Move Over, Mom. We’re Changing the Game With Audience Insights.

You post something on Facebook, and who can you count on to engage with your post within mere seconds? Your mom. Followed closely by your Aunt Sally and then maybe your mom’s best friend, Susan.

As we’ve discussed in a previous blog post, Facebook works off an algorithm when determining the quality of engagement to boost traction for organic posts. The more someone engages with your brand (or person, for that matter), the more content they’ll see. Your brand doesn’t have to spend a penny marketing if those people are regularly engaging with your content because, well, they’ll see it for free, right? So, we got to thinking about our own clients, and wondered who’s seeing their content organically if there’s a “typical” person who’s engaging with it?

If you know anything about us, you know we love data. So, we pulled some. The average age for our clients’ Facebook page fans runs anywhere from 35 to 50 years old with the average age being 44.6 years old. For those same pages, the average ages for our engaged page fans range from 38.5 to 53 years old with the average age being 46.5 years old. And the vast majority of both page fans and page engagers are women. Our clients consist of several different industries, and we saw the same trends across the board, so we knew we were onto something.

FEMALE BABY BOOMERS AND GEN X ARE OWNING FACEBOOK PAGE LIKES AND ENGAGEMENT RIGHT NOW.

Because engagement influences organic impressions, it’s even more important to create an ad strategy with your target audience defined. To reach your audience members with demographics different than your mom (no matter how much you love her), it stands to reason your business can directly influence the people who see and react to your content simply by creating an intentional advertising plan.

One of our clients, who escaped the above statistics, is one where their defined audience is females 25-40. The marketing messaging, creative assets and ad targeting are all centered around this audience. Because of these targeted efforts, the post engagers on all of their content—paid and organic—is 33% women 25-34, and 25% women 35-44.

If you manage a Facebook page, take a look at your Audience Insights accessible through the Insights tab when you’re on the page. Select “People,” and take a few minutes to see who your fans are, who your followers are, the people you reach and your engaged audience. By taking this step, you can easily see if your page is reaching the intended audience.

Bottom line, if your Aunt Sally (no matter how much you love her too) isn’t your target audience for a specific campaign, you should stay away from only targeting your page fans and page engagers or relying on your organic reach to get your content in front of the right audience. Instead, be intentional and select your targeting to reach the age group or gender particular to your message. This step alone ensures your message will be received to kickstart your audience through the marketing funnel.