Facebook will soon take retargeting to a whole new level, and not just in healthcare marketing terms. Last month Facebook announced partnerships with companies that allow tapping into outside sources of data to learn more about target audiences, according to the NYTimes. On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out a new feature “that lets brands target users for status updates that don’t appear on their brand Pages,” according to Mashable. And on Tuesday morning Facebook announced a small test in which behavioral-targeting-based FB Exchange ads can run in the News Feed, that real estate – in the center of the Page – has been off limited to standard advertising.
Facebook’s New Ad Push
Ever since Facebook went public they have been scrambling to find ways to increase their stock prices and appease their investors. They are finding their way with advertising, and looking to get very, very good at it.
Retargeting has always been a strong source for conversions in healthcare marketing. A potential patient does a little research on your Phoenix physician blog about seasonal allergies, and then moves on to research allergies on WebMD and other medical resources. Though they have left your website, behavioral data collected on their ‘off Facebook’ actions can allow you to specifically target that person with a highly effective advertisement on seasonal allergies. Since Facebook knows that this individual has already looked into the topic of seasonal allergies, they can offer you highly targeted advertising options to retarget this individual, and thousands like this individual, to increase your ad conversions. Remarkable, right?
But how does Facebook do it? By teaming up with Acxiom, Datalogix, BlueKai, and Epsilon. Each of these innovative companies are on the verge of everything Facebook wants, and everything Facebook’s investors want – big data on millions of American’s spending habits, e-mail lists, web browsing records, loyalty card records, college tuition records, and any other data that you can think of.
What does this mean for Facebook Advertising? Here is an example from the New York Times article:
Last fall, Facebook invited potential advertisers to provide the e-mail addresses of their customers; Facebook then found those customers among its users and showed them ads on behalf of the brands.
JackThreads, a members-only online men’s retailer, tried this tactic recently. Of the two million customer e-mails it had on file, Facebook found more than two-thirds of them on the social network, aided in part by the fact that JackThreads allows members to sign in using Facebook login credentials. Facebook then showed those customers ads for the items they had once eyed on the JackThreads site.
The nudge seemed to get people to open up their pocketbooks. Sales increased 26 percent at JackThreads, according to AdParlor, an agency that buys the company’s advertisements on Facebook.
What does this mean for healthcare marketing on Facebook? Highly targeted advertising and retargeted Facebook advertising means endless opportunities for physicians and healthcare marketing firms in Los Angeles, like Quaintise. Even if a person doesn’t reveal they are struggling with seasonal allergies through a status update on Facebook, physicians can still target them based on their web browsing as well as offline activities, such as purchasing Benadryl with a loyalty card. When that purchase is made, the four companies that Facebook has teamed up with can integrate that information into advertising options, giving you the most targeted ad possible.
Sound complicated? The healthcare marketing and advertising experts at Quaintise can handle it for you, retargeting your ad campaign and redirecting more traffic to your website then ever before.
These Facebook Advertising updates are slowly being rolled out to big businesses, and will soon be available for everyone to take advantage of.