Imagine that you’re a business searching for another marketing avenue to promote your brand and service. When you start your search, you come across Social Media Advertising. So how can Social Media Advertising benefit your business and how can you ensure you are targeting the right audiences? This blog is here to help you, continue reading to learn more about how to use Social Media audiences and targeting to your advantage!
How Do You Use Targeting?
When using Social Media targeting, you need to start as you mean to go on. With each campaign, you need to pick your chosen goal and then evaluate what criteria a user must meet in order to complete your goal. Here are the forms of targeting which your business needs to know about:
Location-based Targeting
Facebook allows businesses to target user based on their location. You are able to target areas as specific as a postal code. There are several layers to targeting a location, you are able to include or exclude a location, allowing you to be more specific. The default option is to target people who are in a certain location, however, you are able to expand to users who live in an area, people who have recently been in the are or people who are travelling to that location. Location-based targeting is great for all businesses, all ads and all goals. It is always strongly suggested to target via location.
Demographics-based Targeting
On Facebook, you are able to refine your audience by their demographics. For example, you can choose their age, gender and spoken language. When using this kind of targeting, it is always advised to do your research before narrowing your audience down. A great place to start your research is on your Google Analytics. On Google Analytics you are able to see information about the users who have visited your website. Within this information, you are able to see age and gender, this can help you to narrow down your demographics when targeting.
Interest-based Targeting
Interest-based targeting is one of the easiest ways to specifically target users that are going to be interested in your business. You’re able to target people based on their likes and interests, for example, if they have liked a page or used an app, you can target them. When choosing your interests, you are able to include and exclude people, the same as when choosing your location. Once again, this form of targeting is always strongly advised.
Behaviour-based Targeting
Unlike interest-based targeting, behaviour targeting looks at a user’s online history, from purchases to personal events, targeting via a users behaviour correctly can be incredibly beneficial. For example, if you’re an e-commerce business you can target ‘engaged shoppers’. These are users who have recently used the platform to purchase. A top tip for using behaviour-based targeting is that it best in combination with location, interest, and demographics-based targeting. You can mix all of these together to build a highly defined Facebook audience.
What Are The Different Types Of Audiences?
There are two main audiences that a business uses when creating Social Media Advertising: New Users and Lookalike. All of these audiences are made up of different users and have different purposes. Each audience type should be selected with your main goal in mind. For example, if you’re running a page like campaign with a goal of gaining new Facebook followers, targeting people who show the same interests and behaviours as someone who has previously liked your page is the way to go!
New Users
Creating an audience made up of new users is simple. Like with all audiences, you need to know your main goal and who you want to put your ad in front of. A new users audience is exactly how it sounds, a group of new users who have not seen your business but meet either all or some of your chosen criteria.
Lookalike
Facebook Lookalike audiences let you reach the people who are similar to a specific persona whether this is users who have purchased from you previously or users who have liked your page. Creating a Lookalike audience allows you to extend your campaigns ads to reach people who are likely to be interested in your product or service. A lookalike audience works extremely well when running a brand awareness campaign with the objective of gaining page likes as you are able to see your current base of followers and reach out to others with the same nature and online behaviour.
What’s next?
So, you’ve learnt about advertising on Facebook, the different audiences and how to target them, but how do you start? The next step is to contact the professionals! The best way to know if something is going to work is to try it first hand. To find out more about how Social Media Advertising can aid your business and achieve your goals, give us a call to speak with a social media specialist today! – 0115 727 0038
