“Wait, why am I seeing ads for that dress I just bought? And it’s on sale! What the heck? I don’t think I’ll be shopping here anymore.”

Sound familiar? Using social advertising to target your customers as part of your marketing campaign drives sales and results, but if done incorrectly you could be causing more harm than good. Your social ads need to be run in combination with your marketing campaigns. If done correctly, your social ads will exponentially increase the overall impact and ROI of your marketing efforts.

Are you making the most of what Facebook, Google and Twitter have to offer, to target the right customers at the right time? Many marketers still aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities. Well here’s a little secret, it’s not difficult to implement, and you can even do it yourself, starting right now with data you already have.

On average, Facebook users check their accounts up to 15 times per day. Why not engage with your customers where they are? You already have your website visitors, subscribers, purchasers, high lifetime-value customers, and your loyalty program members. You have all the data. It’s time to use it.

Facebook Custom Audiences, Google Customer Match, and Twitter Audience Manager are extremely powerful tools, especially if you use them to their full potential. Advertising on social media can be used for:

Pre-targeting: Create a brand awareness campaign, targeted to specific customer segments prior to an exclusive sale.

Re-targeting: Create specific social ad segments based on the level of engagement with emails, such as subscribers who have:

  • Never opened.
  • Opened but didn’t click.
  • Opened frequently but didn’t click.
  • Opened, clicked but didn’t convert.

Reactivation campaigns: Send compelling social ads to subscribers who haven’t opened emails in a while, or worse, unsubscribed. Include an offer to get them back to the website and update their contact details or re-subscribe.

Cart and browse abandonment ads: These targeted ads will usually be less expensive than regular ads. Recognizing that you have a pre-existing relationship with the individual, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other platforms reward you with cheaper rates because they want their users to have a good experience on their platform. Think of it like calling someone you already know vs. cold-calling a stranger.

These people know and like you; you’re not trying to get a new customer, you’re targeting existing customers. You know the person, you know your relationship with them, you know what they’ve purchased. Using social ads, you can group customers into segments to do very sophisticated targeting that people will respond to.

For example, you can target an ad to a custom audience who bought a particular item, let’s say that red dress. You don’t want to target them with ads showing the red dress they just purchased. You can target that group of purchasers with accessories or items related to the dress to encourage another purchase. Perhaps you sell an amazing pair of shoes, or products by the same designer that could get the customer back on your site and shopping again.

Targeting a social advertising campaign at your existing customers is relatively easy. All it will cost you is the time it takes to create your audiences, and the price of the ads themselves.

Keep in mind that your audiences have to be updated and refreshed constantly. If you don’t keep this information up to date, you can start to create a bad customer experience. Your customers might start to see old ads, ads that aren’t relevant anymore, or the same ads over and over.

Social advertising can be extremely targeted and highly effective. However, while it packs a lot of power, it does take a lot of time to ensure a customer experience that will engage shoppers and increase sales.

Learn more about Emarsys Social Ads, book a demo right now.