Have you heard people talking about warm and cold audiences? I am guessing you have worked out they aren’t talking about people living in at the North Pole or in the tropics. In simple terms, warm audiences are people who know you and are familiar with your work whilst cold audiences have no clue on earth who you are (or at least very little idea of your work). There is lots more detail and breakdown that people go into but when you are starting out with Facebook ads, thinking in these terms is a good start.
Creating warm and cold audiences in Facebook ads
Cold audiences are what you are probably using now or at least partially using now. They are the audiences you set up for your Facebook ads when you select your audience based on things like their age, where they live, their interests and so on. You will hopefully know your target audience well enough that in that mix you will show your ad to people who know and love you but you can’t guarantee that.
When you are just starting out and have no email list, few website visitors and very few Facebook likes on your page, you are pretty much limited to cold audiences. The minimum custom audience is 20 so you need to have an email list over 20 or over 20 people who have visited your website in the last 180 days (after you have installed a pixel) or Facebook page likes over 20 before you can create custom audiences. (Facebook page likes aren’t strictly speaking custom audiences in Facebook speak but it is the same idea – you select them using connections).
You can specify that you want the ad show to people who are on your mailing list, have visited your website or have liked your Facebook page. Ok so some of it won’t be 100% perfect – it relies on the email in your mailing list matching up to the one the person has used on Facebook (so you will probably need more than 20 people on your email list in reality) but it is a great start. There are more options, particularly around activity on your website to make the audience even more customised but setting up the basics is a good start.
Why do you want to show your ads to warm audiences?
You have someone on your mailing list and you have sent them the details of your latest offering, they have liked your Facebook page and you have shared your new product details on Facebook or you have your new offering plastered all over your website that they have just visited. So why the hell would you want them to see another ad?
But I am sure you know yourself that you often don’t buy the first time you see something advertised. You see something once and think that is interesting and then forget about it because life gets busy. You see the ad again, write down a reminder on a post it note to look at it later and then lose the post it note. You then see the ad on Facebook and finally click through and purchase. It is all about showing your message to people a few times.
Lets face it, how many times have you felt overwhelmed with email and just deleted something where the subject line wasn’t catchy enough. Then there is the fact that Facebook isn’t showing your posts to every person who has liked your page because there is so much information on Facebook now it just isn’t possible.
But even with the annoying things that people do to your beautifully crafted email, it is still easier to sell to a warm audience than a cold audience. That isn’t to say cold audiences don’t have a place in your Facebook ad strategy, it is just a different place. And you might want to exclude your warm audiences from some of your ads – for example if you are relaunching a product, you can exclude people who have already purchased that product.
Better cold audiences through lookalike audiences
Aside from your custom audiences, you can also use these custom audiences to create better cold audiences with lookalike audiences. With these audiences, you tell Facebook to show the ads to people who look like your warm audience. You do need 100 people in your custom audience to create a lookalike audience.
There is also the option to select friends of people who have liked your Facebook page. I am not so convinced by this option. If you are targeting me because of my business interests, then many of my friends won’t be interested. But if you are targeting me because of my interest in eating out then you will probably find your ad is more relevant to them.
As you might have guessed you want to show ads for different products and with different ad copy depending on who you are targeting but getting your head around setting up custom audiences is a great start.
What to get started setting up custom audiences but need some help? Then book in for one of my Tech Untangle Power Hours and we can walk through how to do it together.
