Why You Should Use Facebook Targeting Options When Advertising

Social media marketing seems simple enough, but are you targeting the right audience?  It’s no longer good enough just posting post after post on Facebook as part of your digital marketing campaign. It’s now a little more advanced than that, especially when advertising, and cost-effective too.

Being one of the largest social media platforms in the world, Facebook targeting is a great tool to make sure that your message is being seen by the right people, which goes a long way in getting extra mileage out of your social media marketing budget.

To boost your digital marketing efforts, and to fully understand all the great benefits plus tips and tricks when using Facebook, it might be worth your while to complete a social media marketing course.

A Wide Range

When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook is the place  where you should be advertising.  There are many impressive stats available which cover the effectiveness of Facebook advertising.  With most people around the world using Facebook daily, you can safely bet that your target audience is using it too.

Each Facebook user spends an average of 10 to 12 minutes when they check-in on Facebook, so time is limited.  This is why you need Facebook targeting options to catch your audience before they leave.  Your Facebook Ads Manager is where you’ll find advanced targeting options for your advertising campaign.

Targeting options

As we’ve established, the main objective for your social media marketing on Facebook is to get in front of those who may be interested in your product or service while they are engaged in their daily scrolling, and there are many tips and tricks to make this happen.  It’s crucial to understand and know how to target the correct audience.  The options are vast, and mastering targeting will maximize your Facebook advertising spend.

Facebook targeting allows you to be meticulously specific when targeting an audience.  Keeping this in mind, one of the first steps is to understand and know exactly who you want to target with your Facebook ad campaign.

Here are a few Facebook targeting options to help you get started:

• Make use of your customer database – Never underestimate the power of an existing customer whether they may repurchase or spread the word of your business to others and give your company good referrals.  Create a custom audience using your existing customer email addresses.
• Your website visitors – Do you often think that people who have visited your website and left without becoming a customer are lost forever?  Well, with Facebook targeting options you can recapture the attention of your site’s visitors by building a custom audience from your website traffic through Facebooks ads.
• Follow up on leads – It’s a great idea to use leads based on email lists and other contacts to create a custom audience.  Once you have a list of leads that you want to target, import the file into Facebook as a custom audience.
• Lookalike audiences – A lookalike Facebook targeting option is an advanced feature but useful tool.  Once you’ve created a custom audience, you are able to use the lookalike feature audience option.

Types of Facebook targeting options

Understanding the types of Facebook targeting options is very important when you are embarking on a Facebook ad campaign.

Here are some examples of Facebook targeting options:

• Age – This is a crucial factor to reach your target audience and Facebook allows you to choose a specific age for your ad.
• Gender – This option is pretty basic, Facebook offers three categories to choose from, women, men or both.
• Location – Most social media marketing is aimed at users in a particular region and Facebook targeting option allows you to choose people in a specific area.
• Language – If your Facebook ad is in a common language used by your target audience, then it’s best to leave the language option blank.
• Demographics – This is a more advanced Facebook targeting option which allows you to select multiple factors within a category, be careful though, this option can get a bit confusing.