Facebook Audience Development - Using Your Databases on Facebook
Written by Laura Rothwell

Facebook Audience Development

Using Your Database on Facebook

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing advice and How To guides in order to support your marketing and audience development. We’ll first be covering how to maximise Facebook to reach new audiences, engage current audiences and encourage them to take action – aka come to your venue.

First up, How to Use Your Current Box Office Data to grow your Facebook audience.

This method will help you to ensure that all those people on your Box Office database, also like your Facebook page. This means you get to communicate with them on more than one channel.

Preparation

  • You will need a CSV file which contains email addresses for your whole database. Mobile phone numbers are also useful if you have them. Or, the log-in details for your organisation’s Mailchimp account. If you don’t use Mailchimp, you will need the CSV data file.
  • You will need to be familiar with creating a Facebook advert and should have considered the design of your advert to attract a wide audience. For example, the advert should have some longevity so should not be about a specific screening or event.
  • You will need to be prepared to spend some money on this Facebook advert. The minimum spend per day for a Facebook advert (not a boosted post) is £5, you should run this for at least 4 days.

Implementation

  • You are going to create a Custom Audience on Facebook using your own data. Later this will be very useful for finding new audiences. But for now, we’re going to look at all those people on your database who may not be connected with you on Facebook.
  • Go to the Facebook page you manage and from the drop-down menu on the right, go to Create Ads

  • Select Promote Your Page from the objectives

  • Underneath the Custom Audiences field, select Create New, and select Custom Audience

  • Select the first option, Customer File – this will allow you to upload your data file

  • Upload your file or connect to your Mailchimp account to extract data

  • When you have uploaded the file or connected to your Mailchimp, Facebook will begin to process your data.
  • You can go on and create your advertisement in the same way as you usually would.
  • It can take up to 24 hours for Facebook to process your data and create your Custom Audience, don’t worry about this, simply create your advert and follow the whole advertising process through to the end.
  • When Facebook has processed your data, it will set your advert live and you will be targeting everyone on Facebook who uses an email address or phone number, which matches the data from your customer file. Usually, this is around 50%, in the cinema and venue industry it may be even more, as both film and Facebook are typically considered leisure activities and so connected with people’s personal email addresses.
  • Your advert will run for however many days your budget allows, and over that time you will see your audience increase – as such, you will be reaching your customer database both on social media and via the e-newsletters or direct mail you send out.
  • When you have completed your advert, the next step is finding a brand new audience based on our uploaded data. Get in touch if you’d like the instructions on how to do this.
  • Remember: track your success! Keep a tab on how much you spend and how much your audience grows = - so you can work out just exactly how well your activities are working.
  • Any questions? Get in touch: laura@crystlsd.com or 07960 888614.

Success Story

In September and October 2016, Keswick Film Festival uploaded their Box Office email addresses into Facebook in advance of their 18th festival taking place in February 2017.

After spending £17.00 to advertise their Facebook page to audience members who did not yet like the page, Keswick Film Festival saw the following results:

Reach as a direct result of this activity: 3,653

Page Likes increase as a direct result of this activity: 471%

Event Responses as a direct result of this activity: 96

If you have a marketing campaign that has worked well, that you would like to share with the region, get in touch. And, if you have any questions you would like us to cover in these articles, let us know!

This part one of a two part Facebook Audience Development Resource, to find new audiences on Facebook please click here.

Prepared by Laura Rothwell on behalf of Film Hub North