While ever expanding, my gut tells me that the time is right to market fitness tools.
Wearables get the great majority of attention these days. Gauge your heartbeat. Record your strides. Those types of things.
However, what caught my attention is that Facebook is on a new “Fit” tour proclaiming that its Lookalike Audiences tool is of undeniable value to small and medium-sized businesses.
Let’s give that one a gut check.
As background, the Lookalike Audiences feature in Facebook’s advertising platform enables advertisers (SMBs and others) to upload customer information so Facebook can find similar people.
The theory is that those who are “found” will be convinced on Facebook to patronize the advertiser’s business.
I have no issue with the notion that a relevant ad can produce a desired sales effect – in this case, a real or virtual visit to a business.
Where this falls short for me is in the program setup.
To create a lookalike audience, a user, in this case, a business owner needs to do the following within the Facebook platform:
Go to Power Editor and select Audiences from the Ad Tools drop-down on the left.
Click Create Audience.
Click Lookalike Audiences.
Select your source: any Custom Audience, conversion pixel, or Facebook Page.
Choose the country where you'd like to find a similar set of people and select your desired audience size with the slider.
Click Create.
Yes, the business needs to feed Facebook information, i.e. a Custom Audience, to get the process going.
This is the same business that needs to make sandwiches in the morning. Or dry clean clothes for 12 hours. Or run a convenience store.
"These are the tools we are investing in," said Dan Levy, director of small business at Facebook.
Whether businesses devote the time to identify and upload audiences is another question.
Facebook says that it has more than 30 million small businesses with an active page.
That part’s easy. The inputting of basic info on Facebook can be done by someone with little marketing know-how.
But ad buys through Custom Audiences?
It doesn’t yet look like a winner to me.
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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program http://Goo.gl/t3fgW, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
