How to Build Facebook Audiences to Advertise Your Small Business

Facebook has proven to be a driving force in advertising for businesses of all sizes, especially small businesses.

What makes advertising on Facebook so successful is the ability to target relevant audiences.

Think of an “audience” as a group of customers who have something in common; for example, if you’re a retail shop selling maternity clothes, a potential audience could be expectant mothers and women who have “mom” or “grandmom” in their user profiles.

No worries if you don’t know what that means yet, because I’ll take you through the individual steps for setting up a Facebook audience so you can start advertising your business.

Setting Up Facebook Audiences to Advertise Your Business

1. Set up your business page and ad account.

   In order to advertise on Facebook, you must have a Business Page and Ad Account.

   When you log into your Facebook account, select Create at the top right of your toolbar and choose Page. You’ll be asked to choose between a Business Page or Community/Public Figure, select Business. Follow the series of questions that follow, upload your photos, write your descriptions, and voila…your page is up and ready for some content!

Source: Facebook

1. Set up your ad audience.

   Set up your ad audiences. For every ad campaign, you’ll want to identify a target audience. It’s best to create several audiences so you can test how each one is performing, and how you can continue to optimize moving forward. To get started, follow along below. First, you’ll select the same ‘Create’ heading you selected to develop your Facebook Business Page. Select ‘Ad.’ After you’ve identified the objective for your ad, you can begin to create audiences, by following along below.

   Select ‘Audience’

Source: Facebook

1. Start building your audience.

   Name your ‘Ad Set’, one that you’ll be able to identify when creating your ads. Next, you’ll begin to define your audience, following the prompted steps. Choose your ideal location(s), Age, Gender, Language, as well as any detailed interests, behaviors or demographics. The more detailed you get, the more relevant your customers may be to your business.

   As you build your audience, you’ll notice that the dial on the right-hand side will change to reflect if your audience is too broad, too specific, or just right. It will also show your ad’s potential reach, estimated daily results, and post engagement.

Source: Facebook

1. Keep these tips in mind.

   It’s best to begin creating and saving a variety of audiences that make sense for promoting your business. For your first set of ads, begin with a general/broad audience and be sure to monitor daily. If you feel your ad isn’t performing as well as you hoped, you can always stop it, optimize, and begin again.

   As time goes on you’ll begin to understand the type of ads that resonate with your target audiences; be patient, as it’s all a game of test and learn. When you’re defining other audiences, focus on key interests, behaviors, and demographics, and build off of that. Also, feel free to narrow down your demographics by testing specific age ranges, genders, languages, and locations.

   It’s important to remember that building the right audiences on Facebook takes time. Be patient, spend wisely, and continue to test different ad sets.

Before marketing your business, don’t forget to get a business insurance quote to ensure you're covered.