Making Sense of Facebook Audience Insights for your Business
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Corey Halstead
Owner, HALSTEAD.
Quality data about your customers and potential customers is key to running a successful business. In days past, collecting this sort of information was a time consuming process involving weeks of gathering data through surveys and questionnaires and then transcribing that research into readable charts and reports. Companies who could afford this sort of research paid a small fortune for it, because they knew how valuable it was for their business in order to modify their products, services and advertising to better attract and satisfy their clientele. Now this sort of information is readily available: fully compiled and ready to work with, provided you know how to read and use it. Introducing Facebook Audience Insights.
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What are Facebook Audience Insights?
Facebook is not only an excellent platform for connecting with your customers and promoting your company, or even staying up to date with old friends, it’s also one of the biggest data collection projects ever undertaken. This data comes directly from users who have uploaded information about themselves to their Facebook profiles. This info includes everything from age, gender and relationship status to job title, location and interests. Information from third party data collection partners is also available in the US and covers information such as income and online purchases.
At the very top of your Facebook business page's Audience Insights, you can see how many people visit your page monthly, this is also known as your "New Audience." If this monthly active audience is fewer than 1000 people, no data will appear here yet, but don't be discouraged. With a few simple tips and tricks, you can boost your followers in no time and take advantage of this great feature.
Related: 3 Things You Didn't Know About Your Business Facebook Account
Below we'll discuss the main sections of Facebook Audience Insights, how to use them and what they mean for your marketing strategy. Note that while this walk-through is general, the menu on the left sidebar serves to narrow the parameters of the given information at any point. For example, you can choose to focus just on the female portion of your audience, or a certain age group.
Demographics.
Be sure to set your location parameters to the countries you want to focus on here. By leaving the location box blank, you'll see the demographics of users all over the world. This section shows you the percentage of males and females that visit your business’s Facebook page, giving you insight into which gender your product or service appeals to more, or is more useful to. If your product or service is gender-specific, this data can be used to confirm whether your marketing is on the right track. If not, this information will give you a great idea of who your marketing strategy isn't reaching, and get you thinking of ways to attract the neglected group. Also available here is the age groups of your audience, sorted by gender. Both these insights into the make-up of your audience is vital when planning content that will engage and thrill your audience.
Related: Do you know your target customer?
The data under lifestyle, which is only available in the U.S, is based on the activities and the brands that your users interact with. Some of this is obtained from third-party data partners, i.e. external companies that the Facebook users are affiliated with. Third-party data partners relay insight into the household income and purchasing behavior of your audience, and in so doing, lets you find out more about their lifestyle and what sort of products they may be able to afford.
Here you will also find information on the relationship statuses and education levels of your audience, as well as data that shows which industry a follower is most likely to work in. The compare column on the right of the table shows the percentage below or above the Facebook average a specific job title is. This info is all used to create better buyer personas - important in order to inform market and sales strategies as well as to determine user-friendliness or the possibility of being accommodating to a cold call.
Page Likes.
The Categories section outlines the top categories of pages that the audience has liked, as well as the top pages within each category. The Page Likes section outlines the pages that would be relevant to the audience based on what they have liked on Facebook. They are more likely to like these pages than the average user. This helps a company build a better picture of their buyers’ lifestyles, by examining the affordability of popular brands within this list, for example. Possible competitors can also be identified from this list and a company can identify what Facebook content will be received best by the audience.
Related: 5 Facebook Myths Every Home Design & Build Pro Should Know
Location.
This section shows the countries and, more specifically, the cities in which most of your audience members live. If you have the location in the menu on the left set as the U.S, for example, then only U.S cities will be shown. Deleting that specification will give you data about audience members from all over the world. This can have an impact on where your company might consider opening new branches or expand in other ways. This also shows you the languages most commonly spoken by visitors to your page.
Activity.
The activity section will help you to understand the activity and behavior of your Facebook audience. The Frequency of Activities section shows the average number of pages liked, comments, likes, shares and ad clicks made in the last 30 days. This lets you know how active your Facebook audience is, affecting how much of your promotion campaign can be carried out on the platform. If an audience is extremely active, this may indicate that the company’s Facebook page and promotions should be improved to compete with the other pages frequented by their audience. The Device Users section outlines the percentage of your audience using Facebook either on computers or mobile phones. This should prompt certain companies to invest in the creation of their own app or the improvement of their mobile website, should their users be mainly on their phones. It is also advisable to ensure that the content you share with your Facebook audience is compatible with the most popular devices.
Household.
This section is only available for U.S audiences and is based on surveys and publicly available demographic data. It outlines the estimated household income of your audience, which will indicate whether your product or service is affordable to your buyers. It also indicates the proportion of your audience renting, as opposed to owning, their home, as well as the sizes of your audience’s households and the value of their homes. The final category in this section is Spending Methods, giving you an idea of how your audience pays for things. This is important information as it may help improve your compatibility to their preferred spending methods, in turn bettering customer service and avoiding losses associated with payment problems.
Purchase.
Also exclusive to U.S audience members, this section centers on information regarding your audience’s purchasing activity. Retail spending shows you how many audience members are likely to engage in high levels of retail spending in relation to their income. Online Purchases similarly displays how much people generally spend online, in relation to their level of income. Purchase Behavior lets you know what your audience is most likely to spend money on, helping you to tweak your goods or services to better accommodate the demand. Finally, there is data collected from a combination of sources regarding how many of your audience members are in the market for a vehicle - handy information for transport providers, car salesmen or suppliers of alternative modes of transportation.
