Targeting on Facebook: Make Sure the Right People See Your Ads

In previous blogs we’ve talked about why Facebook Ad targeting is important for your Montessori school—reasons like getting your ads in front of your intended viewers, increasing click-through rates, finding ways to reach new audience segments, and so on.

Now that you have a pretty good handle on the “why,” let’s talk about the “how.” In other words, we want to share a few quick tips about how to get it right.

So, let’s get started!

From your Facebook Business Manager account, go to Ad Set from the Ads Manager dashboard. Here is where you will start to develop your targeting strategy for your Montessori school by first defining your audience.

(Don’t have a Facebook Business Manager account? You’ll find quick tips on setting one up in this blog.)

When creating your audience in Facebook, the idea is to think about the families you want to target in very tangible terms.

 How do you do that? Start with key pieces of information such as:

• Where do your current students and their families live?
• What areas (zip codes) would you like to break into?
• What demographic information do your current families have in common? (e.g., family size, age of children, income)

Next, consider what psychographic information your existing families share. This means their hobbies, activities, values, religion, lifestyle (vacation spots, dining choices), and general interests.

Finally, think about the families you would like to have at your school and ask yourself the same questions.

All of this information is extremely useful when developing your targeting strategy because it helps to lay the groundwork for reaching just the right people.

From there, you can get even more specific with Detailed Targeting.

The Detailed Targeting feature lets you narrow your audience even further to make sure Facebook is showing your Montessori ads to the right people—but the trick is making sure you pay close attention to the language you use.

Why is the right language so important? Because if you aren’t careful, you could end up targeting everyone in your state!

Let’s take a look at the two examples below and we’ll explain what we mean.

The image above is an example of incorrect targeting. Can you guess why?

It’s because this ad set would be shown to every parent of preschool age children OR to anybody interested in Montessori education OR to anyone interested in outdoor recreation.

Like we said, that pretty much covers every person in your state—and it’s obviously not at all what you want to do.

Now let’s look at an example of correct targeting:

This ad set would be shown to people who are parents of preschool-aged children AND who are interested in Montessori education OR outdoor recreation.

Much better, right?

Doing it the correct way limits the size of your audience significantly and makes sure only applicable users see your ads. (This is called flex targeting, by the way, and you can read about more about it here.)

Using the AND/OR options in the Detailed Targeting section, you can even fine-tune your audience list to exclude the people you don’t want to target. This can be bit trickier but worth the effort because you can remove people from your list who likely would not be interested in your ads.

And there you have it! Just be sure to pay attention to your wording when creating your audience lists so you know you’re including (or excluding) the right people.

Feel like you need a little extra guidance?

 As beneficial as Facebook targeting is, it can be tricky to get the hang of it at first. Nido Marketing can help! Become a member today and gain access to even more Montessori-focused marketing tips, tools and resources—including a free course on Facebook Ads for our First Plane members.

The experts at Nido Marketing can help you make sure your ads are seen by more potential families at exactly the moment they are searching for you.

And pretty soon those enrollment numbers will start to multiply!