The first installment of the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads was all about the basics: what Facebook ads do, where they can be found, and what types of ads you can create. This week, we’re focusing on how to get your ad in with the right crowd! Let’s jump right in.
How can I target potential customers?
Major targeting methods include:
- Location. Find your country, state, city, or zip code. If you pick a city, you can choose to target only within the city limits or in a 25- or 50-mile radius surrounding. For instance, if you are a wedding caterer in Naperville you might target a 25-mile radius around several of your largest local markets.
- Demographics such as age, gender, education, marital status, job, politics, and more. As a wedding caterer, you can target people in the above markets who list themselves as “engaged” on their Facebook profiles.
- Interests determined by interaction with other fan pages. You might target people who are fans of certain wedding magazine pages–your wedding catering ad will contribute to the type of content they see and interact with on their news feeds.
- Behaviors like in-market or near-market car buyers, product purchase tendencies, financial status, internet browsing habits, and more. For example, you can target users Facebook categorizes as “foodies” who are more likely to enjoy the food you cater at weddings. However, It is important to note that interest and behavior targeting are not mutually exclusive. Your potential audience will only be comprised of Facebook users who meet both of the specifications, which can limit the number of impressions your ad receives. Depending on the goal of your advertising, you may want to widen your targeting if you see that your audience size will be smaller than ten or twenty thousand people total.
- Custom audiences including remarketing and email lists. For instance, you see that you are getting a lot of traffic on your wedding catering website but are not receiving any leads– and ultimately, you want to turn those visitors into converters. So, you can place a retargeting pixel on your site and advertise to those visitors to encourage repeat visits. Once you build up leads, you can upload lists of emails to advertise to potential customers who are more likely to finally convert.
As you can see, targeting on Facebook can be as widely generic or as highly specific as you like. For instance, I could target “people who work at Launch Digital Marketing” and show ads to only my co-workers! You can learn more about Facebook’s targeting methods here. Check back with us soon for the third and final installment in the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads: Advertising Best Practices!
