Facebook Advertising

 longer have an excuse to NOT advertise on Facebook.

Facebook’s advertising targeting options have become so incredibly robust in the past few months.

Unless you’re attempting to target life form on Mars, Facebook’s got you covered.

Are you an insurance broker? Nail salon owner? Dog trainer? Marketing expert? Auto dealer?  Fitness expert?

Yes. You’re covered.

Don’t believe Facebook has a targeting option that fits your needs?  Maybe this will convince you…

You can target people who eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…



…Or people who have shopped for and are most likely to buy a Chevy Camaro in the next 180 days.



The issue is that you (and most people) may not know the possibilities that lie under the “Audience” section of your ads manager.

What looks like six form fields (the ones with arrows)…



…is actually a gold mine of hundreds of thousands of different targeting options. You just have to look.

This article’s purpose it to inform you of the vast targeting options available on Facebook that you didn’t even know were there.

Before we discover the targeting options, it’s important for you first to establish your customer avatar.

Who is the person you’re targeting? What do they read? Where do they hang out? What age are they? Gender? Where do they live? What sites do they search online? Do they have children? (I could go on and on… you get the point)

You must do research about your audience before you take a swing at advertising.

When we begin to develop a new customer avatar, I not only answer the questions above, I also use Alexa and Similar Web.

These tools are free and allow you to collect data from competitors or influential sites in your niche.

If I was in the fitness niche, I would look at data for sites like FitnessMagazine.com.

Want More?
Check out this video from Ryan Deiss showing you EXACTLY how we grew engagement and email subscribers using a simple contest on Facebook.

Using Alexa and Similar Web, I would find that the site is visited heavily by females, with some college education, from their home, and the majority living in the United States.



Similar Web also shares similar sites, so that allows me to find sites most like the competitors or influencers I’ve already determined. You can collect data from their pages, too.



This exercise allows you to have a customer avatar in mind for your target audience based on hard data, not just what you THINK they are.

I usually collect data from 4-5 sites. You will notice that the data for the sites are usually congruent with one another because they are in the same niche.

Write down this information and keep it in mind as we move into Facebook targeting.

Now, let’s go back to our color coded audience section of the Facebook ads manager. Everytime you create a Facebook ad, you’ll have these options:



Here’s what lies beneath each category…

Locations:
Where do they live? (city, state, zip code or country)

Age:
What is their age/age range? (it’s best to segment this down to a 20 year range or less if possible/applicable)

Gender:
What is their gender? (all/men/women)

More Demographics: (third party data)
Who are they interested in? (Men, Women, Men & Women, Both)
What is their relationship status? (Single, In a Relationship, Married, Engaged, Unspecified, Civil Union, Domestic Partnership, Open Relationship, Complicated, Separated, Divorced, Widowed)
What’s their education level? (College Grad, Doctorate Degree, High School Grad, In College, In Grad School, In High School, Master’s Degree, Professional Degree, Some College)
What was/is their field of study? (Marketing, Business Marketing, Finance, etc.)
What school did they attend? (High schools, colleges, etc.)
What years were they in undergrad? (Select a range of years people graduated)
Who is their employer? (Apple, walmart, etc.)
What is their job title? (Sales representative, doctor, etc.)
What industry do they work in? (Administrative, Architecture and Engineering, Arts, entertainment, sports and media, business an financial operations, cleaning and maintenance, community and social services, computer and mathematics, construction and extraction, education and library, farming, fishing, and forestry, food preparation and services, healthcare and medical, IT and technical, installation and repair, legal, management, military)
What is their income range? ($40-50K, $50-75K, $75-100K, $100-125K, $125k+)
What is their net worth? ($1 – $100,000, $100,000 – $1,000,000, $1,000,000 – $2,000,000, $2,000,000+)
What type of home do they own? (Multi Family, Single Family)
Do they rent or own their home?
What is their homes value? (17 different price segments from $50k to $2 million)What is their household composition? (Children in home, empty nesters, grandparents, new teen drivers, no children in home, veterans in home, working women, young adults in home)
What is ethnic affinity? (Hispanic US-All, Hispanic US-Bilingual, Hispanic US – English Dominant, Hispanic US – Spanish Dominant)
What generation are they a part of? (Baby Boomers)
Are they a parent? (Expectant parents, all parents, parents of children 0-3yrs, parents of children 4-12yrs, parents of children 13-15yrs, parents of children 16-19yrs
Are they a mom? What type? (Big-city moms, corporate moms, fit moms, green moms, soccer moms, stay at home moms, trendy moms)
What are there political views? (Donate to conservative political causes, donate to liberal political causes, US active, US Conversative, US Liberal, US non-partisans, registered democratic voters, registered republican voters, registered independent voters)
Life events? (Away from family, away from hometown, long distance relationship, new job, new relationships, newly engaged (1 year), newly engaged (3 months), newly engaged (6 months), newlywed (1 year), newlywed (3 months), newlywed (6 months), recently moved, upcoming birthday)
Interests Targeting: (target related Facebook pages… this is the perfect place to target your competitors and sites you found from similar web)
What do they read? (magazines, blogs, books)
Who are the influencers in the niche? (Mari Smith, Ryan Deiss)
What tools do they use? (For twitter marketing, FB marketing, building websites, etc.)
What events do they attend?
What are other pages liked by people who like the above pages? (use graph search to find)
Behaviors: (third party data)
Automotive

