Here’s what is so valuable about Facebook: You determine who you want your ad to show up for based on choosing parameters that people include in their Facebook profile information. Talk about target marketing!

When you set up your Facebook advertising, you can choose from the following target marketing options:

• Geographic Targeting (by state, city or nationwide) – Ad will show only to those people who list themselves as residents of the city/area you specify
• Age Ranges – Ad will show only to those people in the age range you specify
• Birthday – Yes or No option – Ad will show only to those people whose birthday corresponds to the day the ad is running
• Sex – Male or Female
• Keywords – Targets ads to keywords that exist in people’s profiles
• Education Level – Specify what kind of degree they have, if any
• Workplace – To target employees of a specific company
• Relationship – You can target only people in a certain kind of a relationship, i.e.: single, engaged, married
• Interested In – Men or Women
• Language – Target users that speak a language other than English

Adding Facebook to your social marketing strategies is a nice complement to your paid search campaigns.

That’s because you’re reaching other qualified customers that might not necessarily be searching for what you offer. You can pick as many or as few attributes as you like. Choosing more will make your potential audience smaller, but likely more qualified.

The other great part of your Facebook PPC advertising is that, because you can have such a specific user in mind, you can find a great image to grab their attention. Unlike search engine PPC campaigns, Facebook allows you to upload a small image that runs along with your ad, enhancing the social media strategy aspect of the ad itself.

The next time you start to think about your paid search campaign and your social marketing strategies, think of Facebook advertising as a very useful bridge that can unite both efforts!

Facebook is one of the more frequently used social marketing strategies, but did you know about their paid advertising options when it comes to reaching your target demographic? Facebook gives you different options for reaching your intended audience than a search engine does – and it offers options on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, as well.

How Facebook target marketing is different

If you run a PPC campaign on a search engine, you specify the keyword searches for which you want your ad to appear. Facebook obviously isn’t a search engine, so you choose your targeting differently. The beauty of Facebook advertising is you have a whole different set of tools to reach people who might not be searching for your service in a search engine, but would still be good candidates for what you offer.

You know how a Facebook page has all of that information you opt to share? It has your geographic area, whether you’re male or female, your age (if you’ve filled in your birth date), your relationship status, and a lot of free-form fields to list your particular interests.

All of that information allows Facebook to segment your profile, and let advertisers take advantage of it! If you want to find engaged men in the state of Florida and have your ad only show to them, guess what? You can!

To segment or not to segment your target marketing

In our next blog post, we’ll review the options available in your Facebook PPC campaign, and we’ll provide some guidance on how to get started with an effective set-up!