Introduction To Facebook Ads Targeting
Whether you love it or hate it: Facebook has become an essential platform for businesses to promote their products and services.
With more than 2.8 billion monthly active users, it has the ability to connect you with your ideal customers from across the globe. However, to make the most of this vast user base, it's crucial to understand the importance of effective audience targeting in your paid ad campaigns.
Today, we’re taking a journey into the world of Facebook ad targeting and exploring effective strategies to optimize your campaigns.
First off, what is Facebook ad targeting?
In short, Facebook ad targeting is who you specify you want Facebook to show your ads to. This includes creating audiences of people based on specific criteria, such as demographics, interests, behaviors, previous interactions with your company, and more. This allows you to tailor your ads to reach the right people, increasing the likelihood of engagement, conversions, and ultimately, a higher return on investment (ROI).
When you’re first getting started, I strongly recommend creating and testing multiple audiences. There are three main categories of audience that I tend to utilize in my ad campaigns:
Warm Audiences
Lookalike Audiences
Interest Based Audiences
Let’s start with warm audiences…
Warm audiences are people who have interacted with your company or brand in some way. The most common warm audiences that I use include:
Email List - this is the list of email addresses you’ve collected, exported from your CRM and loaded into Ads Manager
Website Visitors - this is anyone who has visited your website or any pages with your Facebook Pixel installed… don’t worry, we’ll talk more about the Pixel later 😉
Video Viewers - this audience is created based on people who have watched a specified length of select videos which you have shared on Facebook and/or Instagram
Facebook/Instagram Followers - as the name suggests, these audiences are comprised of people who follow your Facebook and/or Instagram accounts
Facebook/Instagram Account Engagers - these audiences are created by pulling together everyone who has engaged with your posts, ads, videos or profile
Once your account is a bit more established, incorporating retargeting audiences into your warm audience pool is a key strategy in driving positive ROI - but we’ll tackle that in another post.
After your warm audiences are built, it’s time to move onto lookalike audiences.
Lookalike audiences are a powerful way to utilize your existing warm audiences and current customers to generate a larger audience of people who share similar interests, behaviors and characteristics.
To create a lookalike audience, Meta’s system analyzes information such as demographics, interests and behaviors from your warm audience to find new people who share similar qualities. Using a lookalike audience allows our platform to deliver your ad to a larger audience of people who are similar to (or "look like") your existing customers.
When creating a lookalike audience, you are able to choose how closely you want your new audience to match your source audience, depending on your goals. Smaller lookalike audience sizes will more closely reflect your warm audience, while larger size lookalike audiences create a bigger, broader audience, ideal for outreach and expanding visibility.
In general, I recommend creating a lookalike of the following warm audiences:
Email List (ideally, if you have a large list of BUYERS, this creates an even stronger lookalike audiences)
Website Visitors (if available, use visitors to a specific webpage that holds a direct correlation to what you’re looking to advertise next. This creates a strong lookalike audience based on people who have already taken an action on a similar/cohesive product or offer)
Video Viewers (I recommend using your most “strict” video viewer criteria to create this audience. Creating a lookalike based on people who watched 95% of a series of videos on a related topic will be far more effective than creating a lookalike based on people who watched just 3 seconds of any video you have shared)
Facebook/Instagram Account Engagers (If your warm audience pools are large enough, I recommend creating a warm audience of people who have engaged within the last 30 days and using that as the source audience for your lookalike)
Next, let’s talk about interest-based audiences.
The first step I recommend when looking to create an interest-based audience is to take a good, hard look at who your ideal audience is. Explore things like demographics, lifestyle, interests and hobbies, role models and influencers they follow, etc. By doing this, you’re creating your Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA).
After you’ve got a clear understanding of who your ICA is, you can begin creating your interest-based audience.
Meta has an incredible database of available targeting options to choose from, so it’s helpful to choose a “theme” for each interest-based audience and select the relevant options that fit within the theme and represent your ICA.
For example, if I was working on an interest based audience of moms who are interested in homeschooling, I might create the following audiences:
Influencers, Publications and Podcasts (this would include things like popular podcasts, blogs, magazines, books and influencers who focus on homeschooling)
Holistic/Alternative (this could include things like alternative medicine, herbalism, gardening, homemade foods, etc)
Education (this could include things like Montessori education, popular educational television programs, curriculum programs, general homeschooling terms, and more)
General ICA Bundle (this is one that I always include that typically is a much larger audience and includes elements from all of the more specific interest-based audiences, while incorporating more lifestyle and broad specifications)
The truth is that each brand, each offer and often, each AD will resonate differently with these different audiences. Typically, I’ll test running ads to these audiences as bundles (ex. Warm bundle, lookalikes bundle), as well as running them individually so I can really hone in on where the top performers are stemming from. Sometimes, I’ll even break down the interest-based audiences and run a single interest in an ad set so I can determine which interests are most responsive to my offers.
The options are truly limitless when it comes to creating audiences and utilizing them inside your ad campaigns. The best thing you can do is to simply GET STARTED.
Happy advertising!
Jill