A passing statement I often hear is that “Blah demographic is no longer using Facebook and are on Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter or whatever the new social media kid is on the block”.
Every time I hear it, I imagine my eyes glaze over and a demon possesses me that unleashes a beast within that starts pointing with great vigour at my computer screen introducing Facebook Audience Insights, a free tool, that gives us volumes of data containing the Facebook behaviours of your potential audience, what pages they engage with and even drilling down to what devices they spend their time on.
I have an unhealthy obsession with analytics and I would quite happily sit in a cave or on a deserted island pouring over the data and click behaviours of different potential audiences.
Let’s say you have a new app, this app is for people who really like Bacon and Barbeques and it helps your audience to locate the nearest Steakhouse. You want to know if these meat loving carnivores click on ads and what other things they relate to:
Out of approximately 13 million active Facebook users in Australia, 2.5 – 3 million of them like Bacon & Steakhouses.
The selected audience of carnivores engage on Facebook higher than the average Facebook user in Ad Clicks and Organic Engagement.
Facebook gives you the ability to target people for app installation based on their device usage, which ensures less investment wastage in Facebook advertising.
All of the above data (not to mention relationship status, job positions, top pages liked and engaged with) helps marketers and Startup businesses put a picture together of a perfect client and test and measure the markets.
If you’ve ever attended a Startup Weekend, a Hackathon and now the workshops Perthcolator, run by Startup community leaders you will constantly hear from the mentors “Validate, validate, validate and then validate some more.” the more you can validate (or not validate) the quicker you can adapt your idea, pivot your business and moving your minimum viable product towards a relevant market, rather than throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks.
About Ming Johanson
Ming is the Social Nerd and Owner of OTOTGo a company that specialises in educating small to large enterprise in the use of Social Media and Digital Marketing Platforms. Ming has been voted multiple times as a Leader of Influence in the Perth community and is a regular contributor as the Social Media Expert on 6PR Tonight and holds a position on the branch executive committee of the Australian Computer Society of WA.