Facebook is the platform with by far the most targeting options, allowing you to reach very specific target groups. Of course, standard data such as gender, age and place of residence are provided, but targeting also uses data points like “likes”, interests and buying behaviour.
If you want to bring a service or product to the attention of a targeted audience, advertising on Facebook offers an extremely extensive platform.
The targeting options of Facebook offer unprecedented opportunities for advertisers
Facebook’s targeting options are very extensive and a just small selection shows how wide the possibilities are. Of course, the various filters can also be combined with each other to very accurately focus on a target group:
- Demographic data (place of residence, language, income, wealth, education, political preference, relationship status, work, age, friend of…, homeowner or tenant, etc.).
- Connections (likes, fan-pages, favourite pages, events visited)
- Interests (hobbies, sports, favourite shops and gadgets, favourite films and music, family)
- Behaviour (travel, mobile device, new or used car, buying behaviour, online behaviour, financial data such as credit card brand, at which bank they are a customer, charities)
- Custom audience targeting (connections, people who have visited your website or viewed content, friends of friends, etc.)
Find similar audiences
A handy feature of Facebook is the ability to create a ‘Lookalike audience’, i.e. a similar target group to the one you are looking for or already have. Using a smart algorithm, Facebook creates a group of Facebook users who have one or more points of contact with existing customers, followers or ‘likes’. This way you can increase the reach and find more buyers or people interested in your company or brand in an easily accessible way.
Use the target group statistics tool to determine the target group
Because the targeting possibilities of Facebook are huge, it is very difficult for many advertisers to determine the right target group. To make this process easier, Facebook has introduced the target group statistics tool.
When you have an overall picture of the target group, this tool looks at what, on average, this group of people are most interested in. In this way, corresponding interests can be determined. For example, it might just be that the people who watch a particular television series also have a common interest in a specific product.
Without the target group statistics tool, it would be difficult to determine these data points or find them out for yourself, and this type of information is virtually impossible to find out with a traditional ‘offline’ marketing campaign.
Custom audience targeting: an attractive solution
Using the ‘Custom audience targeting’ option you can not only reach existing contacts and their associates effectively, it is also ideal for targeting a new audience. The fact that Facebook has more than ten million users in the Netherlands and at least 2.5 billion users worldwide makes this even more appealing.
