Determining your audience

Selecting the right audience is an important part of creating a successful Facebook ad, but before you get started, you’ll need to determine the goal of your campaign. Maybe you want to advertise an item to your best customers or re-engage folks who haven’t purchased in a while. Perhaps you’d like to reach people who aren’t familiar with your business just yet. Or, maybe you just want to target people who have a lot in common with your current customers to showcase items they’re sure to love.

Each goal requires targeting a different audience, so let’s take a closer look at all of your options and when you’d use them.

People on your list

Targeting your existing MailChimp subscribers on Facebook will help you reconnect with customers—and potential customers—who are already engaged with your business. And, with our segmentation tools, you can use what you already know about your contacts to create ads that increase conversions and improve customer retention.

If your goal is to turn more of your subscribers into customers, you could create a segment of list contacts who haven’t made a purchase and target them with an ad promoting free shipping on their first order. Or, if you want to retain and engage your existing customers, try targeting recent, repeat, or lapsed customers by segmenting based on their purchase history. You can even target customers who never subscribed to your mailing list at all. A special incentive might convince them to sign up, or win back people who have unsubscribed.

People with similar interests

Facebook collects a lot of data about its users, and this targeting option allows you to put all of that data to work for your business. This can be a great way to introduce yourself to new people, create awareness around your brand, and grow your list.

You’ll have the ability to narrow down your target audience by location, gender, age range, or interest keywords. And you can use our segmentation tools, too. You could find folks who share similar characteristics with your best customers by creating a segment based on the total amount they’ve spent in your store. Or, target people who are similar to your most engaged subscribers by creating a segment of contacts with a member rating of 4 stars or higher.

People with interests you define

This targeting option, also powered by Facebook data, could be particularly helpful if you’re a new marketer or a small business that doesn’t have a list of contacts in MailChimp just yet.

You can narrow down your audience by location, gender, age range, or interest keywords, and invite them to join your list, tell them about your products, or encourage them to visit your website. Then, as your audience—and your business—grows, you can use our other Facebook ad campaign tools to target segments of your new audience.

Writing effective ad copy

Once you’ve determined your intended audience, take a few moments to consider both the purpose of the ad and the message you’d like to convey. These tips will help guide your copy:

  • Write with your audience in mind. Keep your content specific and relevant. An ad promoting a new product to existing customers would likely look quite different from an ad encouraging a new audience to join your list.
  • Include a call to action. A call to action button provides guidance to your audience and helps drive both traffic and sales—especially for people scrolling through Facebook on their phone. In fact, our early data indicates that including a call to action improves an ad’s cost per click by 29 percent.
  • Convey your message clearly. Keep your message brief and be sure that the intent of your ad is easily recognizable.
  • Stay on brand. The messaging in your ad should align with your emails and other elements of your brand. Write in a voice and tone that’s consistent with your brand and familiar to your audience.

Choosing the right image

Facebook ad campaigns also allow you to decide what type of ad you’d like to create. Carousel ads can help you tell a story or showcase multiple items from a collection. If you’d rather call attention to or drive sales of a specific product, a single-image ad is the best option. No matter which type you choose, you’ll need to pair your copy with the right images. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Use images that reflect your message and brand. Your images should complement the copy in your ad and help people see the personal side of your business—the people, the environment, and the benefits of your products.
  • Keep the context of the News Feed in mind. A highly stylized image that feels right at home in a glossy magazine might not fit as well among the slice-of-life posts and puppy photos in the News Feed.
  • Use high-resolution images. A beautiful, high-quality image—taken from your phone, for example—will grab the attention of your audience as they scroll through their Facebook feeds. For single-image ads, images with dimensions close to 1200×628 will work best. If you’re creating carousel ads, use square images that are 1080×1080.
  • Keep text to a minimum. Facebook ads that contain images with little-to-no text tend to cost less and perform better than ads that have text within the images.

Author: Brandon – Writer for The  MailChimp Marketing Team.