I was surprised to learn that a few of my fellow “Mark-a-teers” had no idea this was available. So for the benefit of those who haven’t considered the following, or simply had no idea this existed; here’s a quick tutorial on using Facebook to conduct fairly elaborate research prior to any launch.
I will break this out into 2 very simple examples, but this can clearly be used for multiple purposes.
Harvesting Data for Event Planning
First you will need a Facebook profile. With that out of the way, sign in. Struggle to ignore your notifications, kitten videos and friend’s recycled wit statuses long enough to notice that somewhere around your page(it moves every so often) you will see the word Advertising. It should look approximately like this:
Click on it, and you will enter the advertising portal for Facebook. You may need to do some looking around, but eventually you should find this button:
Click on it and you will see something similar to this:
Ignore this section as you are not currently looking to actually create an ad, and scroll down to section 2.
The first section should be Location. Mine has defaulted to Canada, as that is the country I reside in. Just below this is three options – Everywhere, By State/Province and By City. These options allow you to refine your data, but let’s skip past them for a moment.
Notice directly to the right of the Location section is a box with the words “Estimated Reach”. This box is where the magic happens, so keep an eye on it.
Currently that box tells me that there is 15,236,860 people over 18 and living in Canada on Facebook. This shows strong canuck presence on Facebook, especially considering Canada’s population, and is an excellent starting figure to work out our data with.
Scenario: The Motorcycle Expo
Carl E. Mavison, famous motorcycle enthusiast, calls you out of the blue. Carl has big plans to tour North America, putting on “Motorcycle Expos”, but before he starts booking arenas and hiring security staff; he wants you to supply him with some research on locations.
Understandably, Carl doesn’t want to throw away thousands of dollars booking arenas where no one will show up.
After a bit of discussion, Carl states that he would like to begin his tour in Ontario, Canada. He wants you to pick out 4 locations, and needs to know that at least 500 people may attend. Armed with this information, you grab a nice big cup of (insert beverage here) and sign into your Facebook.
Making your way to the advertising area outlined above, you focus on the Location section. First click on the option By State/Province, and then type into the new field “Ontario”. Immediately the “Estimated Reach” box on the right will update. It now shows me that there is 5,912,320 over the age of 18 in Ontario that are on Facebook. Again by population, that is an excellent sample.
Now I proceed down the options. A quick look at the Demographics section, and I can see that my audience is already defined as men or women over 18. Perfect. On to the Interests section.
This area will likely be in Broad Category mode, as seen in the above screenshot. We don’t want that currently, so you click on the link below that says “Switch to Precise interest Targeting”.
A new empty field will load, and I type the word “motorcycle” into the box. A drop down menu will appear and I continue to select the multiple variations of the term “Motorcycle” it presents. End result, my “Precise Interests” box looks like this:
Once I have completed selecting the various permutations, I see that the “Estimated Reach” box has updated to show me this:
So 65,780 Facebook users from Ontario have identified themselves as “fans” of motorcycles. Good news. Next I break it down into locations.
Back up to the Location section, I click on “By City” and enter Toronto. The “Estimated Reach” box finishes updating and I see that 17,900 people within the Toronto area have identified themselves as Motorcycle fans. Marketing appropriately to this area will clearly result in a turnout of far more than 500 people. Toronto goes onto the yes list.
Okay, so now I need 3 more locations. I decide to try Waterloo, Ontario. Following the same steps as before, the “Estimated Reach” box now shows me:
8, 860 people there. Another excellent location for Carl to setup one of his shows. Now I try Thunder Bay. The “Estimated Reach” box shows me 940 people in Thunder Bay. That is too small a sample, so I move onto another location.
After trying multiple locations I identify Toronto, Waterloo, London and Windsor as the 4 best options for Carl’s initial Expo placements. I’ll explain how to use this for advertising in the following section.
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