Using Facebook to Explore Outreach Demographics

This a FREE way to do some demographic sampling of the community in which your ministry is located. This can be helpful for online, social media and traditional marketing purposes. It may also help give you some insight about the type and topic of services and events in which your local community may have an interest.

Highlights:
- A free and easy way to take an overview scan of your local area demographics.
- A quick test of the local demand for certain spiritual activity interests in your area. 
- An introduction to Facebook demographics and social media outreach.

Clive deLaporte Ministries can help you set up an effective and affordable social media strategy over a number of social media platforms, set up and train a volunteer or team, to manage your social media outreach. We can also help you develop and implement individual social media campaigns when needed. For more details: info@cdlministries.com

Facebook Ads Manager
This will require that you have a dedicated Facebook page for your ministry and are willing to invest a little time to explore this helpful online tool. In the top right corner you will see a downward pointing arrow, click the arrow and then on the ‘Create Ad’ option. This will produce a list of ad options. For this illustration and for the purpose of simply conducting a demographic scan of your local area, I suggest clicking the ‘Promote Your Page’ option and then select the Facebook page, from the list, to be used for the exercise.

Promote Your Page
Again, choosing a Facebook page to be promoted is simply for this exercise. Name your campaign for future reference. Now click the 'Set Audience and Budget’ button.

Set Audience and Audience Definition
On the left side of the page you will see the following categories: Location; Age; Gender; Languages; Detailed Targeting; Connections. On the right side of the page you will see an ‘Audience Definition’ indicator. Make regular reference to the details of the indicator. Experiment with the following input categories while keeping an eye on the 'Audience Definition' indicator and the 'Potential Reach’ number:

Locations:
Select the ‘People who live in this area’ option.
You have options to your location. I suggest the name of your area; type it in and select a 25 mile radius.

Age:
Set the age parameters desired. Experiment. Try determine the Audience Definition for various age groups. Especially try and determine how many millennials Facebook has as users in your defined location.

Gender:
Again this is an opportunity to experiment with the parameters to see the demographics of Facebook users in your area. For this exercise select the ‘All’ option.

Langauge:
Again this is an opportunity to experiment with the parameters to see the demographics of your area. Leave this blank unless the audience you are targeting uses a language that is not common to the location you have chosen above.

Audience Definition Indicator
Now look over at the indicator. In these so far broadly defined terms, this is the number of Facebook users within a 25 mile radius of your defined location, in your area. Now move on to more detailed targeting.

Detailed Targeting
First complete the requirement to 'INCLUDE people who match at least ONE of the following’. Use the BROWSE button to see the defined Facebook categories of: Demographics; Interests; Behaviors and More. You can also enter your own defined demographics in the box provided. See the matching suggestions provided by Facebook and look at the registered Facebook users number associated with that demographic. These are indicating all Facebook users that have indicated that topic as an interest. This is helpful as it lets you see which topics and interest aligned with you ministry are indicated as the most popular. For the purpose of this exercise lets select the current popular activity of ‘Meditation’ as our ONE identifying demographic. Enter 'meditation' in the Detailed Targeting text box.

Narrow Audience
Now you are able to narrow the targeting. Below the first 'Detailed Targeting' box you will see a “Narrow Audience’ link. Click that link. Once again you can use the BROWSE with defined Facebook categories or enter your own in the text box provided. For the purpose of this exercise lets enter the interest of 'Spirituality'. Again take a look at the Potential Reach number under the Audience Potential indicator.

Connections
Use Facebook Pages. Exclude Facebook users who already like your Facebook page. Specify the Facebook page that you want excluded.

Save This Audience
Save this defined outreach group. Use a reference that lets you know the 'what' and 'when' of the campaign for which you may use it. You are able to retrieve this saved group and make amendments at any time.

Audience Potential Indicator
The goal here is to accurately locate and identify the interests of the ideal target outreach group for your ministry. Try and keep the Audience Potential indicator as far as possible in the middle between the broad and specific zones on the margins of the indicator, while the Potential Reach number as high as possible. Experiment.

Interests
Take some time to research the highest and best possible Audience Potential indicator results using various words, interests, activities, people that are reflect your ministry with integrity and connect with the most amount of Facebook users in your demographic location and target group. The words, interests and activities you are testing become key indicators for use in your postings and ads on social media.

Social Media Outreach and Marketing
The Facebook Ads Manager page is a helpful, affordable and quick way to test your local community demographics; its also a helpful way to test and identify key words for social media outreach and marketing in general. Once you have established the target demographics as above, then use the ‘Detailed Marketing’ and the ‘Potential Reach’ number in the Audience Definition indicator to test the number the Facebook users in your area show a strong Potential Reach number for the interests of meditation and spirituality. This is a helpful indicator of services, events and words that can be posted in your marketing and social media campaigns. For example, based on this example exercise and the strong interest in meditation and spirituality, your ministry could offer a meditation class that is promoted to improve spirituality and spiritual growth. You could promote that event once monthly via a Facebook ad designed to reach this specific demographic group and use these key interest identifiers in the text of the postings.

Taking it to the next level
Test the combination of ‘Detailed Marketing’ interests and ‘Narrow Audience’ interests to find an ideal match of interests for social marketing and outreach events and campaigns. For example: a test in my area indicates that there are 11,000 Facebook users indicating that meditation and spirituality are an interest to them. As a social media outreach campaign I would consider, to be included on the ministry's weekly calendar, a community class on meditation and spirituality. I would create a Facebook event to which I could link a Facebook ad inviting the exact local community demographics tested in this exercise, to attend. The estimated cost of a 1 week 

Example of a Campaign Schedule and Budget
Taking the above exercise example further. Marketing this event to the local target market demographic indicated in the exercise will require a total budget of $58.75. The Facebook ad would run for 5 days from a Wednesday 8:00 AM to a Sunday 6:00 PM, delivered to the Facebook newsfeed's of an estimated 920-2400 Facebook users within the defined target group, each day. Included in the Facebook ad will be links to your website for general online outreach and to the Meditation & Spirituality Facebook event page for more event info and sign up.

Summary and Conclusion
An effective online presence, identity and brand, together with an effective social media outreach strategy is essential in this day and age, essential to help increasing attendance to you ministry's services and events. The Facebook Ads Manager Demographic and Audience Definition indicators can help take the guess work out of the exercise and deliver effective and affordable results. Try this exercise for yourself. Experiment. You may be positively surprised how many Facebook users in your area are aligned in their interests with your ministry's vision, values and mission, and would be interested in knowing about your services and events, and motivated to attend.

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I am available to help you and your ministry with your online identity, branding and social media outreach. For more info about this or any other the Thriving Ministry Services contact me directly at: info@cdlministries.com

Rev. Clive deLaporte, LUM
​Clive deLaporte Ministries
info@cdlministries.com  I  615.596.8917​
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