What are buyer personas?

Buyer personas are fictional characters created to represent customers who come in contact with a brand. Their information can range from demographics to likes and dislikes as well as pain points.

How often should I optimize my Facebook ads?

You should optimize your ads on Facebook at least once a week. Anything less than that and you could be wasting a large amount of budget dollars.

What’s the best way to A/B test?

Change one variable at a time. Changing more than that can cause confusion in data, and you won’t be able to track which variable had an effect.

How to Effectively Target Buyer Personas on Facebook

By Ariel Doebler

Effective Facebook advertising starts with creating compelling ads and targeting the right buyer personas. With over 2.74 billion monthly active users out there on Facebook, finding a cost-effective way to target your audience can be challenging.

The Importance of Buyer Personas

Before you get started with any social media campaign, you’ll want to have your buyer personas created. This is a vital step as buyer personas get into the nitty-gritty details of exactly who your customers are so you can better target them.

Without personas, you have to rely on the spaghetti strategy. Trust me, you’ve heard of this before. It’s when you “throw spaghetti at a wall and see what sticks.” It’s a waste of time and money since you’re not really 100% sure who you’re targeting or what messaging and visuals resonate with them.

Once you have a clear idea of who your audience persona is, you’ll have the ability to attract high-value visitors, leads, and customers to your business with a better return on investment.

Is Facebook the best platform to reach my target audience?

As a marketer, this is a great starting point in the questions you ask yourself to most effectively use your budget dollars. You’ll first want to utilize your existing customer and competitor information and then analyze it. Analyze it like nobody’s business. Find out which social channels are being used, who is visiting your social channels, and where they are going when they are on those social channels. You may look into Google Analytics to see which social networks appear in your referral traffic report. The more information you have, the better equipped you’ll be in making the decision of using Facebook to reach your target audience.

Most of Facebook’s advertising success comes from B2C businesses. However, depending on your B2B niche, Facebook can be a worthy platform to invest your ad dollars. Rely on what your analysis shows you, and always use your data as a guide.

How does the buyer persona fit into the Facebook Ads targeting?

Facebook offers a wide range of targeting options. By defining your buyer personas, you can create Facebook ads that speak directly to your target audience. Below are three audience selection tools for you to create your Facebook Audience.

Core Audiences Ad Targeting Option

Core audiences allow you to target your ideal customers based on your buyer personas with criteria like location, age, interests, behavior, geography, income level, relationship status, education level, and more. From there, you can begin to explore all the options that fit your buyer personas. Here are some questions that may help you identify the criteria for your target audience:

In what stores do they shop?
With what brands do they identify?
What book, magazine, or blog publications do they read?
What events do they attend?
What are their hobbies?
Who or what influences their product choices?
What online sites do they visit?

Ad Targeting with Custom Audiences

Custom audiences allow you to connect with people who have engaged with your business based on customer contacts within your current customer relationship management (CRM) system, website visitor behavior and traffic, mobile app use, and email list engagement.

Adding Facebook tracking pixels to your website can also give you the ability to retarget your audience with Facebook dynamic ads.

Reach New People with Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences provide a fast and effective way to connect with your target persona. You can choose between page fans, visitors to your website, and customer lists as a source audience—choosing the traits that closely follow your buyer personas—and your ads will then reach people with common interests and traits.

Once you establish the Facebook targeting technique that best fits your social strategy, don’t forget to personalize your ads with engaging copy and eye-catching graphics. Even if you have the perfect audience build, none of the carefully tracked research to get there will matter if your content doesn’t attract that audience.

Get the Best Results with A/B Testing

To experiment with your target audience build, copy, and visuals, you may consider A/B testing. This allows you to change certain variables to determine which strategy performs best. You can then use this information to improve future campaigns. When properly A/B testing, you’ll want to test one variable difference at a time. If you test more than one variable, you won’t be able to directly determine which variable change caused a better ad performance.

Review Your Facebook Ads performance and Buyer Personas Regularly

Effective marketing requires continuous planning and improvement. At a minimum, you’ll want to analyze and improve upon your data at least once a week while your ads are running. If you find your ads aren’t performing as expected, it’s time to look at reworking your ads and changing the strategy to better perform with your target audience.

If you don’t have time to manage your ads at least once a week on Facebook, no problem! We’re here to help and support you. Uncommon Marketing Works is the one-stop shop for all your digital marketing services. To learn more about how we can help you with organic and paid social media management, contact us today!