In marketing, it’s always important to know your audience, and to be aware of the demographics you’re trying to reach. Ultimately, the goal for your dealership is to sell cars, which means you want to market to people who actually want to purchase an automobile, and preferably who live in your area. Marketing to someone who doesn’t drive, or to someone who lives halfway across the world, just doesn’t make much sense.

So when it comes to Facebook Ads, there’s something very important that you should do well before you actually build your first ad campaign. Specifically, you should create buyer personas, which are essentially detailed profiles that help you get a sense of who you’re marketing to.

Basic Demographics for Your Buyer Personas

First things first: Your buyer persona can and should include some foundational demographics such as age, sex, and geography. This information will come in handy as you try to narrow down the targeting of your Facebook ads.

A little bit less straightforward, but just as essential: Think through some of the reasons why your buyers want to get a new car, and why they might choose your dealership, in particular. Are they looking for prestige? For affordability? For a family-friendly atmosphere? For a special kind of vehicle they can’t find anywhere else? What are their values? What are their motivators? What are their pain points? What problems are they trying to solve, and how might your dealership be the solution?

All of this has its place within a buyer persona.

Tips for Creating a Buyer Persona

Now, a good buyer persona may involve a little speculation and guesswork—it may not be possible to truly know exactly why your buyers make their purchasing decisions, for example—but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some research to help inform your hypotheses. For example, you can look through your contact database to spot trends—maybe most of your customers come from a particular town, or a particular zip code. Maybe you tend to sell to more women than men. Also check with your sales team for any trends they may have spotted.

You might even take the step of conducting some interviews—calling past customers, asking for a few minutes of their time, and figuring out some of their motivators, likes, and dislikes from the time they spent at your dealership.

Once you’ve done some research, you’re ready to put together a buyer persona—which is basically a profile of your average customer. Your persona should include both demographic basics and also some of the psychological/behavioral factors we’d addressed here. Generally, the more detail the better.

Learn More About Buyer Personas

Buyer personas can help you be truly precise in your Facebook Ads targeting, which in turn helps you get the best results. To learn more about how to make good buyer personas, we encourage you to check out our book, The Ultimate Dealer Guide to Facebook Ads. Grab a copy today, and become a true Facebook marketing pro!