Finding your audience on Facebook is surprisingly difficult, but building a complete data picture can work wonders.

You’ve probably noticed that Facebook has become a big thing, especially for marketers. If not, here are some numbers that drive the point home:

  • Facebook has increased its revenue by 32% (to $16.33 billion) and captured 39% of the US display market.
    [Source: Emarketer]
  • Worldwide, Facebook has over 1.94 billion active users each month. [Source: Statista]
  • The average user spends 35 minutes per Facebook visit. [Source: Social Media Today]
  • 42% of marketers report that Facebook is critical or important to their business. [Source: Zephoria]
  • There are 92 customer attributes available as targeting options, including demographics, geography, mobile device, operating system, personal interests, and user behavior.

It’s not surprising that cost per click (CPC), cost per link click (CPLC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and cost per action (CPA) prices have increased for Facebook marketers. Yet, despite the many potential customization options, marketers are facing bottlenecks in enhancing their ROI and selecting their audience. Add in the stiff competition for customers’ attention and you can see why marketing via Facebook can be a challenge.

And there we find the contradiction: Facebook is a marketing dream and a marketing minefield, all in one. How can you navigate it?

Why Your Facebook Marketing Strategy Should Include Analytics and CRM

Forward-thinking companies have already come up with highly engaging Facebook marketing strategies, including developing on-target content. But this only works if you can get the content to the people it’s created for. How is this possible?

Audience profiling is the pat answer, but successful audience profiling requires more than just Facebook data. It requires data from multiple sources, including:

  • CRM data: transaction information, purchase history, and interaction data
  • Survey research data: customer-reported values, likes, dislikes, and other preferences

CRM and survey data needs to be combined with data analytics for peak effectiveness. This allows companies to bridge the data gap between Facebook profiles and their own customer information. Connections can be made between customers? Facebook interests and their existing CRM profile data. When this happens, marketers better understand their audience. They can get a motivating message to the right persons and present the same brand image across channels. Plus, there?s a more accurate estimate of effectiveness, which keeps the organization on track.

Improving customer relationships is essential to success; exploring and uniting customer data is critical to building good relationships. Customers are constantly evaluating brand experiences, so make their experience with your brand a cohesive and positive interaction. Use the power of data science to deliver relevant information, target ads, and address customer needs. When you combine CRM and survey data with Facebook’s reach and analytics’ insight, you can boost your ROI on social marketing spend and delight your customers.