Social Marketing

Reaching Your Desired Audience with Facebook Ad Targeting

As we dive into the new year, many marketers are setting resolutions for their businesses such as to drive more sales, to reach more consumers or to generate more website traffic. While many marketers have explored the advertising options that Facebook provides, many still haven’t explored all of the unique targeting options that Facebook has to offer.

By effectively using Facebook’s targeting options, advertisers can reach exactly who they want to reach. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the Facebook advertising categories that are effective at marketing to very specific groups of people.

Facebook Advertising Categories

Events – Target consumers who have recently moved, started a new job, are in a new relationship or have a birthday within one week. This is a great option for advertisers who sell home improvement or home good products.
Family Status – Reach consumers who have recently become engaged, are in a long distance relationship, are newlyweds or are expecting a baby. Targeting is also available to reach consumers who are away from family or their hometown – this option could be key for airlines seeking to push flights home, especially around the holidays.
Job Status – In addition to allowing advertisers to reach consumers who work at specific workplaces, this targeting category enables advertisers to target broader categories of jobs, from healthcare occupations to small business owners. This is great for marketers who want to advertise a product or service that would be most applicable to a specific industry, while saving the marketer time from typing in thousands of individual workplace names.
Mobile Device Owners – Have an app to advertise? Target by mobile device type, such as Apple or Android, to ensure that ads are shown to the most relevant end user, thus increasing the likelihood that they’ll download your app.
Parents – If you have a toy, product or service that’s most relevant to a certain age group, this targeting is extremely beneficial, as advertisers can reach parents based on the age of their children.
Politics – Want to gain support for a candidate or policy? Target based on political affiliation.
Travel – This targeting is extremely beneficial for travel marketers, allowing them to target based on if the user is currently on a trip or has recently returned from one, if they are a business traveler or if they’re intending to travel soon. Even more granular, the intended targeting is broken down to reach consumers who are intending to travel to major countries or cities, such as Mexico, England or Las Vegas.

So, before you go spending the big bucks on a television spot on a niche network or even a premium digital media buy, explore Facebook advertising to cost effectively reach your desired customer.

[This post originally appeared on Asking Smarter Questions and is republished with permission.]

Want more on social media? Download Business-Software.com’s Top 10 Social Media Advertising report or visit the Social Tools Research Page to help stay on top of social advertising trends.