What is the biggest challenge facing Facebook marketers in 2020? Finding the right audience for your ads. It gets especially challenging when you are trying to find an audience for luxury products. If you are the owner/manager of a jewelry store, boutique tailor, hand-crafted leather or designer clothing you are aware that your target customers are very few and hard to locate.
Luxury brands must find the very select few who can either afford them or willing to buy their products at a very steep price. This is particularly challenging on Facebook since 2018. After the implementation of GDPR, Facebook has scrapped the ability to target customers based on income.
How to find an audience for your luxury product:
Despite removing income-based targeting, Facebook marketers and media buyers still trust in Facebook’s ability to find the right people. Effectively targeting your audience has its sets of challenges. Try following these alternatives, you will eventually get close or even better results:
- Target audiences living in high-income neighborhoods
- Create a lookalike audience from your Email list
- Choose the frequent flier interest
- Target people who use expensive devices
- Show your ads to people with high-income jobs
- Target people celebrating a special occasion
Target audiences living in high-income neighborhoods
Marketing is a creative profession (obviously). We need to be creative about finding our audience. That entails asking important questions. For instance, one of the most important questions we can is where do our customers live? Thankfully, our customers for expensive luxury goods can be found in high-middle income neighborhoods. A good place to start our marketing efforts can include finding these neighborhoods and their zipcodes, then displaying ads to people living there.
Create a lookalike audience from your Email list
Do you have an email list of existing customers? You can use an existing list to create a lookalike audience on Facebook. A lookalike audience is a feature by Facebook that takes your existing audience and finds people similar to them. This is particularly effective because Facebook’s algorithm can find potential customers based on the data received from your clients’ list.
Choose the frequent flier interest
Finding what makes your customers different from others is a very important skill in media buying. According to this article, the lion’s share of traveling is done by the rich.
This is an excellent opportunity for luxury brands to capitalize on. Facebook has a behavioral targeting option that allows you to focus on frequent fliers.
Can you list more unique cues that your target audience has?
Target people who use expensive devices
The effectiveness of this method can vary depending on your location. While it might be a good idea to assume that only high-income groups use an expensive device like an iPhone, thanks to financing options and deals, some customers for the iPhone might not include your audience.
Targeting people by devices can still be a powerful tactic. People who use the latest gadgets prove their willingness to buy expensive items and can fall under your ideal customers.
Show your ads to people with high-income jobs
Do you know what your customers do for a living? In all likelihood, luxury product buyers come from stable backgrounds and have good jobs. Yes, you can target people based on their job titles. Additionally, if you are unable to find a title, look for an interest that people in that profession might be interested in.
Target people celebrating a special occasion
Not all your customers can be put in a neat little box. Some of your customers might come from groups that you’re not used to serving. One group in particular who might have shied away from your business because of the shocking price tags might come around when a special someone’s birthday or anniversary comes knocking.
Target audiences on Facebook who have birthdays, anniversaries and wedding ceremonies if you believe that you can convert these seasonal customers. You can go the extra mile and also target their friends for good measure.
Use the Narrow/Exclude audience feature to refine your audience. While Facebook’s algorithm is very powerful, we should not overestimate its effectiveness. Some potential customers will be missed out and some non-customers seep into your audience selection.
Use the Narrow Audience selection by creating subsets of audiences.
This can increase your effectiveness by increasing the chances of finding the right person to show your ads. For example, combine high-end device users with people who have graduated from prestigious colleges, if you’re convinced that just targeting devices is too broad of an audience selection.
Exclude interests and behaviors that are not descriptive of your target audience
It is important to understand who your audience is. It is even more important to understand who they are not. A generally known fact is that people from higher-income backgrounds do not watch TV. So, could it be a good idea to exclude people from your audience who show interest in reality TV? This Facebook marketer surely thinks so.
Conclusion
The best digital marketers understand the importance of combining practical knowledge with technology. The key to effective marketing is to understand your audience and figure out ways that technology can help you to bring you closer to them. All brands including luxury good owners can live by this principle to become more effective advertisers.
