Facebook Targeting by Language

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In our last post, we talked about targeting by age and gender. Today I thought I’d touch briefly on language targeting options. Bear with me, Facebook marketing pro’s, this is for those among us who are new to Facebook ads!

With Facebook now available in over 100 languages, the opportunity for language-targeting is HUGE. Although the infographic below is slightly outdated, it gives a basic overview of the top languages on Facebook (as determined by users’ profile language preferences).

To break this down into percentages:

English - 52%
Spanish - 15%
Turkish - 5%
French - 5%
Indonesian - 5%
Italian - 3.9%
German - 2.7%
Chinese - 2.4%
Portugese -1.5%
Arabic - <1%

For small to medium-sized businesses, language targeting will often not even be a consideration. Whatever the language of your country, that will be the standard language you’ll use in your ads and on your fan page.

For large, multinational companies, multilingual targeting is the standard. Not only do they rely heavily on language targeting for their ads, but they often have unique fan pages for different countries/languages, and language-specific landing pages as well (we’ve talked before about the importance of consistency between your ads and landing pages…here’s a prime example).

Note: If you’re wanting to advertise in a country you’re not familiar with, here is a great resource for figuring out national languages.

Post Targeting

Here’s an interesting factoid — Did you know you can actually target your fan page posts by language as well?

Using this feature will allow you to target individual posts to different locations or language groups. Now, if you’re not bilingual, using this language feature won’t be that helpful to you…but if you have a large fan page you may want to hire a freelance translator to help you out with this.

Why Geo-Target Ads or Posts?

More directed, targeted ads and posts = higher engagement (when done right).

Some potential uses for language-targeted ads or posts:

Events happening in other parts of the world/country
Advertise language-specific webinars
Geo-specific deals or contests
Let fans know of new branches/stores opening in their area
News relevant only to certain areas

Do you use language targeting in your ads? How about on your Facebook page? Do you find it increases engagement, click-throughs, sales? I’d love to hear in the comments below!