How to Start a Business

Now that we have an ad ready to run, its time to target who will see the ad. This is all -important, because, as you know, showing your ad to the wrong people is a waste of time and money. Facebook does a great job of helping you refine your target audience.  The screenshot below shows the many ways we can drive down and make our target list even more specific.  Let’s look at them one by one:

• Location – They even allow you to advertise to users in one city or region.  Imagine being a restaurant and offering a birthday discount to people in Chicago only.
• Age – Pretty clear how to use it, but remember 35% of Facebook users are now over 35 years old.  The fastest growing segment is females over 65.  You may target users over 55 for insurance.
• Birthday – Again, pretty clear, and I love the example above of getting a discount on your birthday.
• Sex – An offer for males only for hair replacement?
• Keywords – Probably our best and most important tool.  In the example below, I typed in entrepreneur and now will run an ad just to people that may want to buy a small business magazine.  You can enter a book name, a movie, a singer, a Facebook group, anything, and use that to get the most specific viewer group possible.  Think searching for readers of “Rich dad, poor dad” would give a good target audience of people interested in inheritance planning?
• Education – Advertise to recent grads, history majors, business students, etc. Or just people that went to Harvard for Harvard ties….
• Workplace – Hear that XYZ company is having layoffs?  Target them for resume help!  Or simply offer all Ford employees a discount on tires, just to make them feel special.
• Relationship – Run an ad for just engaged girls in Atlanta as a caterer.
• Interested in – Not going to comment!
• Languages – Just target French speakers for language training…..

And, then after choosing as small a group as possible, you get an estimate of the number of targeted users that will see your ad.  So cool.  The idea is to reduce the number to a small, super-targeted group and then tailor an ad for just them.  As a general rule, getting below 50,000 might be too small for a general campaign.  But, if you are trying to target men in Florida that like surfing, the number may get even smaller, reducing your costs and giving you an incredibly targeted audience!

Next up, budgets and bidding!

Related posts:

1. Facebook Landing Pages – the Important Piece!
2. Facebook Ads Are Old School Display Ads
3. Creating Winning Facebook Ads
4. Bidding for Ads on Facebook
5. Facebook Beats Google