Facebook Targeting: How To Get Really Specific

Facebook targeting is amazing in its simplicity and depth. If you’ve never done Facebook targeting, or perhaps have just done the basics like choosing your zip codes, this article is for you.

Basic Targeting

These are the things people have shared about themselves in their Facebook profiles, sometimes referred to as demographics. These data points include things like age, gender, relationship status, education, language, political affiliation, and life events.

Layered into the demographic data are two additional ways to target parents based on demographic and behavioral data. The first is a broad All Parents category which lets you select a group by age. The second option is a way to choose by type of mom. For example, you can choose Moms of Preschool kids OR you could choose Stay At Home Moms.

 

 

Even this basic targeting is powerful in marketing your dance studio. It helps you to place incredibly relevant ads in front of your ideal customer.

Relevance drives engagement.
Engagement drives conversion.

In other words, I see your ad and think “that’s interesting!” (relevance) so I click on the ad (engagement) and I like what you have on offer, so I sign up or I call (conversion).

You can layer options to get a very specific target audience, which you’ll see in the next section.

 

In action

So let’s put this basic targeting into action by creating a mini-targeting plan to promote a specific class.

Class: Preschool Dance

Audiences:

Visuals & Messaging:

You might be tempted to group moms and dads into one bucket and post one ad unit. However, because you can reach moms and dads specifically, you can switch up your visuals to make the ads more relevant to them. A dad is more likely to respond to an ad that reflects a dad image, for example. That translates to more clicks and more conversions for you!

We’re going to use the same core messaging for each moms and dads, that confidence grounded in accomplishment gives kids the skills they need for life and switch up the images for each moms and dads to give our ads a better chance of being looked at by each parent.

The raw images we’re going to work from:

Geographic area (geofence):

• Specific Zip Codes –or–
• Defined radius of your studio location

Sample Ad Units

Leveling Up: Getting Even More Specific

Are you in an area that has a high racial diversity?

• Use the ethnic affinity filter to segment your audiences and choose images that reflect matching ethnicities.
• Or use the language filter and create your ad in the preferred language.

Do you offer things that would be good for single parents like extended care, flexible session-based classes or easy payment plans?

• Use the relationship status to segment out single parents.

Focused on new students only?

• You can exclude certain audiences from seeing your ads, such as people who have already liked your Facebook Page.

Do you have lots of grandparents caring for kids in your area?

• You can target grandparents in the demographic selection

Have a class that runs in the morning or early afternoon when most parents are working?

• Use the stay at home moms filter to reach moms who are most likely to take advantage of your offer.

Do you offer specials or coupons?

• Use the heavy coupon user targeting to place an offer in front of people who love offers!

The big lesson here…

Facebook audiences are a lot like the beautiful flower image at the beginning of this post. With a little planning and know-how, you can target all flowers, or just the dark pink ones at the edge of the photo.

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