Facebook is about staying connected with friends and family, and this is even more true for people who are living abroad, often far from their loved ones. Facebook estimates that at least 92 million of its users are expatriates and these people do not use the network to only stay connected to their friends and families. Brands, celebrities, sport teams and news outlets are also a great ay for them to keep in touch with home.
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Starting immediately, you can now target expats living within a specific country (like expats living in Brazil) and expats from a specific country (like people born in South Africa and living abroad).
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All nations are not yet available, as Facebook is rolling out this new feature step by step. Right now, nationality-specific targeting is available for people from Brazil, Indonesia, China, South Africa and India.
One of the first brand to take advantage of this new targeting feature was Etihad Airways, a leading Middle East airline. Etihad Airways saw an opportunity with the upcoming Diwali celebrations to connect the 27 million Hindus on Facebook who are currently living outside India. Using expat targeting, Etihad promoted messages about travelling home for the holiday. The results were quite impressive: they reached 536,000 Indian expats living in the Middle East, leading to 700 bookings and a 50x ROI.
Andrew Ward, VP of Marketing at Etihad Airways, explained:
[quote]People expect communication to be personal, relevant and mobile. With Facebook’s expat targeting, we were able to speak to a highly relevant audience and deliver them something that was truly valuable in real time. That’s the secret to a great campaign.[/quote]
Of course, this new targeting feature on Facebook is protective of privacy. That means that Facebook will never share information with advertisers about who a person is, only the fact that the person is from a given country and living in another specific country.
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Image credit: Facebook for Business
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