More than three million businesses use Facebook ads. It’s one of the biggest digital advertising platforms with the best demographic features available anywhere in the world. One reason people use Facebook ads is because of its audience targeting features. They allow you to narrow your ad audience to the people most likely to make purchases.
Some companies think it’s good to get their ads seen by as many people as possible. What a waste of their precious budget for poor quality leads! Segmentation is the key to getting the best return on your advertising dollar. Facebook’s demographic targeting feature helps you get the most qualified audience to your website.
Why Segmented Leads are Important
Outside of the expense of an all-audiences ad, you also have to consider the time and energy spent dealing with leads that will never convert to sales. If your sales team receives a commission, they’re going to get discouraged at the lack of sales and frustrated with poor quality leads.
By segmenting your leads, you’ll focus your resources on the people most likely to buy. There are many ways to approach segmentation from geographic location or age. Demographics are your friend when it comes to segmentation.
By segmenting your leads, you learn what markets you need to create content for. A one size fits all approach is not the way to go to maximize your ad spending. Allow the segments to guide you when putting together Facebook campaigns and creating ads.
Building a Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is one of your best tools in the segmentation process. This resource is a “profile” that you put together that characterizes your prospective customer. You consider everything that’s significant with your ideal lead and develop the buyer persona, so you have a strong point of reference.
Areas to address:
- Basic demographic information
This includes their age, where they live, their education levels, their typical career path, companies they like, etc. There is tons of Facebook demographic data to choose from.
- Life goals
What do your buyers want? Are they climbing the corporate ladder, building their own businesses, want to travel or searching for a place to settle down?
- Quality of life issues
What gets in the way of them living their best life? These problems can be small, like inefficiency in a piece of software, or big, like an illness or elderly parents to take care of.
- Family size
Your marketing should different for a single person that’s dating compared to a married family with several children. Consider the typical home situation of your buyers.
- Type of home
Are they renting or do they own their home? Are they living with roommates or have a house to themselves? Think about the size, location and average price of the place they call home.
- Typical activities
What does your buyer like to do on a Friday night? Sunday afternoon? Do they share a hobby or interest? If you’re not sure, think about what you would ask when you’re getting to know someone.
- Technology owned
Are you looking for tech-savvy customers who pride themselves on being early adopters? Or do they own just a basic computer? Think beyond the devices they access your content with. You want to know what they regularly interact with on the technology front. Depending on your market, you may want to expand this to software and apps too.
- Verbiage
How does your typical customer talk? Do they use a lot of slang or technical terms? Or do they have a casual conversation style or prefer to be addressed formally?
Create a buyer persona for each customer segment you want to target or use current customers.
Facebook Demographic Targeting
Now that you have a fully fleshed out buyer persona, you can use it as the basis for Facebook demographic targeting. You have a lot of options to choose from, and Facebook lets you know the approximate reach of your boosted post instantly.
You can target include where the person lives, their age, gender, annual salary, education level and field of study, and even the schools they attended. All Facebook relationship status options are offered in the targeting tools.
On the financial front, you can also look for people that have a certain level of liquid assets or whose net worth is appropriate for your company’s products. Their home situation is another targeting choice, such as the type of house and the composition of the household.
Life stages is an important part of demographic targeting. You can reach out to people who just got married, a new job, engaged or moved. If you want to target people connected with your current customer base look for Friends Of a specific Facebook user.
You have a lot of demographic information at your fingertips. And it’s all available to use for your ad targeting. All of the attributes can also be excluded from your campaign, so you can stop your ad from being shown to people who would have zero interest in your products or services.
Facebook allows you to target specific interests and behaviors. The social network collects a lot of data on its users. It’s very useful when you’re aiming for a specific type of customer for your upcoming advertising campaigns.
Under the Interests category, choose from a nearly endless amount of options. The broad categories range from the types of businesses they like to the technology they use and enjoy. You have many subcategories to continue narrowing things down.
For behavior, you have another expansive list to look at. Need to choose buyers based on the type of car they drive or if they’re an expat in another country? You can do that. Looking for particular purchase behavior of your leads? Facebook offers that information too.
How to Target Demographics on Your Boosted Facebook Post Ads
When you create a post on your Facebook page, there’s a button labeled “Boost Post.” Click it, and you’ll get an overlay panel that shows the boosted post advertising options. Choose the “People you choose through targeting” option to show a post to your chosen demographic.
Click “Edit” to open up the dialog box and customize the audience for that post. Or create an entirely new audience profile with the “Create New Audience” option.
With the basic targeting fields, you can select the gender, age range, and location of your audience. Go deeper into the demographic selection in the Detailed Targeting section. Type in the attributes you’re looking for or click “Browse” to get expandable categorized lists.
At the bottom of this window, you can see how many people you can expect to reach with your current selection. The meter goes back and forth to let you know how many people you’re reaching. Ultimately, you make the final determination on whether the audience size is good for you.
When you complete this process, click “Save.” You’ll return to the main boosted post configuration page set the budget and duration, then click the “Boost” button.
Customize Boosted Facebook Posts Ads for Your Customer Segments
Maximize your Facebook ad budget by customizing the boosted post for a customer segment. Use similar language and images when you create the Facebook post and the landing page on your website. Leverage the buyer persona so you can write directly to your buyer persona/target audience.
Present products, services, and content they need. Use a different landing page for each audience segment, so the audience gets a congruent experience from the targeted boosted post and the landing page on your website.
If you’re familiar with retargeting campaigns, you can take a similar approach with your boosted post. Select the demographic information of your target market. Now you have a base level of info about the people viewing the social media content. Use it to choose the right format for the post and landing page. For example, a younger demographic might respond better to a video compared to a senior who’s browsing Facebook on an underpowered device.
Conclusion
Facebook advertising gives you the tools to create an exceptionally customized audience segment. This results in better conversion rates. Stop wasting your ad budget on people who have zero interest in your company. Cater to the demographics that are eager to learn about the solutions you have to offer.
What kind of luck have you had with Facebook boosted post ads? Please share your victories and what you’ve learned with campaigns that didn’t do so well. If we all put our heads together we can come up with great strategies that will help everyone reading this article.
Hero photo by Morning Brew on Unsplash
