This document provides guidance on using Facebook Audience Insights to develop buyer personas. It recommends creating a custom audience based on customer data, then analyzing the insights to understand demographics, interests, values and psychographics. Trait and brand affinities are identified by analyzing which attributes customers associate with pages they like. This information is synthesized into narrative personas describing ideal customers, including an example persona called "The Scoundrel." The key benefits highlighted are developing personas that are more accurate, meaningful and useful for marketing efforts compared to traditional brainstorming methods.

1. Using Facebook Audience Insights
to build buyer/customer personas
your creative team can actually use

2. First, you have to ask why you’re going to spend time
developing personas in the first place.
Most of the time the answer to this question is:
To better understand our customers (or our ideal target
customer) so we can focus our creative and marketing
efforts on reaching that person.

3. So you think about who they are, what they look like, what a
day in this person’s life might be like.
You might even talk to some customers.
And then you write your persona. Maybe you give them a
nice picture, too.

4. Do your personas look like this?
Pamela is 35-years old and has worked in procurement
and logistics for 15 years, 8 of those as a director in a
small manufacturing company.
She always feels rushed and works hard to balance the
needs of her job with the demands of her online Master’s
degree course and her family.
She has been married to Mark for 13 years and has 2 boys
aged 9 and 7 who are always have some after-school
activity going on. In the small amount of spare time she
has, she watches YouTube videos about cooking.
For vacations, she tries to get away to the beach with her
family in the summer, and takes a food-centric long
weekend to a big city with fancy restaurants with her
friends from college in the spring.
Procurement Pamela

5. The bad news is that’s a really awful persona, but you’re not
alone in making them that way.
The good news is you can make personas that are better,
more meaningful, more useful and more effective.
But it’s gonna take more time. A lot more time.

6. Facebook Audience Insights

7. I know you’ve heard of Facebook.
But have you heard about Facebook Audience Insights?
It allows you to create custom audiences based on data you provide.
Primarily this tool is used for ad targeting, but we can use its functions to really
understand who your audience is and learn how to connect with them.

8. The first thing we need to do is create a custom audience.

9. Custom audiences can be created using data from:
• A spreadsheet file containing specific fields
• Customer activities on your web site
• Actions customers take in your app
• Engagement with your Facebook page

10. Since we’re uploading customer information from a
CRM export, choose Customer File…
…and then Choose a file or copy and paste data

11. Upload (or drag and drop)
your customer data file,
name it, agree to the
Facebook Custom
Audiences Terms and click
Next.

12. Next, make sure each field is mapped
to the correct data type, and choose
whether you want to include it in
Facebook’s matching algorithm.
This determines which fields
Facebook will try to match in its
userbase, anonymize and return the
results to you.
In this case we’re using 7 of the 15
possible fields.
Actual customer
data here.
Actual customer
data here.
Actual customer
data here.
Actual customer
data here.
Actual customer
data here.

13. And now we wait…
…and wait and wait and wait. Seriously it can take a few hours for all that lovely data to
get matched. But it’s worth it.

14. When the file is ready, you’ll see how many records were matched.

15. Now the fun part!

16. You can get insights for any audience – from :
• everyone on Facebook
• people connected to your page
• the custom audience you just created
Since we’re building a persona from your
customer data in a Custom Audience,
select that option.

17. In the Custom Audience box, select
the audience you just created.

18. If you’re only interested in female
millennial customers in Ohio, you
can filter your insights to help you
create personas based only on
the gender, age and location
demographics that reflect those
characteristics.

19. It may be necessary to create multiple personas for your
audience. You may want to segment by gender, age,
location, job type or other demographics.
But better yet, segment by the problem you solve for them.
How many personas should you develop?
As many as you need, but as few as you can afford based
on your goals.

20. But first!
Let’s take a minute to see what
kinds of data Facebook Insights
can show us.

21. Now you can see the age and
gender demographics of your
audience, along with how Facebook
characterizes their lifestyle.
The dark blue bar is your audience, the light blue/gray is all Facebook users.

22. Want to know what kinds of
jobs they hold, if they’re
married and how educated
they are?
Remember, you can compare
your audience to Facebook
as a whole.

23. These reports tell you which Facebook pages your audience likes…

24. …and this one tells you the cities and countries your audience calls
home, and the languages they speak.

