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[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

The power of Facebook ads is found within the targeting. Success and failure will be determined by how well you are able to zero in on the audience that will respond to your messaging.

It’s why I say that Facebook ads don’t fail, but advertisers do. The tools are available for you to do some amazing things when utilized properly.

Back in February, Facebook announced Core Audiences, which are new and revamped targeting options based on the following:

Location

Demographics

Interests

Behaviors

Today I am going to focus on the demographics enhancement that allows advertisers to target Facebook users in new and powerful ways.

More Demographics

Whether you create your ads in Power Editor or the ad create tool (I recommend Power Editor), advertisers will see the “More Demographics” drop-down in audience targeting. When clicked, you’ll see these options:

Relationship

Education

Work

Financial

Home

Ethnic Affinity

Generation

Parents

Politics (US)

Life Events

Once you start clicking around, a world of options will open up to you…

Relationship

There was a time when you could only target users based on a select number of relationship options. Now you can get far more specific…

Interested In:

All

Men

Women

Men and Women

Unspecified

Relationship Status:

Single

In a Relationship

Married

Engaged

Unspecified

Civil Union

Domestic Partnership

Open Relationship

Complicated

Separated

Divorced

Widowed

These statuses are all pulled from Facebook user profiles.

Education

Facebook allows advertisers to target users based on the type of degree, field of study, school and year of graduation.

Education Level:

College Grad

Doctorate Degree

High School Grad

In College

In Grad School

In High School

Master’s Degree

Professional Degree

Some College

Advertisers can also target the following by entering targets manually in the associated text fields:

Fields of Study

Schools

Undergrad Years

All of this information is pulled from Facebook user profiles.

Work

Targeting based on career just got a whole lot more powerful. You can manually target Employer and Job Title. But you can also use Facebook Categories to target users based on the industries they work in.

Industries:

Administrative

Architecture and Engineering

Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Media

Business and Financial Operations

Cleaning and Maintenance

Community and Social Services

Computer and Mathematics

Construction and Extraction

Education and Library

Farming, Fishing and Forestry

Food Preparation and Services

Healthcare and Medical

IT and Technical

Installation and Repair

Legal

Management

Military

Personal Care

Production

Protective Service

Retail

Sales

Science

Temporary and Seasonal

Transportation and Moving

Amazingly, you can even target by office type…

Office Type:

Corporation

Home Office

Small Office

This is one of the Partner Categories from Epsilon. Some of this data was moved from Partner Categories and into More Demographics.

Facebook indicates that this specific data is “sourced from purchase transaction data and compiled sources.”

Financial

Can you believe that you can target users based on income and net worth? Yep, entirely possible…

Income:

$40,000 – $50,000

$50,000 – $75,000

$75,000 – $100,000

$100,000 – $125,000

Over $125,000

Net Worth:

$1 – $100,000

$100,000 – $1,000,000

$1,000,000 – $2,000,000

Over $2,000,000

This comes from Axciom’s partner data. Per Facebook:

Income is either consumer self-reported through a survey or estimated based on a variety of demographic data such as age, occupation, home ownership, and median income for the local area.

And regarding net worth…

Modeled based on age, income, presence of children, occupation, property data, vehicle data, investment interest and census median data.

Home

When you visualize your ideal customer, where do they live? Do they own or rent a home? How much is that home worth? And who lives in it?

You bet, you can target based on this demographic data.

Home Type:

Multi-Family Home

Single-Family Home

Home Ownership:

Homeowners

Renters

Home Value:

Less than $50,000

$50,000 – $99,999

$100,000 – $149,999

$150,000 – $199,999

$200,000 – $249,999

$250,000 – $299,999

$300,000 – $349,999

$350,000 – $399,999

$400,000 – $449,999

$450,000 – $499,999

$500,000 – $599,999

$600,000 – $699,999

$700,000 – $799,999

$800,000 – $999,999

$1,000,000 – $1,499,999

$1,500,000 – $1,999,999

Over $1,999,999

All of this data comes from Axciom.

You can also target based on household composition. This data is sourced by data mining partner Epsilon.

Household Composition:

Children in Home

Empty Nesters

Grandparents

New Teen Drivers

No Children in Home

Veterans in Home

Working Women

Young Adults in Home

Ethnic Affinity

There isn’t much available here now, but Facebook allows you to target users who define themselves as Hispanic. We can assume this will be expanded in the future.