What kind of vehicle do they own?
When did they purchase it? How did they pay for it?
What cars have they shopped for?
Charitable Donations

Did they donate to charitable donations? (Animal welfare, Arts and cultural, Children’s interests, Environmental and wildlife, Health, Political, Religious, Veterans, World relief)
Digital Activities

Are they console gamers?
Event creators?
Online spenders?
Photo uploaders?
Small business owners?
Technology early adopters?
Technology late adopters?
Financial

What month do they renew their car/home/health/life insurance?
Are they highly likely to invest? (Likely full service investors, Likely self direct investors)
What are their spending methods? (active credit card user, any card type, bank cards, gas, department and retail store cards, high end department store cards, premium credit cards, primarily cash, primarily credit cards, travel and entertainment cards)
Mobile device user

What brand of mobile device do they use?
What mobile device do they used based on operating system?
Purchase behavior

What kind of business purchases do they make? (business marketing, maintenance, repair, and operations, office and corporate gifts, training and publications)
What’s their buyer profile? (DIYers, fashionistas, foodies, gadget enthusiast, gamers, green living, healthy and fit, luxury brands and services, outdoor enthusiasts, shoppers, skiing, golfing and boating, spa enthusiasts, sportsmen, trendy homemakers)
What type of clothing do they buy?
What type of food and drink do they consume?
What health and body products do they use?
Are they interested in home and garden?
What kind of household products do they buy?
What kind of kids products do they buy?
What kind of pet products do they buy?
What are their purchase habits?
What outdoor sports are they interested in?
What store types do they shop in? (Furniture, high-end retail), home improvement stores, low-end department stores, membership warehouse)
What subscription services do they have? (Auto insurance online, higher education, mortgage online, prepaid debit cards, satellite TV)
Residential profile

Likely to move, recent homebuyer, recent mortgage borrower, recently moved
Travel

Do they travel? (all travelers, business travelers, business travel international, business travel US, casino travel, commuter, cruises, currently traveling, family vacation, frequent flyers, leisure travel, personal traveler international, personal traveler US) (Planning to travel – returned from trip 1 week ago, 2 weeks ago, tie shares, used travel app in the past month, used travel app in the past 2 weeks)
Impressed? Now you can target big city moms in New York City who have children between the age of 0-3 that are likely to move and donate to animal welfare J.

Notice that you can type whatever your heart desires into the interests field. You don’t have to choose from Facebook’s list. You can target other Facebook pages and keywords.

For example, you’ll see below that we targeted 4 different brands (Bally Total Fitness, Planet Fitness, Lifetime Fitness, and Gold’s Gym).



We also targeted two authorities in the niche (Fitness Magazine & Shape Magazine) – this is what they READ!

Lastly, we targeted a keyword (womens abs workout).

The possibilities are endless.

Find your competitors, authority figures, and brands in your niche and target them in the interests box

How do I know how big of an audience to target?
It would be terrible if you selected every behavior, or if you entered 200 different interests for one ad. Your ad wouldn’t be targeted as narrowly as you need it be.



You need to sift through Facebook’s “More Demographics” and “Behaviours” for any related targeting options to your niche.

You also need to find brands, authority figures, and keywords to target under “interests”.

Don’t forget that you have the option to target based on location (local marketers!), age, gender, etc.

There isn’t a perfect formula as to how to mix and match the different options to find your target audience.

When starting a campaign, we begin by targeting anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. This can be done by entering a list of interests and then selecting males, 55-65 to really narrow the audience and decrease the size.

If you’re a local marketer, don’t worry about hitting 500,000 people… that will be difficult. The location is going to decrease your targeting, just worry about the interests, behaviors, and demographics of your customers.

For example, if you’re a local contractor who does home remodels, you could target people in a zip code with the behavior of “Home renovation”.



You could also target people in the zip code with interests of “Lowe’s, Home Depot, HGTV dream home, home improvement, home improvement tv series”.



You get the point.

More isn’t always better. The name of the game is to do your homework and discover Facebook’s targeting options, see which ones apply to your niche, and TEST.

The data will tell you which of the vast targeting options convert best for you.

Get out there and utilize these interests.

Have questions or comments?  Let’s talk about them below.

If you have any Facebook targeting tips, please share them in the comments below.