Most Facebook marketers I know are bad at understanding the context of their marketing.
Let me explain
It’s not enough to know what to say to people, or whom to say it to, you have to understand when they’re seeing it and how they’ll perceive that message at that time.
A quick thought exercise. Let’s say I love fine dining (I really really do), and you show me a picture of a beautiful meal that is incredibly appealing to me with great copy that takes me on a journey of not just the meal but the experience of eating at that restaurant. You’ve reached the right person, you’ve sent the right creative and message, the landing page may even be perfectly optimized with social proof to get me to book reservations. The problem? You showed it to me during a lockdown. Now instead of excited I’m sad, and in the corner of my mind that restaurant may well always be the place that I couldn’t go to during lockdown and may remind me of lockdown for years to come. Is that the brand association you want? Probably not.
Obviously, this is an extreme example, and I’m picking on Facebook specific marketers despite being someone that the majority of the work we do is indeed Facebook. The fact remains though that unfortunately a lot of Facebook marketers are just well that, Facebook marketers. They aren’t broader advertisers that think through the implications of the ads they’re running and the context in which they run. A less extreme example might be gifting language during the holiday season versus the rest of the year.
For a long time I fell into that bucket. Someone that would spin up a “good ad” aka something that looked like everyone else’s without any sort of underlying messaging strategy, spin up that good old 1% lookalike audience built off a past purchaser email list and let it rip. Then it would either work or it wouldn’t and I’d ride it until it broke or I’d try something else.
It all felt really random.
It felt that way because well, it was.
Being a good marketer involves so much more than platform competency to really break through and build a truly formidable brand. The kind that can actually scale and hit that larger audience segment beyond your early adopters.
To be clear the UGC + 1% LLA still works, but only if you don’t care about ever growing anything substantive.
You can find those pockets of impulse buyers, they of course exist.
What I’m talking about is the first steps in thinking about building a brand like Allbirds rather than being stuck in the land of obscure dropshipped sneaker brand. Some people buy the product, lots of people buy the story and the lifestyle that comes with it. Without a proper messaging strategy that takes context into consideration you’ll never build anything truly great.
