People put a lot of information on Facebook. Everything from a their relationship status, to where they work and what their specific interests are in music, food, and more.

Now to the average user, they are filling this information out to complete their profiles. However, what they are really doing is giving the information that fuels Facebook’s money machine. Advertising.

All the information that you fill out on Facebook is used by advertisers to target you with their ads. It is actually a brilliant business model when you think about it. BIllions of people voluntarily telling you exactly what they are interested in and important information about their lives. Why wouldn’t you use it?

However, Facebook ads don’t stop just at the things you fill out to make your profile. Any time you post a status, image, or video, Facebook logs that information and attempts to make assumptions about you.

As a small business, all this data is at your fingertips. By using Facebook targeting, you can use this information to target people that you think are most likely to buy your product or service. Some of the criteria you can target on are pretty cool… and some are actually kinda creepy…

Here are the 5 most surprising ways you can target people using Facebook ads:

1. Income – I bet you don’t remember entering your household income into your profile do you? Facebook has a way to estimate how much money you make based on your posts and interests. Is it 100% accurate? No, but it is crazy close and can be helpful if a certain income level is in your target market.

2. Stuff your friends are doing – Have friends that recently got engaged? Got married? Had a baby? Facebook knows that these important life events mean that you will likely be looking for gifts in the near future. By being able to target people based on their friends life events, it opens the door to some clever marketing ideas.

3. Your house – Add this one to the slightly creepy column. Facebook advertisers can target people by the value of their homes, what type of home it is (condo, apartment, duplex, etc.), and what type of people are in the home (family, roommates, etc.). Just another example of how Facebook knows you better then you thought they did.

4. Pretty much anything anyone would be interested in – Want to find people who are interested in rap music, financial services, and the Green Bay Packers? It can easily be done using Facebook advertising. And it does not end there, you can get so specific, you can target people on things like…..

5. Eggs – Do you like eggs? If yes then you fit into a group of people 62 million strong. How incredible is it that you can literally target someone based on whether or not they like eggs?

Now are eggs in themselves something you want to target on? Probably not, but you might want to target people who eat beef, or like orange juice, or maybe someone who is vegan. There are so many incredible way to target using Facebook advertising. The users of Facebook openly give out information about themselves and what they are interested in, leaving behind an in depth database that your business can use to its advantage.

I would like to add that while yes, some people don’t like that Facebook uses their information for advertisers, just remember, we ALL signed up for it when we agreed to their terms and conditions. What? You didn’t think Facebook was actually “free” did you? 🙂