As one of the largest social media platforms, Facebook is important for advertising. More than three million companies advertise on Facebook to reach its large user base.
While reaching potential customers is important, not all leads turn into sales. A smaller but more interested audience is far more valuable than a larger passive one.
Facebook offers very powerful audience targeting features that allow companies to properly segment their ads to assure they are reaching the customers most interested in their products.
Segmenting And Creating A Buyer Persona
By segmenting leads you increase your sales conversion rate. This increases the ROI of your ads and makes better use of your time. Segmented leads allow you to focus on the potential customers that are most likely to buy your products or services.
The best way to create effective segmented advertisements is through a buyer persona. The buyer persona is a generalized profile of your ideal customer based on specific demographic traits.
Facebook has several demographic traits to choose from when targeting ads. An effective persona will contain the following data points:
- Basic profile information such as age, location, career, and educational background. Also, consider their current living situation and family size (i.e. single or married).
- Specific life goals such as future career plans, retirement, travel, and so on.
- Existing issues that prevent them from achieving their goals that you can help correct.
- Their living situation such as house versus apartment or do they live alone or do they have roommates.
- Hobbies and interests.
- Consider their proficiency with technology and how they interact with it. Tech-savvy early adopters have a different profile than basic users.
- How does your customer ‘talk’? They should have a distinct voice. Some profiles would use more jargon in speech while others use more slang.
Facebook’s Demographic Tools
Facebook has different demographics you can use to target ads to reach an exact customer profile. They can be broad general demographic information or more specific such as schools attended. Important demographic traits to target can include:
- A customer’s finances.
- Life stages such as marriage, home ownership, moving, or having children.
- Specific behaviors such as the brand of car they drive or are they an expat.
- Hobbies and interests can be narrowed down to specific broad fields (such as sports) to more specific categories such as companies a customer is a fan of.
An important part of demographic targeting is the ability to exclude demographics. This assures your advertisements don’t reach customers who have no interest.
What Are Boosted Posts?
Boosting posts allows you to target your posts at the specific demographic you’re trying to reach. By clicking edit you can customize your target audience or create customer profiles.
Targeting options include both broad and specific data points. Before posting, Facebook will tell you how many people your post will reach with the selected demographic traits. Once saved, you can then click boost post.
Leveraging Boosted Posts
To increase ad effectiveness your website’s landing page should use text, video, and imagery similar to the ad that links to it. Each audience segment should have their own specific landing page that presents your products as filling specific needs.
Advertising on Facebook is a surefire way to connect with many people. But with such a wide reach, you need to fine-tune your ads to 
Facebook allows you to target your ads specifically to the audiences you want to reach. There are a lot of options to choose from to 
