Advertising on social media today is both highly targeted and not at all targeted to the correct audiences. While we have all seen the strange T-shirts with our birthday month and a random item we like, these are leaning on the creepy and unnecessary side of over-marketing. And I am not at all sure how and why this is a thing.

In an NPR podcast episode called “Does Facebook Really Work? People Question The Effectiveness of Ads,” Jasmine Garsd goes over how Facebook sells their ads: by suggesting that they can reach the most targeted audiences (by area, socio-economic scale, schooling, or any other type of information we enter on our “About” page).

What Garsd, and many others, have found is that Facebook does not explicitly follow the target audience that Ads users ask for. And for small local business, this makes their ads closer to useless and a potential waste of money.

She also shares research from Small Business Trends that found that roughly 60% of small businesses find Facebook Ads to be ineffective, specifically in reaching the target audience they check the boxes for. When dealing with a small business, dealing ads locally is extremely key in making a profitable business.

It is crucial for small businesses, when trying to expand, to reach the correct audience. That is why I would suggest to not solely use Facebook Ads to market one’s self, but also to use the platform as a community builder with its many exsiting pages and groups.

It is important to be mindful of what we put out onto the internet, namely our social media pages and posts, it greatly influences the attention we get from advertisers, and can potentially help small businesses reach their correct audience.

Entering accurate demographics onto Facebook such as name, location, age and/or birthdate, education, vocation, can aid small business in extending themselves to the right places. Making these items accurate and reliable only adds to how we can be targeted as consumers correctly.

Key takeaway: Facebook Ads does not follow its target audience algorithm to a ‘T’ and for this reason, it is not effective for small businesses to use alone and not with other marketing strategies.