When I work with a client to strategize and manage their social advertising, I often talk about segmenting audiences into warm and cold.

In my opinion, Facebook & Instagram are essentially advertising platforms and if you’re a business, the algorithm can limit the exposure of your content. Social advertising can help maximize your reach.

What is a cold audience?

Quite simply, these folks don’t know you yet. They have never seen your website or social content. Through the Facebook Ad Manager platform, you can create audiences based on demographics, location, and interests. In addition, you can create an audience that looks like another audience (appropriately referred to as a "Lookalike" audience). For example, you can create a "Lookalike" audience based on an email list, purchase list, web traffic, etc. Facebook essentially finds other people with the same attributes that may have a similar interest in your content. Think of a “Lookalike” audience as a Doppelgänger audience.

Just a heads up, if you are a realtor, targeting is limited due to fair housing laws. Learn more here.

What is a warm audience?

Warm audiences are already connected to you in some way. Here’s how:

• They have visited your website

• They are on your email list

• They have engaged with your social content (likes, responses)

How do you utilize warm and cold audiences?

My suggestion is to create a two-tiered strategy:

Step 1: Create warm audiences

Through the FB ad manager platform, you can utilize specific objectives for your ads. To create warm audiences, I suggest the following objectives:

• Engagement ads (encouraging likes, follows, comments)

• Web Traffic ads (content that leads folks to your website)

• Video Views ad (videos that are 30 seconds or more)

By creating content that introduces who you are, what you do, and/or sparks intrigue and interest, you are building a warm audience that you can build a relationship with and share additional content with down the road.

Step 2: Retargeting

Once you have your warm audiences in place, you can begin sharing ads that dive deeper into what you want to sell, what you’re promoting or want to share. This audience is more likely to turn HOT and convert to a sale or engage on a deeper level.

What else do you need to know?

Being thoughtful about content is key. How do you want to introduce who you are and what you do? You might consider a short 15 second or less video, a link to a blog post, or simply an image and text that you believe will engage audiences. The proof is in the pudding, so know that measuring results is essential here. Facebook Ad Manager will provide you with all the details about measuring your return of investment.

Do you have any examples of ads?

Did you know that each Facebook page has a section called Page Transparency where you can view all ads deployed by a business? Simply go to their Facebook page, on the left hand side you will see a section called Page Transparency, then click on ad library. Below is an example from The Museum of Modern Art.

Do I stop posting organically?

Nope. Since you will be driving traffic to your social channels, you want to make sure you keep your organic posting fresh and active. How often should you post? Read my article about that here.

Have any questions about setting this up for your business? Contact me today.