With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a powerful platform for online marketing. One of the biggest advantages of Facebook Ads are its detailed targeting options.
By using data collected from its users, Meta is able to put ads in front of relevant potential customers. With Facebook Ads, you’re able to select who your ads are shown to based on target categories. This allows you to precisely target your customer’s niche, giving you the best chance of conversion and optimizing your ROI.
In this article, we’ll be sharing how to best use Facebook Ad Targeting to reach your perfect customers.
The basics
Let’s talk about the demographics and categories you can target with Facebook Ads. Here’s a rundown of what you can target:
- Location: Countries, states, provinces, communities, cities, and postal/zip codes. This can be as specific as targeting people at home and at work.
- Demographics: Including age, gender, education, and job title.
- Behaviour: Consumer behaviours like device usage and prior purchases.
- Interests: People with interests relevant to your product or service.
- Engagement: You can specifically target people who have liked, commented, or followed your page.
Your targeting parameters can be as specific or as broad as you like. However, it’s a best practice to narrow your target audience.
If you have a buyer persona, it will come in handy here. Your buyer persona is essentially your perfect customer, or your customer who gives you the best ROI, who you aim to address in every aspect of your marketing.
(If you don’t already have a buyer persona, feel free to contact us at the bottom of the page. We’ll help you develop your brand strategy and hone in on your specific niche, plus get you set up with Facebook Ads!)
For example, imagine you own a yoga studio in Vancouver. Right off the bat you know your audience is interested in fitness, so that will be an interest you target. You may notice that your customers are primarily female ranging from age 25-40, and you know your customers are generally working professionals.
You get the idea: These are all categories you can target in your ad campaign.
As you add more interests, your Estimated Audience Size (visible on the ad setup page) grows. Facebook experts recommend an audience of between 500k-1 million users, but this can vary depending on your brand’s niche.
Though you can set all of these targeting parameters manually, Facebook also offers Automatic Optimization, which lets Facebook choose who to target.
Custom Audiences
With Custom Audiences, you can target (or exclude) users with email lists and user activity on Facebook and on your website. Data is collected from your website using Meta Pixel (more on that later).
People who follow, like, and comment on your page, view your content, follow your Instagram, or check out your event can all be targeted or excluded in your ad campaign.
Why exclude these users? If you want to reach new customers who aren’t already in your sales funnel, then excluding people who interact with your page and brand is key.
Meta Pixel
Meta Pixel (AKA Facebook Pixel) is a piece of code implemented on the backend of your website to track user data like abandoned carts and recently viewed products, allowing Facebook to retarget customers based on their actions.
It’s a great tool for understanding your customers’ actions and measuring the effectiveness of your ads.
For more information about how to install Meta Pixel, see this article.
Lookalike Audiences
Once you’ve created and saved some solid audiences, you can make use of Facebook’s Lookalike Audience option to target people who fit similar categories.
You can choose how similar or dissimilar your lookalike audience will be, and toggle categories like geography to reach customers in new locations.
Let’s chat
Feeling overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Partner with Good Commerce and we’ll get you started with Facebook Ads. We’ll tailor an ad strategy that provides maximum results. If you’ve run a Facebook Ad campaign that didn’t meet your expectations, we’ll help you get back on track with an Ad Audit.
Contact us at the bottom of this page to book a free discovery call!