No matter what type of business you own or market for, there’s a great chance that your audience is posting, sharing and liking on Facebook. One of the largest and most popular social networking sites today, Facebook boasts over 1.49 billion monthly users – users who are just waiting to connect with you.
Of course, having a massively large pool of consumers doesn’t exactly help you right away. You’ll still have to dig through to find your audience, and if you don’t know how to use certain Facebook ad targeting tools, then you’re going to have a hard time finding your audience among those 1.49 billion monthly users.
So how can you get the most out of Facebook advertising and target the exact demographic with your marketing message? Here are our five best tips for better targeting on Facebook.
1. Go After Your Competitors
You’re having trouble targeting the right audience on Facebook. No matter how compelling your ad copy is or how relevant your ads are, you just can’t seem to tap into your audience no matter how much you play with the settings in Ads Manager, and it looks like your competitor is moving ahead of the pack.
Wait, why not target their audiences?
If your industry has one or two company giants or national brands that attract a lot of followers, you can go after their customer base using Facebook advertising. Go to the ad creation menu and select those large companies from the interests menus. This strategy works best for those with the largest competitors, and when combined with other ad targeting strategies, it can help to lure audiences away from your competition.
For example, let’s say you own a small restaurant in Chicago that specialises in homemade burgers. You want to target people in the local area, but why stop there? Why not target people in Chicago who are following or have liked McDonald’s Facebook page? You already know they most likely enjoy hamburgers, and they might prefer to support a local business rather than a national conglomerate.
Targeting your competition alone might not be enough to reach your audience so be sure to combine this strategy with other ones (targeting by gender, geographic location) to make your strategy even more effective.
2. Create Interest Clouds
When you set your ad’s target using interests, how many interests do you include? Five? Ten? Hopefully more than that. If you’re doing it right, you should be able to create an interest cloud of at least 40 to 50 interests.
Sounds like a lot, right? It certainly is, but if you start your interests broad and then start narrowing it down into specific groups, then you will be able to determine the exact type of people you want to see your ad.
