FACEBOOK AUDIENCE QUESTION

[Ryan Thompson]

Hey Gang,

I've been spending a lot of time learning about Facebook / Insta ads and specifically FB Custom Audiences. I have a question that I think I know the answer to... but wanted to bounce it off refresh nation.

Below is a screenshot from FB Business Manager "Audiences".

My store:

• GMC + Chev + Buick
• Small town (18,000) ... 1 hour north of Toronto

My Audience In Question:

• Cold audience who I will serve educational/ non "salesy" videos to
• I have identified my target would be interested in Chevrolet Silveardo + Boots and Hearts Festival (big country music fest)
• Take a look at screenshot below. Does my audience below:
  • Like BOTH Chevrolet Silverado AND Boots and Hearts? OR will it display ads to people that like Boots and Hearts but maybe not Chevrolet?

When I was first building it out, I thought it was pretty sweet that I could create an audience that liked both (dream prospect).. but when I read below it looks like either / or?

 

[John.H]

Few key points I want to build on:

#1: If you're running advertisements soliciting loan opportunities of any sort. Whether it is for a home, car, or motorcycle. You need to run in the Special Ads Category. Which will limit the type of audience filtering you can perform, but will prevent any ad account infractions. Worst case scenario... your ad account gets flagged/banned for not obeying. Best case, you receive a warning and your ad gets disapproved. Please ensure you're running in the Special Ads Category!

#2: DO NOT use Interest or Behavioral targeting, if you're already targeting a very limited population. (Under 10,000,000 people)

A big reason why Facebook works so well at generating customers is due to the data points they acquire from every person who submits a lead, finance app, application, and purchases a car from your dealership. By limiting the size of your audience, you are inadvertently limiting the data points you may acquire.

In turn, this will limit ad performance. Yielding a much higher Cost-Per-Lead, and ultimately will cost more to produce sales from.

#3: Cold audiences are nice, but definitely try and leverage Warmer audiences, and retarget people from your website. You will certainly find buyers this way, as you're touching people who have already expressed some level of interest in your product/service.

 

[Ryan Thompson]

Few key points I want to build on:

#1: If you're running advertisements soliciting loan opportunities of any sort. Whether it is for a home, car, or motorcycle. You need to run in the Special Ads Category. Which will limit the type of audience filtering you can perform, but will prevent any ad account infractions. Worst case scenario... your ad account gets flagged/banned for not obeying. Best case, you receive a warning and your ad gets disapproved. Please ensure you're running in the Special Ads Category!

#2: DO NOT use Interest or Behavioral targeting, if you're already targeting a very limited population. (Under 10,000,000 people)

A big reason why Facebook works so well at generating customers is due to the data points they acquire from every person who submits a lead, finance app, application, and purchases a car from your dealership. By limiting the size of your audience, you are inadvertently limiting the data points you may acquire.

In turn, this will limit ad performance. Yielding a much higher Cost-Per-Lead, and ultimately will cost more to produce sales from.

#3: Cold audiences are nice, but definitely try and leverage Warmer audiences, and retarget people from your website. You will certainly find buyers this way, as you're touching people who have already expressed some level of interest in your product/service.

Thanks, John.

We do barely any special finance and was not using FB to leverage subprime leads (I know that is a big play for a lot of dealers with FB). So I don't think we would fall into the category of getting banned.

We are using warm audiences for retargeting etc but I am doing some experimentation with filling the funnel of customers who don't already know Ernie Dean Chevrolet. Chat soon!

 

[Marc Lavoie]

"it display ads to people that like Boots and Hearts but maybe not Chevrolet"

Correct.

Custom Audiences work in a similar fashion than Detail Targeting, the main difference is that Custom Audiences you control what's in them.

Here's how Facebook describes it :

Audience matches People who are in at least ONE of the following (audiences).

 

[Dane Saville]

Hi, Ryan.

Unfortunately, you don't have to be promoting subprime or special financing to get pinged by Facebook from what we've seen. You can certainly try running ads outside of that category but don't be surprised if they get disapproved. Please update us when you have an opportunity on what you're seeing.

Yes, the and/or works like it does in regular conversational language, so you're correct in the assessment.

One of the best approaches to maximize cost-efficiencies, fight ad fatigue, and increase relevance to consumers is by focusing on ad variety. That means creating buckets of consumers based on some light targeting, such as interests, with the possibility of layering on Oracle data (if you really want to hone a little more than what Facebook provides) to create a number of audiences and ad combinations because a truck buyer is different than an SUV buyer which is different than a sedan buyer. And even within that, say a Silverado buyer likely has some interests/needs that a different than a Colorado buyer. Some buyers want to see price while others want some sort of emotive copywriting.

If you're wanting to reach audiences that don't have recall of your dealership or haven't heard of it before, this approach is an excellent way to also ensure they don't see the same ads over and over again -- that fatigue is a primary cause to consumers shutting you out. I'd be happy to speak more at length about this approach if you have any interest.

Best,

Dane

 

[Ryan Thompson]

Hi, Ryan.

Unfortunately, you don't have to be promoting subprime or special financing to get pinged by Facebook from what we've seen. You can certainly try running ads outside of that category but don't be surprised if they get disapproved. Please update us when you have an opportunity on what you're seeing.

Yes, the and/or works like it does in regular conversational language, so you're correct in the assessment.

One of the best approaches to maximize cost-efficiencies, fight ad fatigue, and increase relevance to consumers is by focusing on ad variety. That means creating buckets of consumers based on some light targeting, such as interests, with the possibility of layering on Oracle data (if you really want to hone a little more than what Facebook provides) to create a number of audiences and ad combinations because a truck buyer is different than an SUV buyer which is different than a sedan buyer. And even within that, say a Silverado buyer likely has some interests/needs that a different than a Colorado buyer. Some buyers want to see price while others want some sort of emotive copywriting.

If you're wanting to reach audiences that don't have recall of your dealership or haven't heard of it before, this approach is an excellent way to also ensure they don't see the same ads over and over again -- that fatigue is a primary cause to consumers shutting you out. I'd be happy to speak more at length about this approach if you have any interest.

Best,

Dane

Think the special interest ads are only necessary for the U.S.A? Just haven't heard much about it here in the great white north.

 

[DrewAment]

Think the special interest ads are only necessary for the U.S.A? Just haven't heard much about it here in the great white north.

Yep -- ONLY in the US right now

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Think the special interest ads are only necessary for the U.S.A? Just haven't heard much about it here in the great white north.

It's in Canada too @Ryan Thompson - It only means you have to tailor your message/media much better to achieve similar results because you lose targeting based on age/interests/behavior.

Plus, when selecting that Special Ad Category, watch what terms you use in your text to make sure you comply because they are not very permissive.

 

[Alexander Lau]

*see: https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/threads/facebook-has-50-fake-traffic.6353/

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

The Special Interests don’t yet apply in Canada but Facebook is planning on rolling them out in late 2020. We don’t click the Special Interests button when we run ads in Canada so far, but it’s not that big of a deal anyway because broad audiences always perform better with the right content. We may start with light targeting to feed the algorithm but we always move to broad. The most important thing is your ad structure and your ad content. It’s a game of relevance and messaging.

When it comes to your initial question, you CAN layer audiences but it’s really not a good idea unless you are running nationwide. There are tools where you can layer tens of audiences at once and can help with initial light targeting, but I would avoid heavy targeting and just put the majority of your focus on the ad content.