Sometimes when I talk about Digital Marketing (and consequently Facebook Ads) with friends, they ask me if certain things can be done, and they’re surprised when I say yes. Similarly even clients sometimes ask if we can do xyz for them and when I say yes, they’re surprised.
Without further ado, here a few (insane) things you can do with Facebook Ads that you may not know about.
You can show an ad to a single person
Facebook has a feature that lets you upload details of your customers (including phone numbers, emails) to create an audience (a type of audience known as a Custom Audience).
The minimum audience size for this type of Custom Audience is 100 (some websites say more, some say less) to be usable in your Facebook ads.
Now let’s say you upload the details of 99 female users and 1 male user and then only target men in your ads.
That one person whose details you uploaded will now be the lucky recipient of your ads!
We’ve never really tried this because we haven’t had to, but it is theoretically possible.
You can show one ad 90 times to the same person in the same day
Speaking of theoretically possible things, yes, you can also show your ads multiple times to the same person in a single day.
This involves using Facebook’s Reach campaign objective, which lets you control the frequency for your ads (frequency refers to how often the same person sees the ads) over a certain time period.
At the moment, the highest frequency you can achieve is 90 impressions in 1 day (impressions refer to the no. of times someone sees the ad).
This means that you could set a high frequency for your ad to ensure that the same person sees it many, many, many times.
The only drawback here is that instead of paying, let’s say $10 to show your 1 ad to a 1000 people once, you’re now paying $10 to show your 1 ad to a few people 1000 times.
Ideally, it only makes sense if your creative requires a lot of repetition and your target audience is quite small, and most importantly, won’t go nuts after seeing your ad a gazillion times.
You can send messages to users
Yep, you can actually sends messages to Facebook users!
This is achievable through the Messages campaign objective in Facebook Ads Manager. These types of ads appear as messages in the user’s inbox, just like a normal message.
The only restriction here is that you can only send Sponsored Messages to a user only if you have the ability to message them – this means this is only for people who have messaged your Facebook Page in the past.
This type of ad campaign can be a great way to inform your users about new features or products that you are offering, or even to start a conversation with them about their experiences with your brand.
Unfortunately if someone has NOT messaged your Facebook Page, then you will not be able to do this 😅
One workaround this is to do another campaign first encouraging users to message you (again with the Messages objective).
Once you’ve built up a large enough audience (which is also relevant), then you can unleash your Sponsored Messages upon them!
You can show ads to people based on their birthdays
YES you can do this!
Among the many, many, many targeting options available on Facebook Ads Manager, buried deep within (well not so deep) is the option to target users based on their birthday month. Each birthday month is separate so you can choose any combination you like.
Even better, you can also target users who have upcoming birthdays – this is for people whose birthdays are coming up in the next 7 days.
These options are great for creatives that encourage users to splurge on themselves, for e.g., “Treat yourself to a weekend getaway at xyz Resort!”, “You’ve worked hard all year, now gift yourself the break you deserve!”.
But wait, it gets better!
What if you could target friends of people whose birthdays are coming up? After all, it’s more likely that a friend, girlfriend / boyfriend, partner, etc. will buy a gift for their special someone.
The good news is, YES, you can also target these people!
More specifically, you can target “Close friends” of men or women with a birthday in the next 0 to 7 days, or 7 to 30 days. “Close friends” are defined by Facebook, based on your interactions with your friends (you can also set people as your “Close friends” within Facebook).
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