With the weakening of the third-party ecosystem, targeting consumers online the way so many do today is about to change. Instead of campaigns that rely on a less-than-ideal third-party approach, online behemoths such as Google and Facebook are developing their own tools to help marketers use the data they already possess to create specific audiences for targeting with a higher degree of accuracy and efficiency.
For instance, this year Facebook released its Custom Audiences capability. Custom audiences let marketers locate their existing known audience among Facebook users. According to Facebook, "Using your data such as email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs to make the match, you can now find the exact people you want to talk to, in custom audiences that are defined by what you already know."
This allows you to use elements of your existing profile data to match up with Facebook's data to find and reach specific individuals with highly relevant messaging on Facebook ads and/or sponsored posts. Using profile data to support and enhance your marketing efforts across Facebook essentially turns Facebook into a digital marketing channel. Now marketers can use social with precision.
In addition to better connecting with your current customers, you can use Facebook functionality to create lookalike audience segments for acquisition. For example, if you know that the people who actually buy your products (versus those who just like your page) have specific data points in common, Facebook can match those data points with the information on their end and provide an audience of additional folks who might also be receptive to your brand. Custom look-alike audiences make it easy to accurately identify a larger pool of prospective customers who otherwise might be difficult to access with any level of precision.
For Knotice clients, tapping into custom audiences on Facebook is easy - it's now available as part of the platform. It's early, but so far we've found that client campaigns using Facebook custom audiences show some impressive results.