Facebook provides a variety of powerful targeting solutions to help advertisers reach both new and existing customers. In this blog post, we will dive into targeting capabilities that are available for most advertisers. For advertisers who are marketing housing, employment, and credit (HEC) offerings, check out our blog post featuring these sectors, here).
Geographic Targeting
Facebook offers the ability to target users based on geographic information reported in its users Facebook profiles, and other collected location signals. Locations can be selected by country, state, market area, city, ZIP code, or a set radius around a specific address. The default location option is set to target “everyone in this location,” which allows advertisers to reach people whose home or most recent location is within the selected area. If more specificity is desired, location targeting can be narrowed to “people who live in this location,” “people recently in this location,” or “people traveling to this location.”
Geographic targeting is a basic setting that should be included in all campaigns to ensure that media dollars are spent in the appropriate regions. More refined geographic targeting can also be beneficial for specific campaign objectives, such as boosting awareness for an on-site event, or increasing brand presence in key markets.
Demographic Targeting: Age, Gender, and Language
By applying Facebook’s demographic targeting, advertisers can refine their target audiences based on information that users have shared about themselves in their profiles, such as age and gender. Demographic targeting can be used to build broad prospecting segments that reach an advertiser’s primary audience, or to refine and segment audiences to provide a more tailored user experience.
Language targeting can also be applied to reach users in a language that’s specific to the user. Facebook recommends using this targeting when serving ads to users that use an uncommon language in the selected location. A Merkle retail client used age targeting to refine a customer relationship management (CRM) list, allowing the advertiser to concentrate media spend on a key demographic group for an online promotion. The campaign drove a cost per action (CPA) 40% below the historical benchmark. This is just one example of the power of Facebook demographic targeting.
Want to learn more audience targeting strategies? Check out our Facebook Audience Playbook to explore best practices for Facebook advertising, with an emphasis on audience-centric strategy. You’ll learn about the necessary tools to take advantage of Facebook’s audience targeting capabilities and how your own first-party data is the key to full-funnel success on Facebook. Download your copy here.
