this question, I think you’ll have the same questions that I do.

This may or may not surprise you, but no one really had an answer of what would be considered “promotional” and we all agree, there is a grey area that we won’t really have clarity on until next month.

What we do know is if you post about your store or products saying “Come in today!” “Call to buy!” “Click to buy now!” or “Sale ends today!” the post will not be shown in anyone’s News Feed, unless you advertise it. We also know that if you run a contest or sweepstakes on your Facebook page that has no real context it will not be shown organically (for free) but we’re not entirely sure what will fly and what will not at this moment.

So what the heck should you do now? Here’s a breakdown of what I suggest.

Change your Facebook posting strategy. Now more than ever it’s important to post engaging content – things like relevant questions, tips, quotes, advice, facts, etc., that relates to your perfect customer. Social Edge members make sure you fill out your Customer Profile Worksheet to help identify what kind of content to post.
When it comes to posts about your store and products, test to see what gets organic reach (gets seen for free). Since posts that are 100% promotional will not be seen for free, try posting a new product arrival and teach what the product does, but leave out price and salesy copy. Or create photo albums of new arrivals and test to see what the organic reach is of the album.
Test store and products posts that are not 100% promotional and target only certain groups of people who like your page. This is new to Facebook and it’s important to test this feature because it does limit who your posts are shown to as it narrows down your likes, it does not add in new targets. However, this could be a way to get better organic reach (free visibility) and engagement. (screenshots on how to do this below)
Use Facebook Ads. In my opinion, if you don’t use Facebook ads in 2015, you’re wasting your time on Facebook. As a retailer, you need to promote sales, events and new product arrivals. But with these changes, no one is going to see your posts unless you push them to your page using email, in-store signage and ads. Ideally, you’re using all of these outlets to market posts on Facebook. Social Edge members, on December 18th, 2014 a brand new Facebook Ads Training Course will be live in membership. This will completely walk you through the ads platform, help you understand which ads to use for your page, how to save time and money, and how to significantly increase your Facebook marketing efforts. If you’re not interested in learning Facebook ads and would just like my team to manage for you, click here to contact us.

Here’s a few screenshots of where to find the new Audience Targeting feature and how you can use it to focus your posts towards a more targeted audience, without paying for it. NOTE: A few more Facebook changes are below these images, keep reading so you know what’s going on!

With this change, it’s critical to fully understand the Facebook ads platform before spending money there. Facebook ads are incredibly targeted and effective, if used correctly. Please get trained, I don’t want you to waste your time and money!

If you’d like to read the full announcement from Facebook, click here.

ADDITIONAL FACEBOOK CHANGES:

Currently being rolled out over the next few weeks in the U.S. and worldwide next year, you’ll be able to add CTA (call to action) buttons to pages. These buttons can link to any page on your Facebook page, or to outside websites like your site.

These CTA buttons should align with your business goals. For example: in 2015 you’d like to build your email list (this should be one of your goals! email marketing is highly effective for retailers!) so you’ll use the ‘Sign Up’ CTA button for people to join your email list to receive a special offer like $ or % off. Or if a goal of yours is to increase appointments for interior design clients or men who are going to propose, you can use a ‘Book Now’ CTA button. Here’s an example of where the CTA button will be located on your page:

There will be seven CTA buttons available, which are:

Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Shop Now (great for eCommerce retailers!)
Sign Up
Watch Video

Finally, Facebook has added the ability to add an end date to a post on your page. This means the post will stop showing in the News Feed once it’s ‘expired.’ Currently this is for desktop only and not available on mobile devices, yet.

For example: on a post about an in-store event, set the post end date to be after your event. Here’s where to find it on your page Timeline:

With all these changes, if you have any questions please leave a comment below in this post. If you have a retailer friend, please send this post to them so they know what to expect in 2015 and how to leverage these changes.

It’s important to change your strategy and learn what will be most effective for your business when using Facebook in 2015. Please let me know how I can help you.

September 4, 2013 By Crystal Leave a Comment

Top 3 Mistakes Retailers Make on Facebook

I look at A LOT of retailer’s Facebook pages. I probably look at at least 100 a week whether they are my Social Edge member’s pages, big box retailers or retailers I’m trying to find examples of for webinars and live events I speak and train at. I almost always see these three common mistakes and so I’d like to share them with you today. These are mistakes are so incredibly easy to fix, so after reading this post, go over to your Facebook page and change anything that I reference if you’re doing something wrong, or could be doing it better.

Top 3 Mistakes Retailers Make on Facebook

1. No, bad or never-been-changed cover images. The cover image is the first things people see when on your Facebook page. This is prime real estate to feature products, an event, your store, staff, etc. Make sure you have a cover image and I suggest changing it at the very least monthly. When you change you cover image the new photo goes into your fans Newsfeed, gaining extra exposure for your new cover image and for your page.

*Social Edge Members* Log in to membership for today’s weekly tip as I’ve added examples of retailer’s who do a great job with their cover images – you can brainstorm your own cover image by looking at these examples.

2. No way to collect an email address. This is a common missed opportunity not only on the Facebook page, but on blogs and websites too. I strongly recommend retailers use email to market their store. If you have an email list, or are just starting to market using email, you ALWAYS need to be thinking, “how am I going to build my email list?”

When people go to your Facebook page, is there a clear place they can opt-in? When someone is on your website, is there an easy way they can give you their email? What about on your blog?

To collect email addresses from your Facebook page you need to use an application. Most all email service providers like SnapRetail, MailChimp and Constant Contact have an app that you can add to your page. If you don’t use an email service provider (yet! I strongly recommend you use one) then you can use something like Woobox.com or NorthSocial.com to set up an opt-in form on your Facebook page.

Note: mega missed opportunities on blogs – I rarely see a retailer’s blog that has a call to action at the end of a blog post like call us, come in, buy now or “if you liked this blog post, join our email list to the the newest post each week!”

3. Sharing links on the Timeline versus a photo, then the link. What the heck do I mean by this?! Well, Facebook’s algorithm Edgerank deems photos and videos more valuable posts on Facebook, so they give them more visibility in the Newsfeed. Links have a lower weight, so less people will see your post if it’s just a link, or text with a link.

The way around this is to first upload a photo (I suggest 90% of your posts be of a photo), then type in your status update and then paste in the link URL. Always upload the photo first!

Note: if you use a 3rd party to update your Facebook page like HootSuite, and you’re sharing a link, the update will display a small thumbnail image and the link, and because it’s a link post and not a photo post, you won’t get many people who see that specific update. If you want more people to see your posts on Facebook, you need to upload a photo first, text second, link third!

If you found these tips helpful, you’ll love Social Edge! Check it out here.