Curious isn’t it?
How sometimes surfing through Facebook you see an ad that seems perfect for you. Almost as if Facebook was reading your mind.
Seriously, out of millions of people and advertisements, they seem to know your exact taste in clothing, gadgets, music, food, and humor.
And you might have thought, “How do these perfect ads find me?” Or as a business owner, “How can I get my ads in front of people like this?”
The answer is actually simple,
Facebook’s algorithm is doing its job.
Take a look at this…
For most people, Facebook is just a simple social media platform. But, for entrepreneurs, Facebook is a massive communication resource covering the worlds of entertainment, politics, business and more.
There are approximately 2.5 billion active users per month on Facebook, so I’m pretty sure you can find your ideal audience there. And if you feed the right data into the algorithm, it’s like fishing in pond overflowing with fish.
So, how can we use Facebook to target the right audiences?
First, we need to get familiar with the Facebook business manager. If you need help with that you can find it in section 2 of my FREE Facebook marketing mini-course.
Next, we need to understand the 3 types of Audiences available to us:
1. Core Audiences – These are the people that Facebook will find for you based on the targeted locations, demographics, interests, and behaviors that they’ve shared in their user profile and that you ask the algorithm to look for.
2. Custom Audiences – These are the audiences that you can build on Facebook based on the phone numbers, emails, and addresses of your current clients and customers. It can also be from your website visitors after you install the Facebook tracking pixel and it’s specific event codes. This allows you to see which of your website pages people viewed and what actions they took while they were there.
3. Lookalike Audiences – If you give Facebook a sample of people like your product purchaser, top 10 website visitors, your video watchers, and more it will find the new audiences that are similar to the audiences you already have. It does this by cross-referencing the actions, behaviours, and interests of your custom audiences with those of the core audiences. Boom, new audience!
Finding the right audiences is a major key to a successful business.
The Facebook algorithm and the audiences you can reach with it is amazing, but don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a magic bullet. You still need to have good products, services, and most importantly you need to know who your ideal audience is, to begin with.
But, realize that we are so blessed today, as business owners and entrepreneurs, to have these websites and applications to help optimize our businesses. So, take advantage of this digital world and its ability to reach your audience faster.
Think about this,
my grandfather ran a toy store in Puerto Rico and he would get super excited when 16 people came into his store in one day. 16 people!!! With the tools available to us now we can get tens, hundreds or even thousands of people to see our goods and services in a day. It would have taken him years to get that kind of reach and attention if he ever got it.
One last thing,
Take advantage of the fact that advertising on Facebook and its family of apps is still cheap and affordable today. And, even though you see lots of ads on Facebook, I want to tell you that only about 5% of businesses in the world are actively advertising on the platform. That means you’ve got pretty good odds of success if you gain even a little bit of knowledge more than your competition.
However, even if you have the knowledge, it would be useless without implementation.
And, that knowledge could mean the difference between success and failure.
So, whether the above knowledge is a starting point or a refresher, I hope you take advantage of these opportunities by learning to target your ideal audiences on Facebook.
See you next time.
