Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed lead generation, retargeting, and cold audiences for advertising. Now, it’s time to consolidate these topics and understand the connections between them.
For more detailed insights, check out my podcast, Master Making Money With Your Marketing. If you’re interested, listen to the latest episode here. For quick reads of all the episodes, click here.
Lead Generation Audience
The most wide-reaching and “cold” audience you can get will typically be for a lead generation campaign, this campaign likely isn’t looking for an immediate purchase, which will bring the click-through rate up.
When creating this audience, think of your business in broad strokes. Use interests that are generic enough to widen the view, but narrow enough to be in a relevant field.
For this cold audience, we also like to put ourselves in potential clients’ shoes. When they aren’t buying from you, where do they shop? Think of this as opening your door and wanting any remotely interested customer to browse the racks, regardless of intent to buy.
With lead generation we might typically hope to see a conversion rate higher than cold direct selling, but over a period from 30-90 days after signing up. These buyers will need to be on your website a couple of times. They will see and maybe delete emails before opening, but they will be familiar with the brand name.
Retargeting Audiences
The retargeting audience is truly the Subway of audiences, allowing you to focus on what you want and ignore what you don’t. While there’s no single method to set up this audience, we recommend three generic styles.
- Download and export your email subscriber list to target specifically
- Use website and social media engagers, visitors and followers to target
- Combine 1 & 2 for the widest net of warm and familiar potential customers
Within this retargeting campaign we tend to see plenty of email customer sales. This not only makes tracking them as ad sales easier but reaffirms lead generation success.
Our favorite aspect of this audience is the dynamic refreshment. New people will cycle in and out of the audience and with a dynamic creative, will never get the same ad twice.
Conversion Audience
At the very end of the funnel is where we find conversion ads. Cold, and direct, these ads want to sell right away and need ready buyers. For this reason, we want to see detailed interests and plenty of them.
Here we typically like anywhere from at least 20 to up to 60 interests and targeting methods. Similar businesses and industries are excellent starting spots. As a boutique, you may include American Eagle or GAP in your interests. Just something to bring in a clothing-shopping fan.
Aside from interests, it’s helpful to further break things down like with age, gender, and location. This information is often readily available in your social media insights, providing a solid starting point.
Other factors to consider include relationship and employment status. You can even narrow your focus to the top __% of income by zip codes. When you target the conversion audience, you reach the end of the conversion funnel which allows you to sell to those who are both interested and ready to buy.
When it comes to creating audiences there is a method to the madness! And if you’re looking for help on truly learning how to do this Joining my FB Ads Course will be a great starting point!