Targeted Facebook Advertising

[Brendan Alviani]

Ok, so as it turns out that on Facebook, you can target people who work out of their home office! (US only at this point, though!)

Here's how:

1. Install the Facebook Power Editor. It's a more robust way of doing ads on Facebook. It takes more time to set up and get used to it, but it speeds things up after that. (Note: It's just for Google Chrome right now)

2. Set-up your billing (In the top-left corner, go to Billing, then along the top, go to Funding Sources and put in your credit card info.) They charge you like every $40 or 48 hours or something.

3. In the top left-hand corner, go to 

• "Audiences"
• "Create Audience" and in the drop-down, select "Saved Target Group"
• Name the group something descriptive and helpful.

4. Now, we're going to have fun with demographics. There are a lot more options that are worth exploring, but here are the key things to do:

• Country: United States (I'd also recommend putting in your city and maybe selecting towns within 10 miles.)
• Go to "Categories" and select "Partner Categories" Basically, this is info provided by 3rd party companies that data-mine consumer info. There are over 500 customer profiles available! (This whole thing is pretty crazy and worth exploring, but I digress).
• Go to" Epsilon" --> "Business" --> "Types of Business" --> "Home Office"

5. Finish playing around with demographics and save it.

So far, it doesn't seem to cost more to use this CRAZY level of precision. So for example, right now, I'm hoping to open one in Waukegan, IL, which is between Chicago and Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. Facebook says there are 16,060 people who live within 10 miles of Waukegan, are 22+ years old, and work out of a home office. It recommends a bid of 21 to 73 cents per click, which seems relatively cheap to me.

I think 16,000 people is probably too high of a number, but pretty encouraging. It claims that this is based on people claiming their address as a home office during purchase transactions.

So I'm going to keep playing around with this, but thought this might be helpful for folks.