By Tiffany Anderson
If you don’t already know the value of Facebook advertising, it’s OK. The good news is that it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down in the near future. In fact, the ad manager platform frequently launches new updates intended to create a better user experience.
Businesses can now promote content with a few simple clicks but if you don’t understand the targeting opportunities beyond what boosted posts have to offer, you could be wasting money. We’ve collected a few stats from Facebook’s ad manager to give you a preview of the targeting potential in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
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Our infographic illustrates just a few of the 200+ targeting options businesses can use to increase their local reach. January reports showed that nearly 70% of the county’s population 18 years and older are active on Facebook. Before you assume this isn’t the right advertising tool for your business, the ad manager allows us to check the potential reach before spending any money. You may be pleasantly surprised by the numbers!
Here are the best Facebook targeting strategies every ad manager should take advantage of.
Custom Audiences
If you have a list of customer emails, upload them to your audience profile. This presents an opportunity to nurture your audience, develop brand loyalty, promote order frequency, and increase the lifetime customer value.
Lookalike Audiences
Who better to target than the friends of your current customers? You can create a “lookalike” audience from a custom audience, conversion tracking pixel, or business page followers. How does it work? First, Facebook scans the active accounts of the source to identify similar qualities based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Then, those qualities are matched with the friends of the users from the source and curated into a new lookalike audience list.
Location Targeting
This is one targeting option that is pretty easy to overlook. Besides having the option to target locations by country, state, address, and mile radius; there is one selection advertisers should think twice about before starting their campaign. It’s that little drop down box beside the Locations field where “everyone in this location” is preselected. Depending on your business and/or offer, this may not be the most efficient way to spend. When you look at the drop down options (everyone in, living in, recently in, and traveling in this location), you may find at least one of the three groups that make up the default selection does not apply to your target audience.
A home cleaning business, for example, wouldn’t benefit by targeting people who do not live within their service area. A local attraction, however, would see value in targeting people who live in the area and are traveling near their location. In this instance, an advertiser can create different ads that are unique to residents and visitors.
Detailed/Layered Targeting
This is level audience targeting is not available in boosted posts so pay close attention because it can help save you money! There are so many scenarios where this hypertargeting tool comes in handy but let’s pretend we are marketing a new fast and fresh meal option to working moms with small children.
It’s not enough to simply add those selections in one layer because you won’t be targeting the right audience. Without narrowing your selections, you will be targeting all working moms no matter what age their children are and all moms with small children who may or may not be working. Detailed targeting allows us to exclude or narrow selections to further define your most desired audiences.
Purchase Behaviors
Facebook’s partnerships with big data companies offer advertisers with a whole new set of targeting options based on the buying habits of users. From DIYers, coupon users, fashionistas and consumers of just about any type of product you can think of, there is bound to be a selection relevant to your offer.
Life Events
Some businesses, like jewelers, can benefit greatly from Facebook’s life events selections. Life events is a collection of user data that helps advertisers target people in new relationships, who are newly engaged, have an anniversary coming up, started a new job, and more. This feature gives us the unique ability to capture and convert customers at opportune times.
With the amount of information Facebook collects on their users, to say they know more about you than your best friend wouldn’t be totally far-fetched for some. As scary as it may sound, they are committed to transparency and respecting user privacy. Advertisers will never gain access to personally identifiable information of their target audience unless it is willingly submitted by an individual in response to a call-to-action campaign.
Are you ready to explore the opportunities Facebook has in store for you? Create customized ads for niche audiences, build better connections, and measure campaign effectiveness. For help getting started, contact us!