Facebook Ads: Tips on Targeting Ethnicities on Facebook

The Facebook Ads Platform is an amazing tool for targeting, though some marketers may not quite fully understand its potential outside of one-off selections (male/female, or age), or by selecting brand names, or popular products in the interest bucket.

Segmenting target markets by ethnicity has been a traditional marketing tactic, one that may seem a bit taboo today. Nevertheless, Ebony magazine still predominantly targets African Americans, while the new Asian market in town may want to get the word out to their demographic first.

Facebook doesn’t give marketers the option to select a specific ethnicity when targeting Facebook Ads, but there are ways to find them. We may not uncover all of them here, but this post will provide marketers with a jumping off point for uncovering ethnicities on Facebook.

First, start by finding the people who proclaim their ethnic background with pride somewhere on their Facebook profile. To accomplish this, simply use traditional interest footprints for declaring ones ethnicity such as “am [ethnicity],” “proud [ethnicity],” “[ethnicity] pride,” “[ethnicity] American” and so on.

Not everyone may reflect on his or her profile which ethnicity they are; so next we look to other ethnic-centric organizations, societies, and so on. Use interest footprints for this as well: “[ethnicity] association,” “[ethnicity] Coalition,” “[ethnicity] society,” “National [ethnicity],” etc.

Another tactic will require some research, though it’s hardly heavy lifting. Compose a Google search for: “List of [ethnicity] Magazines/Publications” and tap in.

Perhaps your product requires you to be less national and country or tribe-specific, do not be discouraged. Most Facebook users of specific nationalities profess it somewhere on their Facebook profile. These may not be the largest segment you're targeting, but they could very well be the right segment for your specific product/service.

Ethnicities in Africa:

Specific Asian ethnicities:

Target specific Hispanic or Latin-American countries:

And here, just a mere sampling of the nationally recognized tribes of Native Americans:

Facebook may not have a simple-select option for targeting ethnicities, but it’s possible. With that, marketers, I leave you with ideas and tactics to find ethnicity and ethnic-related interests with Facebook’s Ad Tool.