Market Segmentation for Effective Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Aug 31, 2010
Katrina Dayrit

Facebook Office Entrance - Motohiro Takayama

Marketers should properly use and take advantage of Facebook advertising's targeting features for more effective and more profitable campaigns.

Newcomers to Facebook's advertising platform may find themselves feeling a bit overwhelmed when considering all the options they have in order to target potential customers. From age and gender to marital status and beyond, there are a lot of different targeting capabilities to take advantage of when attempting to build a successful campaign.

Fortunately, there are ways to determine how to make the most of a social network advertising budget and target the most profitable demographic for a business.

Determining the Right Facebook Demographic

Before jumping in and launching a Facebook advertising campaign, internet marketing specialists should take the time to really think about what it is they are promoting. They should make a list of all the benefits of the product or service – the benefits, not necessarily the features or technical aspects of the offer.

Upon creating a list of what it is they really have to offer, internet marketing specialists should consider what kind of person would like to realize those benefits in their own lives. That will be the first demographic they will want to test. They should try to have as solid of an idea as possible about their target audience, what their gender is, how old they are, what kind of profession they practice, and any other details that might effect their behavior when presented with an offer.

Using the Right Communication Strategy on Facebook Advertisements

Marketers may wonder which demographic they should target if their product or service could appeal to a reasonably diverse group of people. This kind of situation allows for the true usefulness of segmenting target markets. As above, internet marketing specialists should try to create a customer profile for each group of people that would be interested whatever it is they have to offer.

For example, a skin care product may interest both young and middle-aged women. However, to effectively gain their interest in such a product, advertisements may have to be presented very differently to each type of audience. The product's advertisement for the younger demographic may need to focus on the aspects of suppler skin and wrinkle prevention while the one for the older audience may be more effective if it focused on healthier skin and wrinkle reduction.

With the limited amount of text available in an ad copy, it's important to capitalize as much as possible on product benefits, which will ultimately stimulate the curiosity of the reader more so than technical information about how the product works – that kind of information can be provided upon visiting the landing page.

Testing Various Facebook Ads to Find the Best One

After testing various communication strategies in a number of different targeted markets, internet marketing specialists will gain more insights on what works for their offerings and what doesn't. With that data, they can cut out market groups that don't yield a positive ROI, and keep the ones that do. At that point, they may want to expand even further and begin testing different advertisements within the demographics that they have confirmed to have an interest in their offer.

A great benefit of Facebook advertising is the amount of valuable market data and insights that internet marketing specialists can gather since the platform allows them to be very specific about what kind of person they want to target. Marketers should always consider that data when developing communication strategies for other advertising platforms. Doing so will allow them to scale their campaigns to a very profitable level.