It’s easy, it’s valuable, and it’s stunningly FAST.
And if you’re planning to invest your savings and start a new business venture to pitch to qualified investors, spending some time on Facebook’s Ad Manager can make all the difference in having the compelling information you’ll need available at your fingertips.
Facebook’s Ad Manager is available to everyone who has a Facebook account, and to promote trial (and error) use of the self-serve ad manager, they make it free to use and access without ever spending any money.
To get started, you’ll have to answer a few unimportant questions; all answers lead to the ad generator and if you scroll down the page you can access the valuable “create your audience” targeting tool, that dynamically generates info about Facebook audience sizes available for marketing.
You can access the system and use it to learn the current number of Facebook users who fall into any combination of geography and demographic indicators, and also the interests and behaviours you know (or suspect), indicate your most likely potential customers.
In the past, new business owners would have to rely on government population statistics, to get an idea of their pre-launch marketplace size, or public media measurement services, but technology causes us to change so fast now, all businesses need up-to-date information and insights about their potential business.
[plain]Catch Debbie’s free webinar on how to capitalize on Facebook Ads – Thursday Jan 16, 2014 with Social Buzz Club. Details & signup are here.[/plain]So what does it mean?
Do a quick Google search before you start your Facebook research, and learn the TOTAL POPULATION SIZE of the geographic area where you intend to do business. Then looking at Facebook, the initial geographic population amount you’re given is a % of the total, that you can apply to gain insights to the size of the business opportunity.
Example:
– Canada’s total population on Google: Approximately 30 million over age 15 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo10a-eng.htm
– On Facebook: 19.2 million Canadians over age 13
According to this rough calculation (which is better than no data or old data), Facebook has reach into the Canadian population (over age 13) of at least 64%.
In Canada and for North America, this suggests virtually any geographic or demographic, and many behavioural segments you target in business, will have a large enough result so you can reasonably plan ahead of asking investors for their money:
- At Facebook’s suggested CPC bids, how much will it cost to build your page to 1,000,000 fans?
- Over how long of a period of time, based on investor’s budgets?
This is not to give anyone the impression that Facebook advertising is the only place those funds could be allocated to help build your audience or business, just that it’s a really sexy and compelling bit of social proof for your investors to consider.
Having accessed the knowledge that’s available to you free, also demonstrates your personal dedication and value to the business, by giving your potential investors tangible numbers and even potentially proof (test campaigns running), that your business proposal is a GOOD RISK.
If your business is already launched and you haven’t yet done this research, you should. You’ll learn a lot and the more knowledge you have, the more power and options you’ll have to deal with whatever comes up.