Hispanic (US – All)

Hispanic (US – Bilingual)

Hispanic (US – English Dominant)

Hispanic (US – Spanish Dominant)

Generation

Right now, you can only target based on the Facebook Category of “Baby Boomers.” These options will undoubtedly grow, though I question the value since you can otherwise target based on age.

Parents

If your product or service focuses on children or their parents, this could be an incredibly valuable option for you.

Facebook asks users to share names and ages of their family members, regardless of whether they are on Facebook. Advertisers can then target ads based on this information.

All Parents:

Expectant Parents

Parents (All)

Parents (Child: 0-3 yrs)

Parents (Child: 4-12 yrs)

Parents (Child: 13-15 yrs)

Parents (Child: 16-19 yrs)

Target users who are moms thanks to DLX partner data. This is sourced from “U.S consumer data on where consumers shop, how they shop, what products and brands they purchase, the publications they read, and their demographic and psychographic attributes.”

Moms:

Big-City Moms

Corporate Moms

Fit Moms

Green Moms

Soccer Moms

Stay-at-Home Moms

Trendy Moms

Politics

Data partner Epsilon allows Facebook advertisers to target users based on political affiliation thanks to completed surveys and records of donations made.

Donate to Conservative Political Causes

Donate to Liberal Political Causes

Politics (US Active)

Politics (US Conservative)

Politics (US Liberal)

Politics (US Non-Partisans)

Registered Voters (Democrat)

Registered Voters (Independent)

Registered Voters (Republican)

Life Events

Finally, advertisers can target users based on recent changes they’ve made to their profiles.

Away From Family

Away From Hometown

Long Distance Relationship

New Job

New Relationship

Newly Engaged (1 Year)

Newly Engaged (3 Months)

Newly Engaged (6 Months)

Newlywed (1 Year)

Newlywed (3 Months)

Newlywed (6 Months)

Recently Moved

Upcoming Birthday

Where Does Facebook Get This Data?

It will undoubtedly sound creepy to some that you can target based on some of this information. But if you get past the creepiness, this data can be used to generate incredibly relevant — and useful — advertising.

Demographic targeting is based on data from one of two sources:

Information users provide to Facebook

Information mined by data partners

The first is easy to explain. If you’ve recently moved, changed jobs or got engaged, advertisers can target you based on this information.

The second has actually been around for more than a year in the US via Partner Categories, but some of this targeting has been moved to the More Demograhpics area.

Facebook partnered with data mining companies to collect additional information on users for targeting purposes. Whenever you fill out an application or survey or make a large purchase, data mining companies often get access to this information.

As always, advertisers have no access to the names associated with this data. For more on how this data is used, make sure you read this message from Facebook.

How Can Advertisers Use This Data?

Facebook gives the following examples of ways you can target with this information…

Relationship status expansion and time overlay: If you’re seeking to reach newly engaged couples, you can select ‘Newly Engaged’ as a target audience and overlay a timeframe of 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year+. Education: If you represent a school, you can select an audience with ‘Some College’ to promote returning to college to finish a degree. Workplace and job title: If you’re a recruiter, you can find people with specific job titles based on the role they’re seeking to fill. If you’re a B2B Technology or Telecom advertiser, you can find the right job title, even at the right companies, to connect directly with decision makers for IT purchases.

Note that Core Audiences also allow advertisers to target using “and” statements rather than “or” statements.

From Facebook:

The new structure based on targeting type enables a more precise target audience to be constructed. In the past, many audiences could only be connected via an ‘or’ statement, but

different targeting types are now connected via an ‘and’ statement. For example: an advertiser trying to acquire customers for a new digital camera can target: ‘People who are parents and who are interested in photography and who upload photos frequently.’

On Targeting

Note that as powerful as this is, I recommend that you start first with users most closely connected to you.

My Facebook targeting priority goes in this order:

Facebook Fans Email Subscribers Who Aren’t Fans Website Visitors Who Aren’t Fans Lookalike Audiences Partner Categories (Including Core Audiences) Interests

You can certainly have success with this demographic targeting, but if you have a strong customer list you should have the most success first with those who already know who you are. Depending on budget and the sizes of your audiences (Fans, Subscribers, Website Visitors), you may or may not need to move beyond these groups.

Your Turn

Have you experimented with Core Audiences and the More Demographics targeting? What results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!