A product is something that’s created and consumed. Products can be physical or digital. Some products are scarce, others are abundant. A product takes time and energy to create and delivers value to the consumer. It may take a few hours to write a blog post, days to write a new song, weeks to design and ship a batch of t-shirts, months to build a mobile app, and years to build a brand that people will buy from loyally.

If you can make people feel like they need your product, you can almost guarantee that they will pay you for it. Most people don’t need an iPhone to survive, but it’s how Apple makes the people that want an iPhone feel. They want the iPhone because it looks cool. They need the iPhone to take the pictures their friends will wow at. If you need to have the most likes on Instagram, you need to have an iPhone.

Good marketing will get people to want your product. Great marketing will convince people they needyour product.

Great marketing triggers an emotional response within the consumer. Nature has hardwired the human brain to bias decision-making based on emotions. No matter how analytical or rational we want to be, we make decisions to consume or buy based on gut feelings.

My mom gives my dad a hard time for spending hours at the store trying to decide which wine to buy. He’ll research the vineyard’s history, analyze the tasting scores, but at the end of the day he’ll buy the wine based on what he feels is the best wine.

What really got my dad to buy that wine? It’s the images on the website, the reviews the winery collected from their best customers, the design of the label on the bottle, and the tasteful advertising that’s all meticulously aligned to fire off and reinforce an emotional buying response.

Building a brand like this starts with an understanding of how to cultivate a relationship with the people who want your product. To build meaningful and long-lasting relationships today, you need data.

Data is the lifeblood of the modern marketer. Today’s consumer spends on average 2 hours a day on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They make buying decisions without ever physically interacting with the product they’re buying. Modern consumers are free to listen, watch, read, and absorb content without limit. The internet continues to rapidly change how people consume. To be the best at reaching and engaging consumers, you need the data that defines who they are online.

Not all data is created equal. Even though Facebook page likes don’t provide direct lines to contacting your audience, they do reveal social interests. Email addresses don’t tell you who your fans are, but they do provide a method of personalized communication. Website visits and link clicks show purchasing intent but remain anonymized and unidentifiable. Unifying data across the channels where people interact with your content or product is how you can understand how to target the people who really want to buy what you’re selling.

With data that describes real people who consume or buy your product, you can start identifying the ideal buying persona. A buying persona is a set of characteristics that describe the people who want your product, why they want it, how they prefer it, and when they’ll buy it. Knowing this helps you answer two of the most important questions about growing your business (no matter what your product is):

  1. How to find more people that want what you’re selling.
  2. How to get the people that want what you’re selling to need what you’re selling.

In the past 5 years, Facebook has spent untold money, resources, and manpower designing the perfect tool to answer those two questions simultaneously. The social media universe is undoubtedly ruled by this single entity, providing you the access to reach a fifth of the world’s population. Armed with data, Facebook becomes your most powerful weapon to reach the people that you can directly convince to buy or consume your product.

Advertising on Facebook is the cheapest and most effective way to market to the people you’re selling to. It’s cheap because you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad — or responds positively to your product. It’s effective because you can place your product in front of the most relevant people in the most unobtrusive and engaging way possible. The Facebook News Feed is where people connect and interact with the people who are most important to them.

Inserting your product meaningfully between other naturally emotionally triggering stories allows you to be dangerously convincing.

The key to success in Facebook advertising is targeting the right peoples’ Feeds. There is a direct correlation between the quality of targeting and the quality of data that identifies your ideal buyer persona. Feeding Facebook the interests, characteristics, and behaviors of the people who really care about your product trains Facebook to know which people’s Feeds need your ads.

One of the most powerful applications of Facebook advertising is finding more people that want what you’re selling. This is called lookalike targeting. This type of targeting seeks out people who are similar to the people you know already want your product. You want to avoid spending your marketing dollars trying to convince the people who don’t really care about your product to buy or consume it. The better you can leverage data to narrow your ideal buyer persona, the better the lookalike audience you will be able to target.

Awesome targeting means placing your product in the feeds of people that are most likely to make that buying decision. To deliver convincing and compelling marketing, you need to get in front of the people that actually care. Data is your best friend when it comes to finding those people online.

Target the right people on Facebook

The second-most important question you need to constantly answer is how to get the people that already want your product to repeatedly consume your product. This is known as retention marketing.

Retention marketing involves targeting the people you already have a relationship with. This is your core audience — the people who are passionate about your product and exhibit a high likelihood of consumption.

Retention marketing is still dependent on the data you have about the people who want your product. Marketing to them requires you tell Facebook exactly who to put your product in front of. Qualitative, identifiable information about your consumers is ideal and allows a near-guaranteed placement of your product in front of the people inclined to buy again. Retargeting information — from website visits to link clicks — work well too, but can often incorporate a level of noise that doesn’t clearly encapsulate existing consumers.

Targeting your core audience’s social feeds with new and relevant products is not only cheap but effective. Tailoring meaningful and convincing ads to them is an exceptional way to get people who want your product to believe they need what you’re selling.

Turning data into dollars isn’t rocket science. All you need is a philosophy in knowing who the people that really want your product are. Social media, where more and more people are forming their buying decisions today, has emerged as the perfect channel to convince people to purchase and consume your product. With data, you can find more people to buy what you’re selling and keep them coming back over and over again.

ToneDen is a new way to build and engage your audience. Our Facebook advertising solution makes it easy to create targeted ads to reach millions of new fans cheaply. If you have any questions on Facebook ads or growing your audience, we’re always here to help. Shoot us an email at hello@toneden.io.

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