Facebook + Amazon Ideas and Targeting Inspector Update

Published: Wed, 04/29/15

Got a Few Ideas for You
Lots of questions have been coming in about the enhanced FB ad research tool I shared with you yesterday and I thought I'd share those questions and answers in case you've been having the same thoughts. 

One of the biggest questions was whether or not it would be profitable to use FB ads for your Amazon Associates work.  I have a few ideas for you on that topic, too. 
What You Really Get with Targeting Inspector v2.0
I spent probably 8 hours playing around with this new software yesterday and because I'd spent the previous two weeks with a focus on FB ads and engagement I feel I have a good understanding regarding the benefits of this software and how to make use of it for my online businesses, including my Amazon sites. 

If you haven't seen how the software works, watch the demo video on their sales page:



First, the upsells for this product get a bit confusing.  When you first buy, you have the option of getting the single license or developer's license.  The developer's license lets you use the software for clients so if you run marketing for others you'll be able to share the output of the software with those clients.  Most affiliate marketers will only need the single license.

Then there are a number of add on options - an "extra features" option (this gives you the Chrome extension and the ability to search and sort Wikipedia, Books, and Movies by keyword in order to discover more keywords that might not have been found in FB search but would give you a lot of additional ideas for FB searches to find a larger audience - I did spring for that because I use Chrome extensively for my FB ad work), an option for additional training (skipped), an option for white label rights to distribute the software (skipped), and an outsourcers license pack (skipped). 

Now, to the software itself.  You have to log into the Targeting Inspector WordPress site to use the software, even if you're using the Chrome extension.  You also have to be logged into FB.  Not a problem - the WP site will guide you to logging in so you can do it right from inside the tool.

The site interface is very slick and easy to use.  There are a number of short but helpful training videos.  Watch them - I found it hard to use the tool without doing so (yes, I tried - I always want to jump right in!). 

FEATURES & BENEFITS
This list might not make any sense if you haven't used the FB ads tools before but to those of you have this will help you decide if this software is worthwhile or not for your own business goals:

Interests
In the regular FB ads tool, you have the option to add "Interests" in order to narrow down who sees your ad.  You absolutely must narrow down your target audience so that you don't pay for wasted clicks from untargeted prospects and in order to get the ad in front of the right people.

Unfortunately, the Interests box inside FB isn't very helpful.  You end up doing a bunch of research only to find that the interests you want to include aren't an option at all.  That's a lot of wasted time.

In Targeting Prospector, you enter keywords (one or multiple) and the tool suggests related keywords you an add to your research.  It then goes and finds all the pages on FB that have those interests.  You can also have the tool search not just the page name and business category of the page but also the About section which gives you many more matches since the About section often contains more words (keywords). 

Next, you filter the results based on the number of likes on the page.  This whittles the list down to those interests that are more likely to be inside the FB ads Interests section (saves all that time from trying to find and guess at those Interest matches).

I've absolutely found this beneficial and found new audiences to target that I hadn't come across before.

This and the fact that you can do most of your research in one place are, by far, the biggest benefits of this tool, for me.

Hot Trends
If you can find the hottest trends for the day, you can come up with an ad for that trend and get that ad in front of people most excited about that topic through a certain page or identified interest.

You enter a keyword or explore a FB page and you can access the trending terms and sort them by the number of People Talking About This (which indicates the popularity level of the topic). 

I entered the keywords "baseball", "kids baseball", "tball" and "t-ball".  I then selected the additional suggested keywords and ran a search.

I filtered the results down to those in the US with over 20,000 likes and then sorted the results based on the number of People Talking About This. 

You don't get the People Talking About This information inside of the FB ads tool but it's incredibly powerful.  The results of my search led me to a FB page called Baseball America.  I already know that people are active on this page because of the PTAT numbers and by looking at the page I can see which posts are getting the most views and likes.  There's a post about a Dodgers' home run hit that got a lot of attention.  If I were a t-shirt seller, I'd find something to promote to the audience of that page related to the Dodgers or baseball or home run.  The page is active, the followers are engaged, and I can see what interests them most at the moment. 

Media Kits
I knew businesses put out something called Media Kits but I didn't realize that the kits include information about the demographics in that industry.  Finding media kits related to your niche gives you big clues about the age, location, and other demographic information to help you find your target audience. 

While these media kits can be found through Google searches, Targeting Inspector does the work for you by listing the media kit links based on your keywords. 

Probably not a huge savings since you can do searches in Google to find these yourself but a little bit of a time saver since you don't have to leave the site to find them.  
Facebook and Amazon
As Amazon Associates, we can put our affiliate links in FB as long as we do so on a public page.  You can't share those links in closed groups or your personal, private FB profile. 

Amazon makes this easy to do with a FB share button in the Associate Site Stripe.

Those posts look really sales-ish, though.  To make those work you want to include links to products that are relevant and HOT at the moment. 

You can also build a conversation in FB around a problem in your niche where you know there's a product on Amazon that solves the problem in the discussion and then link to the product after you've stirred up that discussion. 

You could also stir up a discussion, do a post on your site with solutions and share the link to your post on your FB page. 

Those are just a few ways to make FB work for your Amazon Associates efforts. 

It takes some work but it's very doable. 

Now, where do FB ads and Amazon affiliate marketing really come together?

Two of the best ways to use FB ads for your Amazon sites:
  • Build targeted followers (likes) with ads geared towards getting likes
  • Promoting gift lists posts around any holiday where gifts come in to play (Mother's Day...hint, hint - I also shared a list of seed keywords for Mother's Day on FB here:  https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=825075277586833&id=518371151590582&substory_index=0

Jon Loomer has some excellent articles on his site about how to grow FB likes and why they're so important to your online business.

Likes might not mean money today but they're an investment in future reach.  In FB ads, you can target an audience of just your followers.

Not all of your followers will see everything you post but for fairly cheap you can "boost" a post so that it does get seen by more of your followers.  So, you invest in likes now and then you can pull the trigger any time you want to get certain content in front of those people who have already expressed an interest in your topic.  Very effective. 

At the same time, Jon would say that if you're short on funds, exhaust your free options first.  Grow your likes organically by keeping your page updated, creating content for your FB page that gets shared more often, interact with related pages, and make sure to engage with your audience.  Over time, you'll turn that page into an income you can use to invest in obtaining a larger audience. 

Sincerely,

Erica Stone
erica@extremereviewer.com