How do you target audiences that Facebook’s Ads Manager doesn’t have?

Clients regularly ask me to target a demographic or occupation for which Facebook doesn’t currently have an available option. (I say “currently” because the options change.) A week or two ago, an auctioneer asked me to target Christmas tree farms. While there were Facebook private groups for that audience (to which you can’t send ads), we were able to reach these folks obliquely by determining what interests and needs they share with other professionals we could target.

A week or so earlier, it was a seed & fertilizer company. Facebook’s adjacent categories performed well; but we also bought a list of similar companies, uploaded it to Facebook, and advertised to those on the list and their demographic lookalikes. That strategy worked well, as Alexander Auctions & Real Estate Sales garnered bidder registrations from 20 states. List brokers don’t always have categories for niche demographics, either; but by overlapping the two sources of targeting, we can shrink the holes in available audiences.