Understanding Facebook Interest Targeting

This post is part of a series titled “How To Use Facebook Ads For Small Business”. Our goal is to help an average small business owner understand how to use Facebook ads effectively.

Determining your audience’s interests using affinities

Understanding the concept of affinities- refer to your customer profile for ideas

Consider products, websites, magazines, musicians, local retail competitors, competitor brands,

Using Facebook Open Graph Search

Examples of interests: 1 Trollbeads 2 Bridal 3 Local Event

Which interests you target will be determined by any number of the following items but should be refined to include specific items related to your ad’s ideal target. These interests may include…

1. What type of product you are trying to sell.
2. Your ideal target audience’s likes.
3. Your store’s local competitors.
4. Your product’s competitors.
5. Websites, blogs and Facebook pages that are geared toward your ad’s ideal target.
6. Affinities that you find by using Facebook’s Open Graph Search.

Example: Finding Trollbeads – and Trollbeads’ competitors’ fans in your area.

Let’s say that you’d like to create an ad for your store and target an audience meeting the following criteria:

• Location: Columbia, MD + 25 mi
• Age: 35 – 54
• Gender: Women
• Interests: Trollbeads and all related Trollbeads pages, Chamilia, Pandora, Rembrandt Charms, Brighton Collectibles, Jared Galleria Jewelry, and Juicy Coutre

Below is a screenshot of what that targeting would look like. In our area – Columbia, MD – this audience is approximately 16,800 people. If you tweak any of the interests or increase the age range of the target, the audience estimate will change in real time. Shoot for an audience that is large enough to target but small enough to be very specific. We usually try to have an audience of at least 12,000+ but tend to not ran ads to audiences of more than 30,000. If we were running this campaign, we would start with this group because they are the most likely to be Trollbeads customers or be a customer of a competing bead line.

For Intermediate and Advanced Users

If you’re new to Facebook ads, you may want to skip this section and come back once you’re more comfortable. If you’ve ran a couple of ads and want more ideas for targeting, this section is for you.

Using Facebook’s Open Graph Search to Find Additional Interests

One of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal is Facebook’s Open Graph Search. Facebook describes Open Graph as a way to “find people who share your interests, connect with friends who like the same activities – and meet new people too.” For more about Facebook Open Graph, see https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch. While it is all of those things, it provides a very unique value to your business’ marketing efforts.

How Open Graph Works and Some Things You Can Do With It

Some of the basic things you can use Facebook’s Open Graph for include:

• Identifying your own fans
• Learn about your fans favorite interests and hobbies
• Learn about the interests of your competitor’s fans
• Identify potential business partnerships
• Determine prizes to use for promotions and contests based on what your fans’ like

You use Open Graph by typing a specific query (phrase) in the search bar at the top of your Facebook account’s home page. Here are three examples of valuable search queries:

Open Graph Query: Favorite interests of people who like “PAGE NAME”

Replace “PAGE NAME” with the name of your business’ fan page or with the page name of your best selling products. If they make sense, you can use the interests to add to your ad campaign’s targeting. This will tell you the specific interests of fans of a specific Facebook page.

Open Graph Query: Pages liked by people who like “PAGE NAME”

Replace “PAGE NAME” with the name of your business’ fan page or with the name of your best selling products. If they make sense, you can add the Facebook pages that you’ve discovered to your ad campaign’s targeting. This will tell you the specific pages liked by fans of a given page.

Open Graph Query: People who work at “PLACE” and like “SOMETHING”

Replace “PLACE” with the name of an employer whose employees you want to target. Replace “SOMETHING” with “Jewelry”, an Interest, or “Trollbeads”, a Product.