New Facebook Ad Tools Help Businesses With Global Marketing

Facebook has added a feature within their Lookalike Audiences tool that helps businesses reach target customers in new countries who are similar to their existing ones. With the tool, a business can upload a list of leads or their current customers and Facebook will find potential similar leads. Prior to today, this was not available cross-country.

With the Lookalike Audiences tool, marketers can find potential customers to target their Facebook ads, now to many countries, based on:

• People who like your Page
• Custom Audiences derived from email or phone numbers
• Custom Audiences created from website or app data
• Similar location
• Age
• Gender
• Interests

Facebook sees this as primarily a mobile advertising opportunity, where the majority of its ad revenue now comes from. According to an August 2016 eMarketer report, by 2018 there will be an estimated 2.3 billion people worldwide accessing the Internet via mobile devices. Facebook is one of the few platforms on earth that can market to almost all of these people, excluding Communist China. Although, Mark Zuckerberg is not giving up on China, having started his personal quest to learn Mandarin Chinese in 2010.

“On mobile, and on Facebook, people engage with the things that matter to them, even in other countries,” posts Facebook. “More than 1 billion people on Facebook are connected to at least one business in a foreign country, and 1.57 billion people visit Facebook monthly on mobile. In the US, 60% of people on Facebook are connected to a business in a foreign country.”

Facebook has also added extended location targeting capabilities, where advertisers can expand their website conversion or mobile app install targeting objectives to a worldwide region or trade zone. Facebook says it will “optimize delivery to the countries with the greatest return.”

They have added training tools as well to help businesses get started with global marketing including webinars and a handbook.