25. If you want to see how your audience uses Facebook, and the devices they use,
this is where you’ll find it.

26. You can also see how affluent your audience is, and whether they rent or own their
home – and for homeowners you can find their home value.
As you can see here,
Facebook matched 92% of
the audience to find
household income data, but
the household size section
is empty.
If Facebook can’t match
enough individual data
points in a category to
anonymize the data, it won’t
be able to provide insights
for that category.

27. View how your audience spends its money…

28. …along with how their spending habits compare to the rest of Facebook.
Notice that this is based on a small matched sample of the audience, which reduces
how confident you can be that it’s a representative sample of your group as a whole.

29. These are the kinds of products your audience purchases.

30. And these are the kinds of cars they like.

31. Now you know what’s in Facebook Insights,
how do you turn your audience data into
personas you can write to or work with?
We have to take a quick diversion through…

32. The psychology of what and why we like

33. Physiological
Safety
Love/Belonging
Esteem
Self-actualization
Self-transcendence
In 1943, Abraham Maslow hypothesized that until fundamental needs are met, higher
needs cannot be met. For example, if your physiological needs for food and shelter
aren’t met, you probably don’t feel very safe.
Maslow stacked these needs into a hierarchy of five categories, and added a sixth,
self-transcendence, later.

34. Humans are motivated to move up through the stages of this hierarchy.
When you’re thinking about your personas, consider what it is about
each brand, trait and value, that contributes to these basic needs for
physiological health, safety of self, love and belonging to a family, a
person or a tribe, and recognition from peers and people your persona
looks up to.

35. Facebook users like brand pages because they identify with the brand in
some way.
Brand pages provide an important sense of belonging to a larger group,
and an implied approval of who we are. Individually, a single liked brand
may not tell us very much, but if we look for common qualities among
the pages a person likes, we can gain valuable insights from where the
data clusters emerge.
People like things they see as positive, that they want to feel they belong
to and with, so even if we see a brand as very negative, we need to look
for the positive qualities our audience sees.
How do you think people on the left and right of the political spectrum
might view Donald Trump?

36. • Bigot
• Misogynist
• Buffoon
• Anti-intellectual
• Narcissist
• Incompetent
• Patriot
• Businessman
• Straight-talker
• Successful
• Populist
• Decisive
It’s unlikely that someone would follow the president’s Facebook page
because they think he’s a bigot. It’s much more likely that they see the
president as straight-talker.
It’s all a matter of perspective, and if you’re going to get your personas
right, you need to see things through the eyes of your audience.
Which description is correct?
It doesn’t matter. You’re not looking for the truth, you’re looking for
perspective. Specifically, the perspective of your target audience.

37. • How do people who like this
page see themselves?
• How does this brand
positively contribute to this
consumer’s sense of self?
• Do multiple brands support
the same kinds of traits?
• What do those traits and
values tell us about the
consumer?
It all starts with Page Likes.

38. I value [brand] because [value statement]:
• It makes me feel _________
• It reminds me of _________
• They are ________
• It is ________
• It helps me ________
• Makes me think about __________
The adjectives you might use to answer
these questions could be:
• Cool
• Funny
• Intellectual
• Sporty
• Family
• …more on the next page.
Start with some simple traits that complete this statement:
For example: I like Entourage because it reminds me of my friends
the characters are cool
it is funny
Remember, this isn’t supposed to be what you think, it’s just the positive feelings a person
who likes this show might associate with it.

39. Courageous
Courteous
Creative
Cultured
Curious
Determined
Dynamic
Educated
Elegant
Emotional
Free-thinking
Friendly
Frugal
Fun-loving
Generous
Gentle
Genuine
Glamorous
Gracious
Hardworking
Healthy
Helpful
High-minded
High-spirited
Honest
Humble
Humorous
Idealistic
Imaginative
Independent
Individualistic
Innovative
Intelligent
Intuitive
Kind
Legacy
Leader
Logical
Loyal
Masculine
Maternal
Mellow
Modern
Mystical
Old-fashioned
Optimistic
Orderly
Organized
Outspoken
Passionate
Paternalistic
Patriotic
Peaceful
Perceptive
Playful
Practical
Purposeful
Questioning
Relaxed
Romantic
Rustic Sensitive
Sentimental
Serious
Sexy
Simple
Skeptical
Skillful
Sophisticated
Sporting
Strong
Stylish
Sweet
Tasteful
Tough
Vivacious
Well-read
Witty
There are a lot of words you could use. Here are 78 more.

