Facebook audience insights is a powerful tool that marketers and business owners have relied on for years to better understand their target audiences on Facebook. It provides detailed demographic data, interests, behaviors and more about the people engaging with your Facebook page and ads. This enables you to tailor your content and ad campaigns to resonate better with your ideal customers.
In recent years though, Facebook has restricted access to some of this audience data due to privacy concerns. So can you still use Facebook audience insights in 2023 and what data is available? Here I’ll explain what audience insights is, the data it provides, the recent changes by Facebook and how you can still leverage insights to improve your Facebook marketing and content strategy.
What is Facebook Audience Insights?
Facebook Audience Insights is a free analytics tool accessible through the Facebook for Business section of your Facebook page. It gives you aggregate insights into the demographics, interests, behaviors and more of the people interacting with your page and ads.
Some of the key data points it provides includes:
- Demographics – Age, gender, relationship status, education level, job titles and more
- Location – Countries, cities, languages spoken
- Interests – Pages liked, groups joined and more to showcase interests and hobbies
- Behaviors – Device usage, when they are online, purchase behaviors and intent
- Page followers and ad engagement – Follower growth over time, posts with high engagement, ad results
This information enables you to create buyer personas of your ideal customers. It also helps shape your content strategy. You can tailor your Facebook posts, ads, videos and other content to the interests, demographics and behaviors of your key target audience.
Recent Changes to Data Access
In 2018, Facebook restricted access to some of the audience insights data due to privacy concerns around Cambridge Analytica improperly accessing user information. Here are some of the key changes:
- Less demographic data – Can no longer see the breakdowns of education level, employers and job titles
- Less interest data – Have to rely more on basic interests and public page likes now
- Less customizable – Cannot segment and filter audiences to analyze subgroups as readily
Facebook has understandably clamped down on privacy concerns. However, many marketers and business owners relied heavily on the rich audience insights data to optimize their Facebook marketing success.
What Facebook Audience Data Can You Still See?
While the depth of insights has been reduced, there is still helpful audience data available to guide your Facebook efforts. Here are some of the key reports and metrics you can still access:
Overview Report
This provides a snapshot of engagement with your Facebook page over the last week. It includes metrics like:
- Total page likes
- New page likes
- Reach of posts
- Post engagements
- Engagement rate
Monitoring this week-by-week helps you diagnose when your growth and engagement levels are changing so you can dig into why.
Followers
You can analyze the people who like and follow your Facebook page by location, gender, age and language. This helps ensure your content resonates with this audience.
Likes
See the total likes on your page over time. This helps diagnose when you may be getting an influx of new followers so you can capitalize on it.
Reach
View how many people you are reaching daily or weekly with your page posts. Aim to grow this over time by optimizing content.
Engagement
Engagement metrics like reactions, comments, shares, post clicks and more indicate how engaging your content is. Monitor this to diagnose when certain post types or topics resonate better.
Audience Retention
See the % of followers who engaged with your page content over the last week or 28 days. Rising retention levels mean your content is resonating better with followers.
Demographics
You can still view aggregated breakdowns of your audience by age, gender, location, language and interests:
| Age | 18-24 | 25% |
| 25-34 | 30% | |
| 35-44 | 15% | |
| 45-54 | 20% | |
| 55-64 | 10% |
Tailor content topics and visuals to align with dominant demographics. Include pop culture references and slang terms they use.
Interests
You can see top interest categories of your audience like small business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing, etc. Create content around these.
Facebook Ad Reporting
When running Facebook ads, you can still get detailed audience insights data to optimize ongoing campaigns or future ones. Metrics include:
- Demographics
- Locations
- Interests and behaviors
- Device usage
- Peak online hours
- Day of week or time of day performance
- Click-through rates
- Landing page engagement
- Conversion rates
Many of these insights are only available when running active ad campaigns. You can then tailor ads, placements, creatives, landing pages and calls-to-action that resonate with your target audience.
How to Leverage Facebook Audience Insights
While the depth of demographic and interests data has been reduced, you can still leverage Facebook audience insights reports to improve your organic and paid Facebook marketing results.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Use location, age, gender, interests and Page like data to build detailed buyer personas and identify your prime target audience on Facebook.
2. Inform Your Content Strategy
Craft content around interests, pain points and demographic preferences of your audience. Include references and slang used by your ideal age groups.
3. Optimize Ad Campaigns
Use the ad reporting insights to create more relevant ad creative and text. Target placements and devices used more heavily by your audience. Show ads at times they are most active on Facebook.
4. Measure What Resonates
Diagnose what content types, topics and formats perform best by analyzing engagement, reach and audience retention data.
5. Spot Trends and Changes
Monitor audience size, growth, retention and engagement over time. This helps you identify what is working so you can do more of it. Falling metrics indicate when you may need to switch up your approach.
Conclusion
While Facebook has tightened up on privacy and restricted access to some detailed audience data, you can still leverage insights to optimize your Facebook marketing. Use the follower demographics, interests, behaviors and Facebook ad data to better understand your audience.
Then create tailored content and ad campaigns designed to resonate with their preferences. Continue monitoring the audience, engagement and ad metrics to diagnose what content and strategies perform best.
Facebook audience insights remain a valuable resource to boost your Facebook marketing success. Use the data available to ensure your approach aligns with your audience and what they respond to best.