By Caitlyn Cornell
Are your social media efforts falling flat, unable to provide the return on investment that you so often hear of? Are you still trying to concoct that perfect viral post to skyrocket your brand but failing to launch?
In today’s digital age, advertising can seem more complex than ever before. With an endless amount of placements to consider and big corporations spending billions in the race for top-of-mind brand awareness, it’s easy to lose sight of where your brand can shine within the clutter.
Perhaps the secret to measurable success is less about the allure of virality, and instead, rooted in the basics of messaging and placement.
Is an organic social presence enough?
Social media offers an opportunity for retailers to become more personal with their audiences, increase their brand awareness, and ideally, boost sales and revenue. Organic content is invaluable to the independent retailer, providing an opportunity to showcase your brand personality at no additional cost… but is it enough to see measurable results?
Paid ads can be incredibly impactful if they are well-targeted to the right audiences, highlighting products and services that they're interested in or searching for, and ultimately expanding your brand’s reach. The question remains— how do we identify these audiences? The secret is much simpler than you might think, and it starts with your customer list.
Joining forces for good
Surely your customer email list is sacred data; the fruits of the intense labor that is converting consumers into recurring customers. Each email address serves as an insight into the demographic makeup of your customer base, so why not harness its potential?
When we unite the efforts of email marketing and social advertising, the result is the reinforcement of your message, as it accompanies your intended audience from screen to screen, device to device.
Through the computerized process known as hashing, consumer email addresses are encrypted and assigned a unique string of code. This code operates like an individual’s digital passport— it tracks their online activity, collecting stamps like a trail of crumbs to mark their stops along the way.
Most importantly, the encryption is anonymous and secure, protecting the consumer’s privacy.
How do we leverage this data?
Through Facebook’s display network, advertisers have the ability to create custom audiences of people who already know your business using sources like customer lists, website traffic or online engagement. Because these individuals have already engaged with your brand, your ads will be highly relevant for them.
Although Facebook privacy protections do not allow for the usage of plain text email addresses, the display network does accept hashed file data. Upon creation, your custom audience enters a “learning phase” in which each unique hashed file is used to identify a matching Facebook user profile.
With this custom audience, we unlock the ability to maximize spend by delivering targeted ads to customers who are already familiar with the brand. Moreover, custom audiences can be utilized to capture data for new potential consumers through the creation of lookalike audiences.
The lookalike audience is somewhat of a data goldmine… Facebook’s algorithm leverages demographic information, as well as interests and behaviors from your source audience, or hashed customer list, to identify new users who share similar traits. When you utilize this lookalike audience, ads are delivered to the audience of users who look like your existing customers.
Perfecting your marketing recipe
With how often people use social media, a consistent presence on the right platforms can do wonders for your brand awareness efforts. It is also an important channel to build a strong relationship with the customers - contributing to increased brand loyalty.
While there is no guaranteed recipe for marketing success, the most lucrative strategies are crafted using careful attention to the data available and how it can be used to provide insight. When retailers utilize their deployment lists for cross-channel opportunities, the result is an integrated marketing strategy that carefully refines the target audience, maximizes return on spend, and ensures that your message is being placed in front of the consumers who are most willing to convert.