Your customers make up a big part of your business’s equation. Successful acquisition of customers ensures a successful business. However, they are still a lot of businesses out there who do not know who their customers are, or where to look for them.

One big blue sea where you can start is on Facebook. This may seem daunting to many, but here are some ways and tips to help you.

Firstly, there are three stages in the journey where prospects become customers in one’s business. Let’s explore them.

1. The ‘Before’ Phase

These are just viewers or users on Facebook hanging around on social media. You would want your ads to be exposed to these viewers

2. The ‘During’ Phase

This is when the viewers have seen and engaged with your ads. They may have visited your website and may be in the process of becoming a customer.

3. The ‘After’ Phase

These viewers are already your customers. They have already purchased your products and services.

The 3 Pillars of Profitability

To tackle each stage, one can use the three pillars of profitability.

1. Awareness and Acquisition

This is suitable for people who haven’t heard of your brand or business before, or the uncaught fishes in the deep blue sea of Facebook. Your ads should focus on getting in front of these people and not those that are already your customers or subscribers. You can, however, target people who share similar traits with your existing customers, to generate leads and sales.

2. Retargeting

These ad methods are best suited for viewers who have seen or engaged with your brand. They could also be people who have visited your website. There are two targetings you can get out of this pillar:

• People who saw your product page but didn’t add to cart > Target them with an ad.
• People who add to cart but didn’t check out > Target them with an ad.

3. Loyalty

This pillar is reserved for your existing customers or people who have purchased from you. The strategy here is loyalty, and you can achieve that goal by giving your customers special deals, promotions and complementary products to increase retention and LCV (Lifetime Customer Value).

Here, you can segregate into two different influential segments:

• Customers who bought your most popular product but not your second most popular product. You can show them ads that advertise your second most popular products because these people would more likely buy similar trending products from you. This could also be used with your third and fourth most popular products as well.
• For those people who saw your video ad for a product but still didn’t buy, you should retarget them again. This is because if they’ve watched 75% or more of your ad for this product, it means they’ve shown interest in buying.

If your advertising is asking for engagement, then you should respond accordingly. This is the core philosophy behind these three pillars that you need to understand: advertising is all about communicating with people based on their behaviour and what they’ve already consumed.

How to Advertise on a Budget

So how much do I need to spend to advertise? We understand that money is of the essence in a business and you would want to get the most bang out of your buck. Here are a few strategies to not burn a hole in your pocket.

1. Shorten your window of engagement in Facebook Ads Manager

Here you can test different ads without letting it run for a long period. For example, you can use Facebook’s Engagement Custom Audiences to target audiences who have recently engaged with your content across the Facebook family of apps and services, and then set the period to 7 days to cut costs and make your retargeting more effective.

REMEMBER: The more recently someone has engaged with you, the more likely they are to engage with you again. Retargeting those who have consumed your content in the last seven days is a great way to get the most from your ad spend.

2. The Clicker, The Converter & The Scroller

Facebook segments people into these three segments. The clicker is people who frequently click on posts and ads. The converter is people who click posts or ads to make a purchase, and the scroller is people who usually only scroll through their news feeds. If you’re advertising a video ad, Facebook will put it in front of clickers and scroller first. If you’re advertising a conversion based ad, FB will put your ad out to converters first.

3. Optimise Custom Conversions

An ‘Add To Cart’ action happens at least six times more than a ‘Purchase’ action. If you let Facebook optimise for ‘Add To Cart’ under the Custom Conversions section, they will look for people who would be most likely to add to cart, and more likely to end up as purchasers. To learn how to create custom conversions on Facebook go here.

You can be successful in using Facebook for your business with these tips! Always remember to test your ads across different target audiences and optimise ads that aren’t performing well.