Facebook Target Audiences - A Basic Introduction and Overview

Discover the ability to unlock the door to your target market by using the key of Facebook audiences.

One of the most powerful tools available to a marketer today exists inside of Facebook audiences. And while there is this misconception that “organic reach” is the holy grail of advertising, the truth is that using paid advertising and the right specific audience has the ability to exponentially grow your business. Both options have the ability to reach your perfect prospect but only the paid advertising is predictable, scalable and duplicatable in any reasonable timeframe.

I’ve included a 15 minute video that introduces some of the options available  through Facebook to laser target your specific target market. The idea is to introduce some ideas and to get your mind flowing with ideas of how to identify the right people for your brand, product, opportunity or message.

(In the video I make the assumptions that you already have a fan page and an ad account with Facebook. If not, I plan to make a couple of videos to explain, step by step, how to create a fan page and set up an ad account. When those videos are prepared I’ll include them here.)

I’ve included a written summary of some of the ideas that I’ve included in the video to make it easier to take notes.

When targeting your audience you have several criteria to choose from.  You can use location, age, and gender as basic criteria.  Facebook gives you more options including demographics, language, and additional behaviors.

Location – when targeting by location you can be as general or specific as you want. You can choose entire countries (or multiple countries), states, cities (near cities, within 1, 5, 10, 25 or 50 miles), and postal zip codes.

Age – you can choose any age range that makes sense for your situation.

Gender – you can target males, females or both.

Interests – Facebook has already created some broad categories for interests. Inside of each of these broad categories are sub-categories and broad niches that you can use to generally target your audience. These include:

Business and industry

• Advertising


• Agriculture


• Architechture


• Aviation


• Banking (with additional subgroups)


• Business


• Construction


• Design (with additional subgroups)


• Economics


• Engineering


• Entrepreneurship


• Health care


• Higher education


• Management


• Marketing


• Nursing


• Online (with additional subgroups)


• Personal finance (with additional subgroups)


• Real estate


• Retail


• Sales


• Science


• Small Business

Entertainment

• Games (with additional subgroups)


• Live events (with additional subgroups)


• Movies (with additional subgroups)


• Music (with additional subgroups)


• Reading (with additional subgroups)


• TV (with additional subgroups)

Family and relationships

• Dating


• Family


• Fatherhood


• Friendship


• Marriage


• Motherhood


• Parenting


• Weddings

Fitness and wellness

• Bodybuilding


• Dieting


• Gyms


• Meditation


• Nutrition


• Physical exercise


• Physical fitness


• Running


• Weight training


• Yoga


• Zumba

Food and drink

• Alcoholic beverages (with additional subgroups)


• Beverages (with additional subgroups)


• Cooking (with additional subgroups)


• Cuisine (with additional subgroups)


• Food (with additional subgroups)


• Restaurants (with additional subgroups)

Hobbies and activities

• Arts and music (with additional subgroups)


• Current events


• Home and garden (with additional subgroups)


• Pets (with additional subgroups)


• Politics and social issues (with additional subgroups)


• Travel (with additional subgroups)


• Vehicles (with additional subgroups)

Shopping and fashion

• Beauty (with additional subgroups)


• Clothing (with additional subgroups)


• Fashion accessories (with additional subgroups)


• Shopping (with additional subgroups)


• Toys

Sports and outdoors

• Outdoor recreation (with additional subgroups)


• Sports (with additional subgroups)

Technology

• Computers (with additional subgroups)


• Consumer electronics (with additional subgroups)

This is an incredible list of interests that Facebook is tracking on every single account. Some of the information comes from affiliate partners who collect their own amazing databases of information which I’ll point out shortly. 

In addition to the list of broad interest categories that Facebook has already put together, you have the ability to focus on specific interests as well.  By searching for a specific interest you can access Facebook’s massive database of interests to get very specific for your targeting. And as you search for specific interest Facebook will offer you additional suggestions that may help you focus or broaden your search to include those additional interests.

