In the modern world of digital marketing, it’s not just about finding an audience. It’s about finding the right audience. Read on to learn about building a paid social audience persona.
SEE ALSO: 6 Branding Tools to Effectively Establish Your Digital Brand
Why Your Audience Matters
You can pour time, money, and energy into making the perfect social campaign for your digital brand. Many businesses do. However, putting in all of that work without thinking about the right audience for it is a mistake.
If you create social ads without any paid social audience persona strategies, you run several risks. For one, no one might see your ad at all. However, it is more likely that the people you need to see your ad won’t. Having the right people see your social ad campaign is key to building a strong persona audience.
What Is A Persona Audience?
You might be asking yourself what a persona audience even is. Let’s break it down. A persona audience is an audience built through social media channels. These can include, for example:
A persona audience comes from Facebook, rather than a customer list you already have. It comes from Twitter and not an email list. As 68% of Americans now use Facebook, you don’t want to miss out on it as a marketing opportunity.
For example, think about the ads you see on your Facebook newsfeed. It’s not pure chance. It’s actually the result of a lot of algorithmic work and data.
Based on the actions you take online, Facebook groups you so advertisers know who to show their ads to. For example, say you check into a lot of restaurants. It’s likely Facebook will show you ads for more restaurants.
If you are new to the social media aspects of digital marketing, knowing where to start can be hard. How do you build a paid social audience persona? How can you also generate useful leads for your brand and business?
Use these tips to get started.
SEE ALSO: 10 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Ad Conversions
Know Your Goal
Start with your end goal. This will help you figure out what kind of people should be in your persona audience. If your whole company is new, or you are launching a new service or product, your goal may just be raising awareness.
Simply raising as much awareness as you can is a good goal to start with. The most important thing to do it to define your goal of raising awareness via driving action.
Persona audiences work well for top-of-the-funnel campaigns. Looking ahead, they can also play into your mid-to-lower funnel campaigns down the road.
Applying the Persona Audience To Real Life
Let’s say a photographer has begun their own photography business. They have
Rather than setting an initial goal of instantly getting clients, they want potential clients to be aware of them. Consequently, this will make people more likely to choose them when they need the services of a photographer.
Think About Which Detailed Targeting Identifiers To Use
Most social media platforms let you use targeting identifiers. Facebook, for example, has three main detailed targeting identifiers to choose from. These are:
- Demographics: Including employment, life events, and household characteristics
- Interests: Including which pages you follow and content you interact with
- Behaviors: Including your purchase behaviors, online history, and device usage
So, it is very important that you know the ins and outs of each identifier’s purposes and limits when you make your audience.
For example, while interests provide an enormous amount of options, you need to take more than that into account. This identifier works best for raising awareness. Likewise, if you only focus on behavior identifiers, you may overly narrow your audience.
Find Your Audience
If you think you know your audience, but you haven’t done any research or testing, think again. Jumping into any situation without all the information is never a smart move. So, you definitely do not want to operate any ad campaign in that way.
Have you ever seen an ad and felt annoyed by it, because it did not apply to you at all? This is common and can even turn people off to businesses.
According to Hubspot research, internet users overwhelmingly feel overwhelmed, stalked, and annoyed by ads. Over half of people say that intrusive, unpolished, and irrelevant ads give them a poor opinion of the brand being advertised.
Don’t be the advertiser with poorly targeted ads that work against you.
SEE ALSO: Why Brand Consistency Matters in the Ad Tech Age
Example #1
Remember our hypothetical photographer? They could just make an audience that includes all people near their business. However, that is very general. So, it may not create the best results.
After all, people often require photographers for specific events or projects. They may book them months and months in advance. Not everyone needs the services of a photographer every day.
However, people who are planning weddings almost always need photographers. By creating a paid social audience persona on Facebook, they can reach those people. Rather than a general search, the photographer can target people who are engaged. This can be done by choosing that demographic in Facebook’s audience builder.
With Facebook’s detailed targeting, one of the main demographics is
Example #2
Those in some businesses are in luck when it comes to finding their persona audience. However, for others, it can be harder to define. In most cases, there will be no option to target a single group.
For example, say a business owner is opening a sandwich delivery shop. When building social media ad campaigns, there is no box to check labeled “people who eat sandwiches.” Instead, the owner will have to do research. They will have to find out the common traits of people who eat out or get delivery.
For example, they might focus on people who are interested in chain sandwich restaurants or who use delivery services often. These are the people they want in their paid social audience persona strategy.
SEE ALSO: Using Facebook Custom Audiences to Create an Unforgettable Digital Brand
Building Your Paid Social Audience Persona
These tips can help you build the right persona audience for your ad campaign. Taking the time to understand your target audience is key. If you don’t, you could waste a lot of time and money advertising to the wrong people. These people will never be interested in your products or services because they don’t apply to them. As a result, you may not get the leads you want.
Having the right persona audience means that the right people will become aware of your business. Then, they will potentially engage with your content. Finally, they may eventually buy your products or make use of your services.
Which factors do you think are most important when it comes to building a persona audience? Comment below…
