Before now, Facebook was a simply a place where friends and family met to connect and reconnect. Well, that’s still the case, but there’s much more to Facebook nowadays.. Those coveted leads, clicks, traffic, and buyers can all be squeezed from this platform.

Today, an estimated 2 billion people actively use Facebook monthly and, honestly, to do your marketing well on this platform, it’s going to require reasonable knowledge about its marketplace, including the demographics, as well as a deeper understanding of the proven intelligent marketing techniques that work on this platform..

There are thousands of marketers and brands who swear by this social platform for different reasons and if you’re not already one of them, this is your best chance to get your feet wet into this phenomenon.

What Is Facebook Marketing?

Facebook marketing refers to the process of coming up with and actively using a Facebook page to maintain contact with existing customers and also attract new ones.

Facebook has itself facilitated this by making available an option to create, not just individual profiles, but a business page for organizations, companies, or any other group looking to build an audience for their brand, product, or service.

Provided you have a legitimate business, you can leverage Facebook’s many opportunities to increase awareness and conversions. Brands, personalities, non-profit organizations, local businesses, all use the platform for different missions and it’s a smart idea to learn how to market effectively through this medium as those who have leveraged this platform effectively have made handsome returns.

What Types Of People Can You Reach?

When it started out, Facebook was reserved for college students as a way to connect with other college students but later on, the platform expanded to include different demographics. Over the years, the number of users has gone up, and this has made it possible to reach a broad variety of market segments.

As you might be aware, in marketing, target audience really matters. It’s an absolute waste of time reaching out to an irrelevant audience because they won’t lend an ear or eye to what you have to offer.

Thankfully, Facebook gives you the opportunity to reach out to different types of audiences based on specific criteria including:

1. Custom audience 

Facebook can scrutinize your offline audience such as email list, web traffic, or phonebook to locate those who are active on the platform.

2. Location

You can narrow your message to those from a specific country, state, city, province, or based on the ZIP codes/postcodes.

3. Demographic options

The platform allows you select an audience based on gender, age, education, relationships, finances, life events, and so on.

4. Interests 

You can base your selection on particular interests. It could be those on the user’s profile or from the kind of pages they follow or like.

5. Behaviours 

Facebook has enlisted the help of data mining firms in tracking the user’s website activities. From the data obtained, they can let you pick your audience based on the device they use, websites they visit, places they travel to, purchases made, etc.

Ways You Can Find People To Market To

After narrowing down on the proper audience (those likely to engage with and relate to your content) for your business or organization, the next thing you’ll need to know is how to find that audience on Facebook and serve them your message. Well, here’s how.

1. Targeting options

As far as marketing goes, Facebook provides the user with a wide variety of targeting options. Each option aims at a particular segment of its users.

Those that are common include demographics targeting, interests targeting, page likes (those who’ve liked your page), behavioral targeting, custom audiences, just to name but a few.

Notably, targeting options seems to work better for those who already have page likes, followers, email lists, and website traffic. If you lack an audience, don’t fret just yet. There are other ways you can use to find that target audience.

They include:

I. Facebook Graph Search

After logging in to Facebook, you’ll see the search box atop its pages. You can then look up information that seems relevant to your search for the right audience.

For instance, you can search: pages liked by men who like sports, interests of women who like Taylor Swift, pages liked by nurses who live in San Francisco, and so on. Use what you’ve gathered to further your search until you narrow down to your target audience.

II. Audience Insights

Audience Insights is a Facebook tool that lets you dig out more information such as interests, demographics, location, and page likes about your search term(s).

III. Power Editor/Ad Manager

Once inside any of these tools, there are options you can use to gather more ideas about your target audience. The autocomplete feature on interests tab can help to spark your imagination. Similarly, the suggestions option on the right side of the interests tab can assist you to further your search for the right audience.

What Tools Can You Use?

Since Facebook marketing gained prominence, several tools have been developed whose goal is to make your work as a marketer on this platform easier and convenient.  There are plenty of them but we’ve narrowed down our list to the top five.

1. Facebook pixel – Grouped as a troubleshooting tool, Facebook pixel performs a range of functions including checking out errors or if a Facebook pixel has been installed on your website. Also, it can help you understand the data supplied by a pixel.
2. Compass– This little tool analyses your Facebook ad campaign and presents an ad report showing what’s working and what’s not.
3. Agora Pulse – Agora pulse is a set of tools that can help you perform a range of functions, from scheduling and publishing of posts , monitoring of social activity and competitors to assisting you start your campaigns and tie your different social platforms into a centralized location.
4. Headline Analyzer – CoSchedule’s headline analyser gives a quality score and rates the ability of your headline to result in increased traffic, social shares, and search engine optimization value.

How Much Should You Spend?

To get the most out of Facebook advertising, you’ll need to practice reaching out to the right audiences with the right offer – and that’s going to take some investment.

However, the question many have is, how should one budget for their Facebook ad campaign?

First, there’s no straight answer to this, but to start you off, note that your industry, audience size, planned frequency of communication, ad quality, and estimated click-through-rate (CTR) all have an impact on the budget. So make your selections and estimations wisely.

Next, determine which campaign to choose. You can pick one or several. Note that each campaign costs differently.  The three common Facebook campaigns include:

• Increasing page likes
• Promoting posts, product or services
• Driving website traffic

Facebook’s Ad manager will be helpful in estimating how much your campaign will cost. As always, set a budget you are comfortable with.

3 Crucial First Steps If You Are New

Before you launch your first Facebook campaign, there are three crucial steps you must first take, and they include:

1. Determine your goals – What do you hope to achieve through Facebook marketing? Is it to generate leads? Get more likes? Expand your reach? Or earn more traffic? Note that each goal demands its own unique strategy and budget.
2. Understand your audience – For your Facebook campaign to be effective, you must come up with a profile of what your audience looks like and thereafter, identify it.
3. Select a relevant ad campaign – Facebook has options of several different ad styles. Make sure you choose one that matches the needs of your goals and brand.

Final Word

Facebook has no doubt redefined marketing, and the platform’s greatest attributes are that it’s powerful and accommodative to almost every business. What’s more, you can run different marketing campaigns that seem appropriate for your budget, business, and schedule.

Remember, Facebook continues to grow at a rapid rate and so, the earlier you leverage its abilities, the better it is for you and your business.