Advertising with social media gives you access to audience targeting on rocket fuel. You can choose between ad formats, and combinations, different headlines, images, text… and you can zero down demographics with an almost frightening degree of accuracy.
Trouble is, most social media marketers aren’t at all sure what to do with so much firepower, and frequently use it like a nuke for a nail: wasting a lot of money and energy, ultimately accomplishing very little.
On Facebook alone, where most U.S. adults spend approximately 40 minutes a day, there are hundreds of amazing strategies to allow advertisers to get the most bang for their advertising dollar. And we’re going to teach you the best tips and tricks to make the most of it!
These social media targeting opportunities include ensuring that you use all targeting options: but primarily the ones which go most neglected. Purchasing behaviors, subcategories, life events, and even lookalike audiences! And of course, if you’re using third party social media targeting tools and apps, you can dig deep into the data of past campaigns to recommend fine-tuning.
Purchasing behavior fields
If you’re selling a product or a service, chances are that there’s a Facebook purchasing behavior associated with that. For example, say you’re a real estate agent and want to target potential home buyers. You can use this option to find people likely to move: who’ve had their credit pulled considering a mortgage.
From ‘purchased pet products’ to ‘loves reading mystery novels’, you can target users based on almost any kind of recent large consumer behavior. And though you might not know it yet, there’s guaranteed to be a consumer behavior on Facebook which reflects your ideal audience.
Subcategory profiles
You can even drill deep with buyer behaviors with subcategories. Looking to sell your hand-made jewelry to fashionistas? You can target people who are into clothing, and even optimized based on specific fashion-related behaviors. Want to market your restaurant to foodies?
You can do that, too! And Facebook will even suggest how many user profiles fit your targeting, helping you optimize your groups. Hard to argue with all of that! If at all possible, never leave your subcategory areas blank! It’s often better to market hard to a small audience than to have a tiny chunk of a large one.
Life events
Life events are another fantastic targeting option which you should never leave blank. Whether someone is starting a new job, newly engaged or married, expecting, you can bet that there’s a good identifying life event which unites the vast majority of your ideal audience. And there are time metrics, too, so that you can target individuals anywhere from 3 to 12 months after a significant life event.
Expanding your audience
If you’ve already narrowed down your audience using all of these targeting and found what works for you, there’s another trick, hidden near the location metrics: optimizing for similar profiles. This allows your social campaign to be marketed towards virtually identical individuals who may meet most, but not all, of the criterion for the audience you’ve set up.
This is a great idea when you’re wanting to increase exposure to people who may not be ready to become consumers yet, but are likely to in a short while. And of course, the more times you’re able to get your brand name in front of a possible consumer, the more likely they’ll be to use your service!
Key takeaways
Facebook gives you a lot of tools for targeting your audience: so use them! It’s always better to get in front of a large portion of a small-well defined audience rather than aiming for a tiny piece of a large pie.
Doing so will ensure that you can market with consistency, increasing the likelihood that those you market to will remember your brand and actually make the plunge to do business with you.
