In our tenth and final installment of our Social Media Best Practices series, we discuss the importance of understanding your Facebook ad audience and how knowing the specifics of your demographics can help you achieve success. If you missed Best Practice #9: “A hybrid paid and organic approach,” click here.
Make sure you understand who actually saw your ads – and where!
When digesting the performance of Facebook ad campaigns, make sure to dig into the demographic and placement data to understand who is engaging with your content. Does it align with your expectations and targeting? You might need to adjust future campaign targeting and placements if results are unfavorably skewed.
Too often, marketers are so focused on budgets and results that we forget to investigate the demographic resonance of our messages. In Facebook’s Ad Manager, there is a blue sidebar on the right of the screen. Expanding this sidebar will reveal crucial audience data about any particular ad, campaign or group of campaigns. For example: You’ll be able to see how many link clicks occurred within common age groups. You’ll also be able to check whether your ads were more successful on Facebook or Instagram.
This kind of information is also readily available for Page communities through the normal Facebook interface for Page administrators. It’s worth knowing where your followers are from, what time they are online, and what similar Pages are posting. Comparing the demographic results of your paid ad campaigns to the demographic composition of your Page audience can draw important contrast to prove or dispute campaign efficacy.
