Have you noticed that your Facebook Ads almost always seem perfectly tailored to you, minus a few random exceptions? The truth is they are! Many Facebook advertisers tailor their ads to their ideal audience. So it’s no coincidence that you see ads of products that you would probably be interested in or have checked out already.
Since Facebook has information on age, gender, relationship status, education and type of work from your Facebook profiles, advertisers can use this information to better target their audience.
The Facebook Ads’ targeting system is effective on niche audiences and more common audiences. For example if you want to target dog owners who love to purchase things for their dogs online? You can. And as Barkbox has proven, the right users will buy.
There’s no denying that targeting matters a great deal. However, it’s the personalization aspect of targeting that ultimately gets the results. By making our ads as personalized as possible for our customers, we’re increasing the relevance of the ads and the chance that they’ll convert. It’s human nature for people to care about things that will affect them and at a first glance Facebook users care more about things that are relevant to them.
What Does Personalization in Marketing Mean?
Personalization is revolutionizing marketing, and it has been for a while. That’s why Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign went viral and was so successful; people loved finding Coke’s with their names, or—even better—the names of their friends and loved ones they could share it with.
Coca-Cola is a company that has really grasped the personalization concept; they used Facebook Ads to distribute their 2017 Super Bowl commercial, which celebrated diversity and inclusion by singing America the Beautiful in multiple different languages, to audiences in each language.
Not only did they deliver a powerful political message, but they were able to get the message in front of the audience who would be most receptive to it. They then ran Facebook Ad campaigns targeting unique, individual audiences to great success.
That’s why personalization in marketing is so essential; it’s all about getting the right content in front of the most relevant audience possible, thereby making the user experience as interesting and engaging as possible. This helps Facebook by making users stay on the platform longer. It helps the businesses who get clicks—and sales—from those laser-targeted, hyper-personalized ads.
The Future of Personalization in Marketing
Personalization is becoming more and more essential in the world of marketing. Since personalized content gets the best response rates, so why wouldn’t you try to use it more?
Eventually, personalization will bleed into new types of mediums and platforms; we’re seeing both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) take hold, offering massive potential for personalization.
Augmented reality is already being used to sell more products in stores. For example Shisedo uses an AR Makeup Mirror that takes a picture of a user’s face and shows them what different shades of makeup will look like on them. This can help users “try on” multiple types of makeup in one visit, helping them seal the deal and commit to a purchase. Imagine how incredible it will be when this technology becomes more commonplace and can be delivered through social ads.
Image via I am fabulicious
Personalization and virtual reality have already made their way to social media; Facebook has just announced their beta version of virtual reality with Facebook Spaces. Users who have bought the Oculus VR system can connect their Facebook accounts to a virtual reality space that focuses on connecting with each other, sharing those experiences, and having fun. It is, perhaps, the most personal Facebook has ever gotten—and just imagine once we’re able to display ads in those VR spaces.
This type of personalization means that the personalization in marketing matters more than ever, and soon, we’ll be able to personalize our marketing materials even more than we already do. This is significant.
How to Use Personalization in Your Facebook Ads
When you want to up the personalization in your Facebook Ads to drive more results, you can do so through a combination of copywriting and better targeting. Specifically, you’ll want to identify niche groups and craft messages specifically for them, making the messages as targeted as they possibly can be.
There are several ways to do this, including:
- Create buyer personas.Buyer personas are a great way to add personalization to your ads without actually having to truly personalize them. You can create specific niche segments of your audience, and accurately craft highly targeted messages that they’ll be receptive to. If you’re able to flesh out your personas enough to the point where they feel like real people, you can create ad copy that feels personalized to their particular needs and pain points.
- Utilize heavy segmentation. Heavy segmentation of your audience goes hand in hand with buyer personas, and requires you to break your audience down into small niches and sub-niches. By targeting these small audience niches either through custom audiences or behavior and interest targeting, you can deliver personalized messages based on those needs and pain points you identified when creating buyer personas.
- Use custom audiences from a website, or dynamic ads. Custom audiences created from website visitors lets you show users the exact products they were considering on your site, increasing the odds they’ll go back and click again. Dynamic ads do the same thing, on a much larger scale; if you can upload your product catalogue to Facebook and run these ads, you’ll completely automate personalization.
- Split test.Split test, split test, split test. This is the key to perfecting personalization; by seeing which audience responds best to which content, you can craft the perfect ad, made up of the perfect copy, image, and offer for each individual audience. This will make your ads seem more personalized and more relevant to the users who see them, increasing your results and conversions.
Final Thoughts
Personalization is revolutionizing the world of marketing, and is becoming more important as we see both developments in technology and targeting abilities, and as the users’ digital environment becomes saturated with even more content. Start now by personalizing your ads—and the copy and offer within them—as much as possible, connecting with users personally the first time around.
Want help personalizing your Facebook Ads to optimize results? We’ve got you covered.Schedule a consultation and see how we can help you.
