Facebook's New Post Targeting Options Launching Soon, Learn How To Use Them Now

Facebook recently announced a new targeting option for page admins trying to Reach particular segments of their audience.

With the new Facebook targeting options, admins will soon be able to target a variety of options such as:

• age new
• gender new
• interested in new
• relationship status new
• language
• education new
• workplace new
• location (country, state, city)

These new targeted segments open up a whole new array of options for marketers trying to pin point their brand’s message.

Typically with brand new features on Facebook, comes new opportunities for early adopters. Understanding why Facebook has created new targeting options and what they may do with them in the future, can help you expand your Reach once this feature is rolled out to all audiences (Rumor has it that it will be rolled out to all admins on August 7th).

It will look like this:

Why is Facebook Adding Additional Targeting Options?

In my opinion, Facebook is adding additional targeting options for two reasons: decrease a barrier of entry for creating an ad unit and help admins increase reach. By allowing admins the ability to target their update right from the Timeline, they can quickly Promote the post and pay to Reach their desired audience. For organic content, admins will be able to restructure the content and target it in optimal ways.

How To Use Targeting To Increase Reach

Let’s create a hypothetical situation to help explain how a brand can increase their Reach using the new targeting options. We’ll use a chocolate company such as Dove Chocolate on Valentine’s Day for our hypothetical situation. Dove has approximately 1 million fans of their page with a diverse audience. Previously (before advanced targeting options), Dove Chocolate made a widely appealing Valentine’s Day post:

This Valentine’s Day post attempted to Reach their entire audience but most likely only reached a small percentage. However, this upcoming Valentine’s Day, Dove will have an opportunity to expand the Reach of this post without Promoting it.

Here’s how they would do it:

• Identify Demographic Information Within Facebook Insights
• Select Demographics To Be Targeted
• Craft Content To Target Audience

This Valentine’s Day, Dove has a new opportunity to target their content for each selected segment. For each brand, the amount of segments will differ depending on their fan demographics, this should be determined by the admin and the brand’s strategy.

Dove would target the following segments:

• Young Single Women
• Young Single Men
• Young Married Women
• Young Married Men
• Old Married Women
• Old Married Men

The work for the admin has now sextupled, as they now have to create (or modify) content to each of our targeted segments. Here are some sample posts:

Young Single Women 

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world” - Lucille Ball

Young Single Men

Give a special woman in your life a box of chocolates this Valentine’s Day.

Young Married Women

Hint: Your husband loves chocolate on Valentine’s Day too.

Young Married Men

Now that she’s your wife, doesn’t change her love for chocolate. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Old Married Women

Chocolate you love is best enjoyed with someone you love.

Old Married Men

Reminder: Today is Valentine’s Day. Another Reminder: Your wife loves dark chocolate.

Each of the above posts should be targeted to the corresponding segmented audience. By custom tailoring both the message and targeting of the posts, you’ll have a higher opportunity of engaging your fans. Engaging more fans and publishing more relevant content will increase the Reach for your content.

For the advanced admins, they’ll analyze when each demographic is online to view the posts, then publish the posts at the optimal times of day for each segmented audience.

A Note To Small Brands

For the millions of small brands marketing on Facebook, the targeting options will be less impactful. Facebook requires certain levels of fans in order to be able to target a particular demographic.

However, there will still be value in the targeting as you’ll be able to target broad segments such as gender or age.

The brands that have millions of fans will most likely be able to use a variety targeting options to fine tune their targeted audience. Large brands often suffer in the news feed due to the diversity of their fans and fan acquisition methods. Segmenting may begin a process of Reaching these hard to reach fans.

source