5 Smart Strategies to Finding Facebook Audiences

Written on 17 June, 2015 by Robert Skelton
Categories Social Media

5 Smart Strategies to Finding Facebook Audiences

Facebook offers an amazing array of targeting options for anyone wishing to promote their business in social media. An example of a business advertising on this platform is noted by the social media giant in this example:

If you are a DIY marketer using Facebook to promote your business, you might be satisfied with reaching such a unique audience with just a few clicks. However, be aware the facebook target audiences that cost the most to reach are those that first come to mind; they are the same people your lazy competitors have selected.

Spending an hour to determine smarter targeting will be well worth your while. Not only will you be able to extend your reach, you could also find audiences that your competitors are ignoring, meaning your ads are ultimately cheaper to run.

  1. Drill down to find value of target audience

The wedding supplier in Facebook’s example can drill down deeper into the options, and find these:

  • Engaged for 3 months
  • Engaged for 6 months
  • Engaged for 1 year.

You can create a separate custom audience for the three types of engaged woman, run ad campaigns for each, and then compare results. It might be that people who have been engaged for a year aren’t that interested in planning their wedding, and excluding them could save a lot of your budget.

Another angle is to target a subset of engaged people who have recently created an event on Facebook. If the event is their wedding, then the timing for showing your ad is really good.

  1. Lateral thinking – the helpful Mum

The same wedding supplier could also target the people who are most likely to be helping with the wedding preparations – the mother of the bride, the bride’s best friend, and (these days), the groom-to-be. Any of these people can like a page that relates to the wedding plans, such as a wedding venue. This allows you to target them, even if they aren’t someone who is engaged.

Exclusively Weddings could serve ads promoting free samples of their products (2), providing them with a way of being helpful in the planning.

The mother can be specifically targeted by selecting these demographics

  • Friends of ‘Newly Engaged’
  • Female
  • Over 50 years of age.

Now you have a great way of finding facebook mothers who are spending hours researching and influencing their daughter’s wedding.

  1. Brands that you sell

It is easier to sell to someone who is a self-confessed fan of a brand that you stock. Facebook’s example business lists their top brands (3), and they include Kate Spade and Vera Wang.

Over 4 million Facebook users have shown an interest in Kate Spade, and 2 million for Vera Wang. Combine this targeting with someone who is listed as engaged and female, and your chances of a sale are way better.

  1. Competitors and shared audiences

If you have confidence in your product or offering, target Facebook users who like your competitors. Because they have actively chosen to like a business in your sector, they are a more engaged consumer who most likely buys more of your type of product.

Or you can target brands with the same audiences, who aren’t competitors. For example, if you sell dog collars, your audience would be the same as that of a major dog food brand. And in the wedding arena, a single brand – David’s Bridal – accounts for 20% of all bridal-gown sales in the USA. It’s a no-brainer.

  1. Research – studies and surveys are your friend

Studies and surveys provide an extra dimension of data about certain groups of people. If anyone has surveyed your target audience, then you need to find those results and study them. Here are some facts and figures that are relevant to Facebook’s example business, Exclusively Weddings, and ways you could apply them.

Babies then marriage

The average American woman is 25.7 at their first birth, and 26.5 for their first marriage (4). Not many people are actually average, but it is still worth testing. Try targeting wedding ads at expectant parents, women who have recently given birth, or have children under the age of 5.

Time of year

16 percent of proposals occur in December (5). That’s double the average. This is a good time to run ads, as well as in January.  Time of year data can also be found in Google’s Keyword Planner tool, where you can see fluctuations for specific search queries. Entering “virgin island wedding” into the tool shows a substantial peak in January.

Side-purchases

During the engagement period, couples buy:

  • $4 billion in furniture
  • $3 billion in housewares
  • $400 million in tableware.

Try targeting young people who have liked brands in all three categories. 18.8 million people have expressed an interest in tableware. Someone showing an interest in tableware and who is engaged is quite probably in planning mode.

Gift registries

More than 91 percent of engaged couples register for wedding gifts. Target people interested in “gift registries”, as well as the names of popular registry services. Make sure this is in conjunction with selecting engaged people – after they are married, their like of the gift registry will remain.

Popular destinations

Which Facebook users have liked a top honeymoon destination? They could be in wedding planning mode. The most popular US honeymoon destinations are: Hawaii, Florida, California and Nevada. The most popular overseas destinations are: Mexico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Italy, St. Lucia, France, and the US Virgin Islands. (5)

The same destinations are also the most popular for destination weddings.  A whopping 24% of modern marriages are destination weddings. So targeting people interested in those destinations covers two different angles at once.

Even better, people who Facebook believe are intending to travel to Mexico, France, Las Vegas and Italy can be directly targeted.

– – – – –

The above examples are specific to the wedding industry. The methodology will work for any business.

That little extra effort it takes to think of different audiences will typically equate to a wider and cheaper reach for your budget. If you’d like to find out more about Facebook strategy, get in touch with our specialists on 1300 663 995.

Written by Robert Skelton – Performance Media Specialist at Webcentral.

Looking for some help with domains, hosting, web design or digital marketing?
 

Send me marketing tips, special offers and updates