By Richard Brasser

1. Is your target audience on Facebook?
This is a not a helpful question when trying to evaluate whether to use Facebook as an advertising platform. The answer is probably “of course they are on Facebook.” With over 600 million people on the platform, the chances are very good.

• The question should be: Is your target actively looking for your solution while on Facebook? There is a huge difference. Think of Facebook as a person’s living room. It is a personal and intimate space. Your prospect is also sitting in their real living room but you aren’t knocking on the door and asking them if they want to buy your IT consulting services, right? On the contrary, someone sees a message about their friend getting engaged and they want to find a cool gift…bang…ad for cool gift gets clicked. You get the idea.

2. Do the demographics of Facebook align with my market?
Facebook is just kids and people who love pictures of pets, right? Of course it isn’t. Almost every social media presentation belabors the point that people of all ages, genders, etc. are on Facebook. However, once again, it isn’t whether they are there or not.

• The question should be: How well can you segment your exact demographic, psychographic and technographic to achieve the right results with Facebook? There are eleven attributes currently available for targeting but the list is growing. If you can really hone in on your exact high value target, it could pay huge dividends. One thing to keep in mind is that “Targeting your audience is as important as the message itself. Develop personas to represent your target audience. Learn what they’re interested in — their educational background, relationship status, and where they live. Reach only the audience you desire by leveraging Facebook’s targeting to meet your ideal customer profile,” advises Paul Dunay from Buzz Marketing for Technology in his Facebook for Dummies book. So make sure that the targeting parameters fit YOUR targeting matrix before using Facebook for your product.

With over 11 years of experience in the interactive marketing world, Richard has become one of the leading experts in social media and interactive marketing. Helping clients like SAP, Avaya Nortel and GMAC, Richard provides business focused strategic guidance that leads to tangible results.

Connect with Richard: Twitter – @socmedia365 LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/brasser Email: rbrasser@targetedgroup.com

Web – www.thetargetedgroup.com

Tags: b2b marketing, digital marketing, facebook, facebook advertising, facebook strategy, interactive marketing, social media for business, social media marketing, social networking, social technologies

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 10:30 AM and is filed under Digital Delivery, Social Media Matters . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.