4-24-2017, Entrepreneur -- Social media ads are the norm for entrepreneurs both as consumers and business owners, so it’s a safe guess that most entrepreneurs realize the power and reach of Facebook's targeting capabilities.  

Maybe you’ve tried Facebook advertising but it wasn't as effective as you hoped, or maybe you’re a believer who wants to take your ads to the next level. Either way, Facebook advertising is too powerful to be given up easily. There are five crucial considerations to accelerate conversions and ROI.

1. Getting very specific about your audience.

Facebook has such impressive targeting capabilities, it’s getting scary. After the basics like gender, age and location, you can dive deep into people’s interests and life stages. For example, you can target people in the market for a specific car make or model, or appeal to parents of newborns, or target people at specific income levels, plus interests and lifestyles such as frequent travelers or readers of Entrepreneur magazine. Hone in on your audience by specifying as many demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle characteristics as you can.

Use Facebook's Lookalike Audience tool to find the top one percent that looks like your existing audience. In my experience, it can make a big difference in your targeting, because Facebook evaluates tens or hundreds of characteristics and signals, which we humans simply cannot do.

2. Placement is about content and context.

Facebook now boasts many placement options, from good old timeline and right sidebar to Instagram, Audience Network and Instant Articles. Audience network is simply a network of partners, such as various applications that will show your Facebook ads in their apps.

You can select which placement you want to advertise on and which one you won't. This matters because different placements hint at different contexts and activities. A mobile news feed is obviously suggesting a person who is on the go, so you know not to offer him or her a 30-minute video or a large app to download. A person scrolling through a desktop news feed might be looking for casual entertainment and information. Instant Articles hint at people who like in-depth reading.

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