Facebook knows a lot about you – like your age, gender, income and even whether you rent or own a home. You thought you were the expert Facebook stalker!
Facebook constantly gathers data about its users through third-party tools and this magical thing called the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that’s placed on a website to collect data from site visitors. Whether you are advertising on Facebook or not, it’s always a smart idea to have a Facebook Pixel on your site because Facebook collects this data to share it with you! And what you do with that data can make a difference.
There are several tools that allow you to view this data, but the newest tool is Facebook Analytics. This tool, although not yet a powerhouse like Google Analytics, is slowly evolving and has tremendous potential. Facebook Analytics allows you to view data from your website visitors, Facebook page, mobile app and even bots on messenger.
But having all this data is useless unless you know how to use it. You can use Facebook Analytics to find your audiences and shape your marketing strategies – digital or otherwise.
Analyze Demographics
In Facebook Analytics, you can choose to view data from site visitors via the Pixel, Facebook page, app or bots. Each source pulls up different datasets. For this blog post, we will focus on site visitor data.
Once you’ve selected a source to view its data, Facebook Analytics populates an overview dashboard. Although some demographic information is displayed here, to dive deeper into your audiences navigate to the “People” tab. There are three categories within this tab that help find who your audience is: demographics, technology, and household/purchase.
The Data
Look at ages and gender in the demographic section. Distinguish the top 3 (top 4 if numbers are similar) age groups. In this example, our top age groups are:
- 25-34
- 35-44
- 18-24
If there happens to be one gender that visits your site more than the other, within a specific age group, take note of that too. In this example, its split pretty evenly between men and women.
Country, city and language data is shown next. If there aren’t two huge variables, don’t worry about segmenting here. In this example, it doesn’t make sense to focus heavily on the 2.87% of people that speak Spanish and visit the site.
After breaking down top age/gender groups, look at job titles, education level, and relationship status.
In this example, the top job title is “management.” The top education level is “college” and top two relationship status are “married” and “single.” Use your best judgment here as to what “top” is and pick accordingly.
Once you’ve established your top picks in these categories, move on to household and purchase data.
Find the top household incomes, top purchase behaviors, household sizes and homeownership.
The last data to view is technology – does the audience prefer a computer or mobile device? This can help determine whether certain devices should be given priority over others.
This audience is mostly on mobile! With this information, we can create and optimize our site to be mobile friendly.
Piecing It Together
Now we can begin to piece this information together to get an idea of who the audience is:
- Ages:
- 25-34
- 35-44
- 18-24
- Management Position
- College Degree
- Married or Single
- 50,000-250,000 income
- Buys: food and drink, clothing, subscription services
- Homeowners
- Household size: circa 2
- Mostly on mobile
Remember this data is only for site visitors. You can still check your Facebook page, App or bot to gather even more data on the people you cater to.
The Cream Of The Crop
Having a clear picture of the overall audience is helpful, but what about your crème de la crème? These are people who convert on your site - whether that’s through a purchase of a product/service or become a lead. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know who they are so you can find more of them?
Yes, it absolutely would! Facebook allows you to segment those people and view their demographic data to analyze as we just did with the overall audience.
Converters can be segmented from other users within Facebook Analytics. In order to do this, however, you need to set up an event that is capturing these converters by placing code on a thank-you page (or something similar) that only converters are going to. This allows you to segment them out from everyone else.
To create this segment is simple. At the top select the segment drop down and select "Create New Segment."
Then segment your converters by selecting event – and choose the event placed on your site.
Make sure to save the segment and click apply for Facebook to populate the data that allows you to make an overall analysis. Go through the same steps outlined above to analyze your website’s visitors to create the ideal customer persona.
There are many ways to segment your audience. Segment the ones that will be the most valuable to know and study.
Determine Marketing Strategies
I can’t tell you what campaigns to create, what voice to use, or what pictures to display, but one look at the audiences you’ve created using Facebook Analytics and you will have what you need to create different marketing strategies.
Use this data to further research your overall audience and top converters.
What does a 35-year-old married man with a management job like to read about? How do they like being spoken to? What kinds of pictures do they like to see? How can you add value to them?
Asking these questions can determine what kind of marketing plan to execute and how to execute it. And if we’re talking Facebook marketing – these audiences are great places to start creating a Facebook strategy!
Figure out who you’re speaking to. Find out who’s actually responding. Then confidently go towards a plan that’s made for them.
