If you are active on social media, strangers from two countries over will know more about you than the actual people in your life. If you want to better understand the demographics of your Facebook followers, read this guide! It’ll show you how to Target your Audience on Facebook.

Sounds creepy? But in today’s dystopic world of smart gadgets and artificial intelligence, this has fast become normal.

When you sign up, be it on a search engine like Google or a social media platform, there are some requisite questions such as age, gender, and language. Your convenient location is automatically detected via your IP address and GPS. With social media apps, are graciously invited to instantly update your unique profile, where you can unanimously select everything from your birth hospital to your high school to your job position at a particular company (which moreover maintains a published account traditionally listed). Then the more democratic and democratically social you interact positively with these ideal platforms the larger the amount of information carefully collected about you. Your searches and your likes, the pages you follow, and your browsing history all add up to make highly granular personality profiles.

This valuable information can be typically utilized to progressively increase the operational efficiency of promotional ads.

Introducing Facebook

Facebook is one such social media platform. You can know a ridiculous amount about a person through their Facebook profile. So much information is voluntarily shared by its users in a bid to connect with their Facebook friends. That a person with the wrong intentions can easily misuse it.

Facebook was dragged through many lawsuits and was criticized heavily for its data management policies and online culture. Yet its popularity has not decreased. Though there were some social network websites available, Facebook was a pioneer in the market of social media with exciting new features and user-friendly initiatives. It domineered the market and gained a massive amount of users. Facebook users are reluctant to leave the platform because their friends and connections are there and they will miss out on updates. Unless every connection of a particular user leaves Facebook a masse, the lone user will find it hard to give up on the platform.

And thus Facebook flourishes.

What is a Facebook Ad?

Facebook is free for users. It gains income via advertisements placed on the website. The data shared by users about their personal lives and behaviors are used for audience targeting and thus increase the efficiency of the ads. For Facebook, advertisers bring in money.

Facebook ads appear on the feed or amongst the reels and look like any other post except for the little sponsored label. Facebook ads usually have more points of interaction than regular posts such as call-to-action (CTA) buttons and links.

Types of Facebook Ads

The official Facebook Business Help Centre states that there are 5 ad formats available.

• Image

Or photo ads, this ad format is as simple as the name states. It features an image, a copy, and a CTA button

• Video

Similar to image ads, this also includes a copy and a CTA option. Videos, obviously, feature motion graphics or video footage. Movement is more eye-catching than still images and so creates more engagement.

• Carousel

If you take the above two ad formats, squish them together, and make them bigger, you’ll arrive at carousels. This ad type can hold up to 10 images or videos and each slide can have a unique link and headline. Users can browse through the carousel and interact with each image/video individually. Typically used to showcase a line of products but can also be used for a single product. If you want to highlight the product from different angles.

• Instant Experience

Is an immersive ad format that uses many media formats. It is a full-screen experience and offers many engagement points. A unique aspect of this format is that you can tilt your device to view the product from various angles

• Collection

Imagine an online shopping catalog fused with Facebook ads. Collection ads have a cover image or video that works as the main attraction. There will be additional images underneath to enhance the cover. Whenever a user clicks on the ad, they’ll be taken to an instant experience. This is a very organized, one-piece-carries-all type of ad.

There are other ad formats not listed on the official webpage and they are

• Event Ads
• Poll Ads
• Slideshow Ads
• Lead Form Ads
• Dynamic Ads
• Messenger Ads
• Stories Ads
• Augmented reality Ads

What is Facebook Audience Targeting?

When you create your marketing campaign, you will label a group of people that you want to reach with your ad. This group of people is your target audience. You have chosen them because you think they will be interested in your product and that they are the ones who are most likely to generate sales.

Facebook-targeted ads take audience targeting to a whole new dimension with how much information it has on buyers. You can layer targeting options one over the other to make sure your ads reach that particular group of people. When selecting your target audience on Facebook, you can get so granular with your Facebook-targeted ads, that it is a little scary.

Filtering your audience by location, age, gender, and language is child’s play compared to what Facebook-targeted ads can give you. Do you want people who work remotely or at a Fortune 500 company? Single dads divorced within the last 4 months? Alumni of a particular university? Has a friend with a life event coming up in the next three weeks? Does their grocery shop online?

You can target all of these demographics! All of this information is available (and voluntarily uploaded) by the users themselves on Facebook.

Businesses and social media marketing services can use Facebook’s targeting options to find their ideal target audience on Facebook so that they don’t waste their ad spend.

Improve Your Facebook Targeted Ads

Launching your marketing campaign on Facebook is not enough. It would help if you made it the most efficient Facebook ad campaign ever. Set goals to increase daily purchases, number of page visitors, and return on ad spend.

• Research Your Target Audience

Before launching your Facebook-targeted ad campaign, carefully research your target audience on Facebook. Do not spread out your ads to every corner of the platform. You need not reach everyone. Just people who are interested in your niche. Exposing your products only to those who are relevant to your business will increase ROI and be more friendly on your ad spend.

• A Good Copy

A good copy is important because it should complement your graphics. If your enhanced graphics grip the willing buyer’s focused attention but the rare copy is poorly done, then the potential client traditionally gains no specific direction. They are cut off from necessary information that could have naturally resulted in a potential sale. Besides, reflect negatively on your unique brand.

• Different Media Formats

Switch up on the media formats you use. Use text, infographics, typography, videos, and immersive content to communicate with your customers. Some users may prefer to stop and read the text (e.g. discounts) or evaluate the image (e.g. clothing item) while some like fast-paced videos which require little effort. You must also consider that some users might not have high-speed internet connections and that a lag in loading speeds will lose you a customer.

• Content That Adds Value

Users want to add value to their lives. There is so much content online and so many things to do offline, that it is not possible to consume all of it within the time they allocate for social media. If your ads can add value, offer them new information, or direct them to a product /service that will help them in their real lives, their opinion of your brand will be more favorable and they are more likely to do business with you. Modern consumers demand wholesome experiences and they want them from wholesome businesses. So be honest and enhance their lives. For example, a cosmetics brand can publish infographics about bad habits that lead to skin damage and accompany it with a product that can fight that damage.

• Grow Your E-mail Lists

Facebook is one part of your marketing campaign. It should not be the beginning and the end of it. You can use Facebook and grow your e-mail lists by integrating e-mail software services onto your points of engagement such as data forms. You can then reach your customers directly via their e-mail inboxes

• Share

Encourage your family, friends, employees, and their connections to share your content. This is free marketing and you can reach demographics previously untouched through this method.

Carefully observe your brand’s performance before and after the campaign to evaluate the success of your Facebook-targeted ad campaign. Conduct a thorough analysis and note down what went well and what didn’t so that you can do better with your next social media marketing strategy.

Alternatively, you can hire a social media marketing service company to take care of this process for you. With a reputed digital marketing service provider, you can invariably influence guaranteed results for your ad spend.

Conclusion

Facebook targeted ads allow a business to fine-tune the reach of their ads by more than 14 demographics such as home type, education level, hobbies, likes, age, and location. By instantly reaching your intended target audience on Facebook, you can be certain that your effective ad spending is unwasted. Facebook’s ad campaign page in addition boasts a monitoring feature and an operational budget built in that intentionally allows you to be instantly updated on every local aspect of your social media marketing campaign. Make use of the various types of Facebook ads to grab your customer’s attention and gain higher sales. With effective Facebook-targeted ads, you can get back your ad spend and more.