Crafting FB ads and showing them to just about everyone on Facebook is a big waste. That’s kind of like throwing a fishing net into the ocean with your eyes closed in the hopes you’d score. Utilizing radar equipment can help pinpoint their exact location. Special tools like this would save you lots of time and effort because its easier to find schools of fish this way. With Facebook ads, you can be just as efficient if you knew who you were trying to reach. Once you identify your ideal audience you can reach them by laser targeting various groups of people, and you do so by creating personas.
Don’t show ads to everyone on Facebook when you can reach people who are interested in your products or services. You can narrow your focus to a specific group who has a real interest in your brand. One way to identify who these people are and reach them on Facebook, is to create personas.
Creating a persona (or avatar) is building a fictionalized detailed representation of your ideal client. It’s like capturing a vivid picture of the customer you’re trying to reach. Gather all you need to know about your persona and use their information to find them on Facebook. So here we share how to identify your ideal audience. Below is a step by step example of a persona created through our research:
1. FIRST STEP
The first step is to give a name to your persona. Humanizing your persona with a name makes it easier for you to build content that addresses their interests, hobbies, needs, and problems. We’ll name our example persona, Dana.
Next, you’ll want to begin researching your information. You can either interview current or past clients, do a search with Google, or vet your client base and look for similarities. Although most marketers will only focus on basic demographics such as location, age and gender – you’ll want to dig deeper. Each question will reveal specific interests and behaviors that are important to identifying who your customers are.
2. GET THE BASICS
Your persona’s name: Dana
Age: 41
Gender: Female
Location: New York City suburb
Occupation/Job title: Dance studio instructor/owner
Interests: dance, music, health nutrition
Connections: The Lincoln Center, Fame Theatrical Productions
Education: Grad of The Juilliard School
Workplaces: Broadway Dance Center, Joyce Theater Production
Income: 75-95K
Relationship and Familial status: Married with 1 child aged 4.
3. NOW THE MEATY STUFF
What does a day in their life look like? Describe your persona’s typical day, the more detailed the better.
Long, she is a solo business owner and instructor handling everything her studio demands. Starts off morning by cleaning studio and locker room, moves on to catching up with her own admin work, returns phone calls and email inquiries. Hops on Facebook business page to respond to comments and post pics of student progress and achievements. Grabs a quick lunch on her way to making a deposit at the bank. Instructs 4 hour-long classes back to back. Does a quick yoga and meditating session by herself before closing up shop. Heads home to make a quick meal for her family. Does this 5 ½ times a week, month after month with no break.
What we learned from Dana: She is super busy, so when writing content we’ll want to focus on time savers to engage with her. She is a daily Facebook user, yoga and meditates, has a family with one young child.
What does your persona value the most?
Keeping her studio open to students who want to learn. Values time because she is spread thin. Loves spending time with her family.
What we learned from Dana: Values time loves family. We can incorporate balancing work and family life in our ads.
Describe their pains, challenges and frustrations.
Frustrated she’s not making strides with enrolling new students. Business is slow, people cancel or don’t show up. She doesn’t know how to bring in more clients.
What we learned from Dana: You can identify your ideal audience from learning what your persona’s pains and frustrations are. Here we find she could use how-to’s on marketing and advertising as an entrepreneur.
What are your persona’s biggest fears, what keeps them up at night?
Worried over keeping the lights on. Scared she will run herself down, get injured or fall ill. Terrified and feels vulnerable that she is only a one man show.
What we learned from Dana: She is not only concerned for her finances but also her overall health and well being. We can engage with Dana in our ads with specific pains.
What are their goals, wants, dreams or desires?
Does not want to worry about finances. Dreams of hiring instructors to take pressure off her. Would love to expand studio size to offer more classes. Wants to diversify and enroll more students. 
What we learned from Dana: Our persona’s goals in business offers a unique way in identifying our ideal audience. Dana wants to grow. We can build ads with headlines that tap her goals towards expanding her business.
What holds them back or is stopping them from achieving this?
Stuck in fear mode, never takes a risk, not sure where to start with marketing.
What we learned from Dana: We can create ads tapping on risks or pains associated with running her own business and give her information/resources she can use to start marketing her business more effectively.
What are their most common objections to your product or service?
Cost and is very minimally educated on social media marketing.
What we learned from Dana: Knowing what holds your ideal audience back is vital to your ads. In this example price overall else influences her decisions. Ads on Educating basic social media marketing would benefit her.
Where do they go for information?
Google, trusted peers, network of friends and family.
What we learned from Dana: She researches online and considers input from her peers and family.
What kind of publications do they like to read?
StageLight Magazine, The New Yorker
What we learned from Dana: Specific magazine publications we can use when targeting her persona.
What are their interests or hobbies?
Explores local museums, loves the theater, and watches family films on Sunday.
What we learned from Dana: Specific interests we can target from the arts and film industry.
Where does your ideal audience like to shop?
Online, Lululemon, Athleta
What we learned from Dana: Precise clothing brands we can use to target customers who have similar preferences.
What kind of car do they drive?
BMW
What we learned from Dana: She is a luxury car owner that we can use to reach other BMW owners just like her.
Great! Now that you’ve identified your persona, reaching your ideal audience will be that much clearer. Plan on using this information when writing content on your website and in your Facebook ads in order to engage with people just like the persona you created. Tailor and target your ads according to your persona’s interests and behaviors just like we’ve done here––towards busy business owners such as Dana.
