There’s an old marketing quote from the 1800s that is credited to John Wanamaker, although I’m sure every business owner since the 1800s has felt this to their core: “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Well, after 200+ years of John Wanamaker and other advertisers scratching their heads, the wait is over – problem solved.

Much like we discussed in our blog post about understanding and identifying key personas of your client base as an internal model for success in advertising messaging, we can now use data science to dramatically reduce spend and increase customer acquisition.

When it comes to digital marketing & advertising, the more precise you are, the better your ads will perform. Traditionally, digital marketing & advertising has two main buckets: Social Media Marketing, and Pay-Per-Click Marketing (Google Ads/AdWords).

Facebook Targeting:

Facebook has always been at the forefront of insight-based and audience-based targeting. Within Facebook, not only can you target location and age, you can target other pertinent details such as interests, job title, life events, and likes.

Facebook is more than a content repository, it allows advertisers to target users by using over 52,000 data points PER user to accurately display pertinent ads. Traditionally, business owners view Facebook as a way to communicate to consumers that already follow or “like” their business, true marketers know how incredibly dialed in Facebook’s targeting can get.

Kick Targeting Up a Notch:

Now, if that isn’t targeted enough, you can actually use your customer data to not only develop a more fluid relationship with your existing client base, but you can create look-alike audiences to target potential clients that match your existing client base within varied (and parsed out) percentages.

What is a Facebook Audience?:

A Facebook audience is a group of people with one or more shared characteristics, defined by you, that you want to target with your ads.

For example:

  • We can create an audience of past visitors to your website who didn’t purchase anything, or people that have come to our website but didn’t convert (click-to-call, submit an email form).
  • We can create an audience of your existing clients.
  • We can create look-alike audiences based on all types of your previous clientele from customers we want to OMIT, to customer types we want more of.

When creating a lookalike audience, Facebook will generate a group of people based on the data you upload or sync that have characteristics similar (but not identical) to your current audience.

This is incredibly powerful because now we’re not just

Using Existing Client Data To Build Facebook Look-alike Audiences:

Now, when you’re first starting out with Facebook, it might be beneficial to get your name and company into as many people as possible. However, over time, your data and insights will allow you to get more targeted. Yes, your marketing engine can actually get smarter!

But how can you further optimize and dial in your marketing? You can upload your existing client data to Facebook to fully optimize and target the potential clients you want.

It is totally worthwhile to separate your existing client base into segments. Of course, this is based on a lot of company-specific criteria. After all, some of your larger clientele might stretch your workforce too thin.

Depending on the export data available in your CRM, you can create audiences on any valuable criteria such as Lifetime Value, Larger Spenders, Lost Clientele, Casual Clientele, and more.

Google Ads (AdWords):

Google Ads (AdWords) is Google’s advertising system in which advertisers bid on certain keywords in order to display ads on Google’s search engine and its partner websites. Recently, Google has added a new and vital update to this advertising platform called “Customer Match”.

What is Google Customer Match?

Customer Match is a new feature in Google Ads that allows advertisers to make the most out of their own data. With a barrier to entry being 1,000 contacts, Google Customer match shares some of the same targeting features as Facebook’s audience creation and targeting engine.

Segmenting Audiences:

As always, the goal isn’t to market to your audience as a whole. Depending on the type of business you operate, you can segment your audience into highly targeted subsets (reminder – the barrier to entry for Google’s Customer Match is 1,000 clients).

Big Fish:

Segment your audience into the highest ticket sales or even lifetime value. Adjust your spend with this audience accordingly, or even expand your geographical range for your highly targeted ads to acquire larger value customers. This can sync up well with look-alike audiences.

Lost Customers:

It’s happened to everyone – at one point, we’ve lost a customer. Sometimes even the good ones go somewhere else. Well, depending on your data exportability, we can create an audience based on customers that aren’t with us anymore. If any of our lost customers search for services we provide within our geographical settings, they’ll see our ads with a unique offer.

Lookalike Audiences:

Much like Facebook’s marketing backbone, we can create lookalike audiences off of your existing customer records. Instead of targeting ads based on all consumers searching for services you provide, we can tailor the visibility of your ads based on the data points and metrics Google’s Customer Match provides to show your ads to qualified searchers.

This is Just The Beginning:

The world of AI-backed client targeting is just beginning. The faster you adapt to these principles, the better. Mind you, this cannot be looked at as a new extension of your marketing principles – if you’re going to do it and do it right, you need to amend the way you track, log, interact, and collect your new and current client data internally.