40. Page/Brand Cool Intellectual Informed Capable Funny Aspirations Friends
Barack Obama Y Y Y Y
New York Times Y Y
Tasty Y Y Y
Adweek Y Y Y
Entourage Y Y Y Y
Mashable Y Y Y
Advertising Age Y Y Y Y
Total Brand 4 4 5 2 2 3 3
From this list we can say that this particular consumer likes
brands that evoke a sense of “cool,” that make him/her feel
“informed” and “intellectual.”
This exercise will help you identify where your audience has trait affinity and brand
affinity. Use as many brands as you feel are relevant to build picture of the feelings this
consumer likes to have stirred in him/her. Facebook will show you up to 100 pages your
audience likes, so it can be a time consuming process. But it’s worth doing.

41. Trait affinity: These are the values your audience identifies
with, seeks out and wants others to see in them. In the
table on the previous page “informed,” “intellectual” and
“cool” had the greatest trait affinity.
Brand affinity: These are the brands your audience
admires, enjoys, or aspires to. In the table, “Barack
Obama,” “Entourage” and “Advertising Age” had the most
brand affinity.

42. When you map the feelings and traits that resonate with
your audience, you can identify the characteristics they
most admire and identify with.
You can also identify the brands and people that inspire the
most affinity.
And now we need to ask: why does this person like this
page? What benefit does this brand bring to their life? Are
there groups or patterns to what this person likes, and has
an affinity for.

43. So who is this person?
He likes (has strong brand affinity for):
• Entourage – HBO
• ESPN
• Mad Men - AMC
• The Points Guy – Travel points website
• Sports Center – ESPN
• Game of Thrones – HBO
And a few other things that, if we’re being honest, are aimed at a male audience and are
male-centric, if not outright misogynistic.
Data for this persona was filtered to show only male audience members.
So we can safely say this persona is male.

44. HBO and ESPN are premium cable channels, so he likely earns
enough money to pay for those higher-end cable packages. Based
on the content of the HBO shows he likes, he’s just fine with TV that
pushes boundaries.
He likes sports, and that probably speaks to a competitive streak –
because just like sports, Entourage, Mad Men and Game of
Thrones are about being the alpha male.
He travels enough to think about travel points, so he probably
travels a lot for leisure or, more likely, work.
We’re already starting to get an idea of who he is. In fact, you might
be able to make some other inferences just from this data.

45. Based on his other page likes, he looks up to…
…stylish, risk-taking alpha males who aren’t afraid to break
the rules to get results.

46. …and identifies with brands like these…

47. How do we bring all this data together in a narrative so
marketing and creative departments can use them?

48. Your first persona – The Scoundrel.
The Scoundrel likes his products and brands to be assertive, masculine and
unpretentious. He looks up to alpha-male type protagonists, especially those who take
risks and beat the odds.
He enjoys beer as an opportunity to re-connect with friends, and probably prefers
domestic out of the house, where drinking with their buddies is about how much they can
drink; and premium imports and craft brews at home, where exclusivity and good taste are
the qualities he wants to project. As the Scoundrel gets older and his earning potential
increases, his tastes get more expensive. Budweiser is replaced by bourbons; Men’s
Wearhouse makes way for tailored suits and shirts.
While family is important to the him, don’t expect emotional heart-to-hearts with friends. At
the gym, physical exercise is as much about cutting an imposing figure and being
competitive as it is about being healthy.
He sees his vices as acceptable when they’re shared with role models. Day drinking is
okay when Don Draper does it, being imposing is okay because James Bond and Jack
Bauer do it, and risks are acceptable because it’s better to die a heroic death like Leonidis
in 300. Rules are for other people; he feels more like Han Solo than Luke Skywalker, and
is always looking for an opportunity to get an edge over the competition.

49. How can we reach the Scoundrel?
Use messaging that appeals to their competitive nature,
adventure and risk-taking, his role models, friends, alcohol
and sports.
Assertive Winning Competitive
Powerful Influential Successful
Strong Hero Impressive
Active Tough Commanding
Beat the odds Composed Ambitious
Affinity/trigger words to use:

50. As you proceed to make connections between traits and
brands, you’ll discover:
• How does this person consume information?
• What information does he consume?
• What values are important to him?
• What kind of image does he want to project?
• What are his motivations?
• What discourages him?

51. By building your personas in this way you’ll have a picture
of who your audience really is that’s broader, deeper and
more accurate than brainstorming in a conference room.