Languages – Facebook will choose the language for you based upon the location you’ve chosen to target. However, if you want to narrow your audience by language you can choose a specific language (or languages). On the other hand, if there is a language that is not common to the location you’ve chosen you can choose that specific language.

For example, maybe I want to target the Chinese speakers living in North Dakota. If I just choose my location as North Dakota my automatic language preference is English. But maybe my audience speaks Chinese. There are 1,400 Chinese speakers in North Dakota (on Facebook). That is a small audience but my ads will be focused to my audience.

Behaviors – this allows you to reach people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more. (Some behavior data is available for US audiences only.) The better you know you ideal client, customer of prospect (referred to as an Avatar) the better you can target your message to them. The behaviors (and subcategories) that Facebook tracks include:

Automotive

• Motorcycle


• New vehicle buyers


• New vehicle shoppers


• Owners


• Purchase type


• Used vehicle buyers

B2B

• Company Size


• Industry


• Seniority

Charitable donations

• All charitable donations


• Animal welfare


• Arts and cultural


• Cancer Causes


• Children’s Causes


• Environmental and wildlife


• Health


• Political


• Religious


• Veterans


• World relief

Digital activities

• Canvas Gaming


• Console gamers


• Event creators


• FB Payments


• Facebook Page Admins


• Internet Browser Used


• Operating System Used


• Photo uploaders


• Primary email domain


• Small business owners


• Technology early adopters


• Technology late adopters


• Unity Plugin

Expats

• Bazil


• China


• India


• Indonesia


• Ireland


• South Africa


• US

Financial

• Banking


• Investments


• Spending methods

Job Role

• Administration and managerial


• Blue collar and craftsmen


• Corporate executives


• Educators


• Farmers


• Financial professionals


• Homemakers


• Legal professionals


• Medical professionals


• Professional and technical


• Religious


• Retired


• Sales and service


• Self-employed


• Student


• White collar and clerical

Media

• Radio


• Television

Mobile Device Users

• All Mobile Devices by Brand


• All Mobiel Devices by Operating System


• All Mobile Devices


• Feature phones


• Network Connection


• New smartphone and tablet owners


• Smartphone Owners


• Smartphone and tablets


• Tablet Owners

Purchase behavior

• Business purchases


• Buyer profits


• Clothing


• Food and drink


• Health and beauty


• Home and garden


• Household products


• Kids products


• Pet products


• Purchase habits


• Purchase types


• Sports and outdoors


• Store types


• Subscription services


• Technology

Residential profiles

• Length of residence


• Likely to move


• New mover


• Recent homebuyer


• Recent mortgage borrower

Seasonal and Events

• Baseball


• Basketball


• Cricket

Travel

• All frequent travelers


• Business travelers (US or International)


• Casino vacations


• Commuters


• Cruises


• Currently traveling


• Family vacations


• Frequent International Travelers


• Frequent flyers


• Leisure travelers


• Personal travelers (US or international)


• Planning to travel


• Returned from trip (1 week ago or 2 weeks ago)


• Timeshares


• Used travel app (1 month or 2 weeks)

This list still boggles my mind how they can know so much about us as Facebook users. A lot of this information comes from outside affiliate partners who also collect immense amounts of information about us.  But let this list percolate through your brain as you consider the possibilities.

Connections – this filter allows you to reach people who have a specific kind of connection to your Page, app or event. This will narrow your audience to include only people with that specific connection who also meet all the other targeting categories you’ve selected. This way you can decide if you want to remarket to people who already know you, find new people or just market to everyone you can choose. This is an especially powerful option for those people who understand email marketing and creating lists because this option gives another way to present you message to your list without spamming their inbox and it gets your message read.

There are endless possibilities with the combinations from Facebook to laser target your ideal audience.  I wanted this to be a brief introduction but I also wanted you to be able to grasp the insane amount of information that is available to you to use to find the right people for your message.

Facebook Target Audiences - A Basic Introduction and Overview