Digging into Dads on Facebook: Psychographic Targeting Hot House

Move over, moms — fathers are reportedly taking a greater role in family purchases, “specifically fathers 25–40,” according to a recent article on CNBC. We’ve previously exposed the myriad ways to target moms in Facebook. In this edition of aimClear’s Psychographic Targeting Hot House, Merry Morud, Creative Strategist, digs into dads.

Men + Demographics > Parent Targeting
Naturally, our first step in dad-targeting is to select Men as the target gender. Next, drop down to the More Demographics box and select Parents > All Parents.

Here, advertisers can specify targeting of all dads by age of the children.

Get Specific with Age and Interest Targeting
Choose the age range of the children that maps to your product/service; new and expecting dads who are early adopters of technology would be well paired with baby care gadgets.

On the other hand, dads of older kids with a passion for pigskin (plus a healthy income) are a prime target for game-day tickets.

For even more focus, layer on specific teams, players, even coaches targeting in Interests, but take note: Qualified segments work best with ad copy that reflects the specific interests. Start by working with general copy that performed best, then adapt the copy and get even more playful with specific teams and rivalries.

Map Mom-targeting to Dads
Facebook has made targeting moms super-easy with categories, but does this map to dads?

No. That doesn’t mean advertisers can’t craft these types of moms to dads. Just about any mom “type” can be mapped to dad-targeting by adding interest or behavior targeting.

We’ve only scratched the surface of targeting dads, which isn’t as simple as mom-targeting, but it’s not impossible given Facebook’s targeting abilities. The beauty of Facebook targeting is the ability to layer parameters on top of one another for tightly focused, qualified segments. Happy targeting!