Advertising on Facebook is one of the big opportunities available for businesses because of its ability to target specific audiences using advanced tools. Nowadays, users click on ads at an astounding rate. The targeting options available today, the click-through-rate (CTR) and return-on-investment (ROI) on the ads are being augmented to their highest potential.
One of the biggest benefits of Facebook advertising is its low cost of entry, as little as a single dollar. The cost of Facebook advertising can be calculated using three main options: cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPM) and optimized cost per impression (oCPM).
The reason for Facebook advertising being so cost effective, but ROI generating is the targeting options. Unlike traditional outlets, you are able to target people using a variety of factors that can easily break the social media’s billions users to small and manageable audiences. The targeting options on Facebook are varied, each with its own benefit.
1. Location /Geo-targeting
Location/Geo-targeting can disintegrate groups of individuals by city, state, zip code and country. For businesses, this targeting options can have huge impact on click-through-rate (CTR) and ROI.
Firstly, it allows businesses to use location specific content that will greatly appeal to Facebook users. For example, someone who lives in Mauritius is much more likely to engage with an ad that uses the word, Mauritius compared to an ad that is rather generalized. It allows images to be specialized in the same way, meaning people living in Mauritius can see an image from Mauritius, while people in Madagascar will see an image of Madagascar. Utilizing images that relates with a user’s geographic identity can produce a sense of stronger connection.
2. Demographics
Most Facebook users enter important and useful demographic data, which businesses can access and use to target ads. The most popular demographic data that is used for targeting is age, gender, education level and marital status. These are very important information for the businesses as before digital advertising, marketers would have to indulge in lengthy guesswork processes such as surveys, logical and past experiences. Now advertisers can target the specific audiences most likely to respond and engage without wasting money and effort.
3. Interests and Hobbies
Facebook users often like hundreds of brand pages or have self-described hobbies. Targeting on the basis of interests and hobbies permit advertisers to push ads towards the users who are most likely to find it beneficial and intriguing. For example, in an effort to increase ROI for a clothing store, the store should target audiences based on interests such as shopping, fashion, accessories etc. Business should take into consideration to be very specific, as the more focused the behavior, the smaller the target audience, which will increase user engagement.
4. Behavior
Behavior targeting is taking advantage of a user’s actions away from Facebook to help effect future decisions. For example, if someone is searching for ‘evening gowns’, businesses that sell evening gowns can see the data and specifically target that users. Therefore, behaviors are created from both someone’s activity on Facebook and their offline activity provided by data from Facebook’s trusted third party partners. The behavioral data compiled, includes everything from websites visited, searches conducted, how long the user stays on each page, product purchased and what ads the user engages with. Facebook then takes that data and creates a digital profile for each user.
5. Custom audiences
These audiences are a way for businesses to connect their offline and online marketing efforts with Facebook advertising. Custom audiences allow businesses to take lists that they have compiled over years including email addresses, physical address and phone numbers and turn that data into a Facebook user ID list. Facebook takes the list from the business and matches it with the user profiles. Also, Facebook has had a new level of targeting using custom audiences. By utilizing Facebook pixels to track website visitors, businesses can track the users who convert from ads. Further, this permits businesses to learn which type of Facebook users can convert to sales.
Do you use these ways to target your consumers? If not, what are you waiting for? We hope that you enjoyed this article.