5 Free Tools to Research Demographics for Your Facebook Ads (with Infographic)

Currently, Facebook is the fastest growing social networking site in the world with over 800 million users and growing. With this population, there is a great opportunity for your local business to flourish. Moreover, you would also be able to find your ideal target customer in Facebook if you know how to find them.

The Facebook advertising platform is definitely something that is worth exploring especially if you are trying to target a local market .This is a great opportunity for you to get new customers and it seems that failing to be in Facebook these days is a huge mistake. Facebook Ads is a great opportunity for business and this just requires you to pay for as low as $1 a day.

Facebook Ads is very different compared to Google Ads (Google AdWords) as this is based on demographics while Google Ads is based on keywords. Demographic is the characteristic of a population like age, gender, education, interests and many other data. When it comes to marketing strategy, Facebook Ads offers a very direct as well as personal approach in marketing your business. You are given the opportunity to target and advertise your products and services to specific people who are most likely going to patronize and make use of the products and services that you are offering.

If you do not have a Facebook account yet, you have to sign up and create one before you can start your Facebook Ad campaign. It is also important to note that you have to be mindful of the activities that your competition is doing. In order to check on this, you can create a Facebook account with the set up a profile setting according to the target market of your business. Once you are in, you would then be able to see the campaign ads of your competition on the sidebar. You can change on the profile to match the demographics of your target market to check more on the same business ads that are targeting the same customers as you are.

If you are not quite sure of the customer demographics of the products and services that you are promoting, you can definitely check on some free tools online. These tools can help you research on the demographics that you can use in your Facebook Ad. It will really pay off if you are going to research on demographic data so that you will be able to have the correct target market data to use when filling up the Ad form.

• Search Engines. Search engines are highly useful free tools that you can make use online to research on the demographics for your Facebook Ads. There are a lot of search engines that are available like Google, Bing and Yahoo. To use this tool, you just have to key in your product or service keyword and search for the top ten sites that are ranked for your local business. You have to take note of the first ten sites in the search result.
• Quantcast.com. Quantcast is a measurement service that is helping buyers and sellers quantify the characteristics of the digital audience. This way, businesses can effectively formulate an addressable advertising solution. With this tool, you will be able to see the demographic profile of the people who actually visit the ten websites that you have researched and noted from search engine result. It is very easy to use this tool as you only need to input the website name and click on the demographic link. You will then be provided with the gender, age, ethnicity, household income as well as the education level of the typical visitor to that particular website.
• Google Ad Planner. This free tool provides with the following necessary information: the demographic data and the interests of the people who visit the websites. You can simply type in the website and you will be provided with the result showing the interests of the people who visit the site and the other websites that they frequently visit. This will also provide you with the keywords use by the site visitors in their searches that you can make use on the next free tool.
• Google Insights. This free tool is an awesome tool used for tracking and comparing trends. This will be able to provide you in-depth geographic data. You just have to enter the keywords utilized by your targeted audience and you will be able to get the 10 geographical locations where the keyword generates interest.
• Facebook. One of the most effectively ways to get results using FB ads is to use the platform itseld to do research and create what I like to call a micro local strategy. For example, let’s say I was to create a campaign for a new health restaurant in Winter Park, Florida a small city near Orlando. Instead of just creating ads to target people who like healthy restaurants in Orlando, I would micro target by researching on Facebook Pages for local gyms near Winter Park specifically instead of Orlando. I would probably find crossfit gyms and a local YMCA, so I can now target these specific pages in my Facebook ads. I can even create an ad that says “Hungry after crossfit but do not know where to eat in Winter Park?” This guarantees that my message is strategically targeted to a small group but it is aimed directly at getting a response from them. Another example would be using the interest bar inside the FB ads tool. I can search for people’s interest inside the tool and narrow it down by creating keywords.The more targeted your ads are the less expensive they will be and also the more success you will have with them.

Now that you know the free tools that you can make use of to research demographics for your FB Ad, you can now start filling up the Ad form and start advertising now! And if you’re looking for advice on how to create a killer Facebook Ad, make sure you check out this excellent infographic below!

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