Salesforce and Facebook came together at Connections 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia to present advanced strategies for Facebook marketing, focusing on three core principles that all marketers should be testing.

Ron Belanger, AVP Sales, from Salesforce and Martin Gilliard, Global Head of MarTech & Data Partnerships from Facebook co-presented to a crowded room about how to get that 'Boom' factor from your Facebook marketing endeavors.

Facebook is a microcosm of your own social world; your personal daily, or in some cases, hourly newspaper. Marketers need to use this as a mantra and know that broad targeting is outdated for so many principles of Facebook marketing. The marketing philosophy reflected by Belanger and Gilliard illustrated this, pushing the marketers in the room to believe in a customer centric mindset; less waste, better targeting. As Martin told us...

"Audiences first, campaigns second...customers don't demand great experiences, they expect it."

Gilliard really stressed how marketers have already been using data for customization but there are very large caveats to this. One way to do this is cookie-based targeting but how much accuracy can we really place upon them? An online tool shows that the cookies on my laptop place me as both a single lady in my 20's and an elderly parent who's recently purchased a truck. I can assure you neither of those lifestyle statements are even remotely accurate - so why would you be purchasing media against this data when more efficient practices exist?

Furthermore, Gilliard pushed, regarding cookies, who uses just one device and just one browser these days? You can't cookie an iOS mobile device! Big problem. Mobile has utterly changed our consumer journey and subsequent attribution analysis and this must be reflected in our targeting strategy.

What Gilliard was really stressing is that email is the key now across these devices and Facebook (and both Google and Twitter) allow us to target users based on email address. Logged in data feeding into attribution modeling is holistically so much more efficient than cookies. I don't have enough adjectives to stress this further.

So without further ado, here is the first strategy that was presented to us:

Custom Audiences: Cookies pale in accuracy compared to your own cross-device email data. With Salesforce, you can securely use your website and CRM data to create targeted audiences that will refresh every single day within your Facebook ad accounts. No manual downloading and uploading. No unsecure data. No cookies - just real nutritious data.

For me, Belanger and Gilliard could have dropped the mic after that strategic play but as the name implies, they had two more strategies to cover. The second one covered extending your reach off Facebook and using your Custom Audiences across the extensive Facebook Audience Network.

Audience Network: Expand your reach beyond Facebook into a bunch of other apps and mobile websites. The Facebook Audience Network still allows you just as relevant targeting as Facebook but expands your potential to reach your audience when they aren't browsing their News Feed. Just have a little look at this case study from Rosetta Stone which saw a 40% improved cost per lead from utilizing this network.

So, Gilliard had covered targeting, placement and now we had a strategic play on ad format.

Welcome Lead Ads. This format makes it even easier for your target audience to convert - they don't even have to leave Facebook to become a prospect for you - they can fill in a lead form, customized by you, right within their newsfeed, in just a few clicks. Submit and then this lead data is all ready for you within your ad account. Information that Facebook already have on you, such as name, age, email will already be populated within the ad unit making it even easier for your customer to submit.

This format is of course empowered by Salesforce which will drive this lead straight into Marketing Cloud, or pipe it over to Sales Cloud using Journey Builder and Marketing Cloud Lightning. This is much more efficient and secure than the current set up where you need to download this sensitive data from Facebook into Excel. Sub optimal. Salesforce - optimal.

So, three advanced strategies that you should be testing. A lot of marketers think along the lines of 'I'll use this for the next campaign, when I'm ready" but you should always be ready to test, test and learn learn. All of this is so quick to get setup once you have the creative and data, you really have no excuse.

Recap of Gilliard's point - 'Customers don't expect great experiences, they demand it'.

Want more? See Advertising Studio Audiences in action. Watch the demo!