How to choose target audience for your Facebook ads

Goal: To choose the appropriate target audience for your Facebook Ads’ Ad Sets.

Ideal Result: Based on data that is at your disposal and that takes into account the various audiences you are targeting across your account, you have chosen a strong targeting option for your Ad.

Prerequisites or requirements: If you do not already have one, you can follow blog 010 to create a Facebook Ads account. If you do not yet have the Facebook Pixel on your website, you can start tracking your conversions by following blog 005 (or blog 068 if you are using Shopify) and blog 017. Depending on the audience you use, you might need to have the Facebook Pixel operating on your website and your conversions set up.

Why is this significant? Your campaign’s audience has the power to succeed or fail.

Where it is done: This is carried out on Facebook Ads Manager.

When to do this: Each time you make a new ad set.

Who does it: This is done by the person in charge of paid advertising.

Important Information about target audience

1. This blog will provide you with a strong framework on which to launch new advertisements, but it should not take the place of decisions that were made in light of the information and insights you have gained through managing your accounts on a regular basis.

2. In order to discover the audiences that work best for your business, you need regularly review your outcomes.

3. It is particularly helpful when an account is created from scratch or when expanding or diversifying an existing ad account.

Before beginning to target audience

1.  Learn about the three main methods of targeting:

•   Core audiences: If you want to focus on a demographic that has probably never heard of your company.

                       Target audience based on their locations;

                       Targeting individuals depending on their demographics;

                       People who are targeted based on their interests to better understand them;

                       People’s behavior based on their general online behaviors (not just on your site);

                       Visitors to be targeted who have connections with your pages in particular ways;

       Custom audiences : If you want to target a group of people who are already familiar with you.

            Target individuals that match your customer contact list using contact lists. (Telephone numbers or emails)

            App users: Speak to those who utilize your app.

            Visitors to your website – Speak to folks who have already been there.

            Facebook engagement: Find those who interacted with your content there.

           Lookalike audience: If you want to reach a group of people who have probably never visited your business before but who are highly similar to your customer audience or a certain portion of your audience in some other ways (e.g. customers).

Follow the decision tree for choosing Facebook Ads audiences provided by ClickMinded.

1. Answer each question one at a time, beginning at the top. Continue to the following chapter once you have decided on one of the three primary targeting options described in the previous chapter.

Choosing an audience

   General guidelines

1.    When in doubt, avoid selecting your targets with excessive granularity. Loose targeting options for Facebook Ads are effective. This is especially true if you have been using that account to run Facebook Ad campaigns and providing data to your Facebook pixel for some time.

          Example: Do not restrict your campaign’s reach to men alone if you have a gut feeling that the majority of your PPC clients are men but lack concrete evidence or are not entirely confident about it.

2. On the other side, be careful not to target too broadly.

        For instance, there is a very good possibility that the majority of your customers will be women if you are promoting a lipstick business. If so, make sure to restrict your campaign to women.

3. Ad sets should not combine various Interests, Behaviors, Custom Audiences, or Lookalike Audiences. If you do that, you will not be able to tell which of the audiences are effective and which ones are not if your Ad Set performs or underperforms.

           Good illustration: US Lookalike 1% Purchasers

         Poor example: “Lookalike 1% Purchasers – US + Interest: Display Advertising + Interest: Business + Custom Audience: Visited the Checkout.”

It is important for target audience

Make sure you have already chosen the appropriate targeting group by using the decision tree before continuing. Return to that chapter if you have not done so before.

Your Core Audiences: Defining

Depending on your resources, choose one of the following options:

Option 1;Use current customer avatars (best)

Option 2: Refer to market research or competitor information; (good)

Option 3: Stake out sites that offer rival services or goods (not ideal, specially in the long run)

Option 1: Create consumer personas (avatars) to describe the demographics and interests you will utilize in your targeting. These personalities ought to have been developed especially for your company. And should correspond to the good, service, or deal you will be advertising in your ads.

Example:

Investigate the demographics, interests, or behaviors that your customer avatar would exhibit in Ads Manager’s precise targeting:

Do not forget to check that the audience is not too big or too small:

For instance, 41 million people will probably be too much, so you should focus on demographics or stacking different audiences to further reduce the number.

Option 2: Make use of market research or rivalry information. You have a few options for how to collect this information:

1. Utilizing Similar Web (Free)
2.  Use market research and industry reports; (Free or Paid)

1.    Utilizing Similar Web (No cost, no email needed):

1.    Visit https://www.similarweb.com for more information
2.    Enter the website’s URL here that you want to analyze:

Note: Normally, your brand would be there. However, if you do not yet have enough traffic, you can substitute a very close rival as a proxy.

      c.   You will receive a report that will provide you with additional details regarding the visitors to that particular website. It Might or might not be able to access some data, depending on how popular the website is.

One can choose suitable interests, habits, or demographics by using the following insights:

Example:

   2. using market research or industry reports (free or paid depending on the source)

1. Definitely you can utilize those to aid in choosing pertinent interests, habits, or demographics if you have access to industry reports, papers, case studies, market research, or other documents that allow you to get insights about the type of audience your business may be targeting.

         Example:

           2) Select appropriate interests, behaviors, or demographics with the use of these insights.

Option 3: You can target your competitors or businesses that provide complementary goods and services to yours or that your target audience uses to collect information if you do not have any of the aforementioned possibilities or want to diversify your traffic or test new audiences (as long as they are large enough).

Note: After identifying your initial core audience, always remember to take the following actions:

1. use layers for targeting
2. Identify overlapping audiences;

Creating your own target audiences

The custom audience you should choose will mostly depend on what your advertisement will be promoting.  However this blog includes a list of potential audiences to target. Look over each one to determine which one makes the most sense for the offer, product, or service you intend to market to your visitor.

As a general rule, you should start by choosing people who are as close as feasible to the conversion goal of your ad.

Example:

Moreover you might want to target audience who have been to the checkout but have not finished the transaction. If your advertisement is meant to persuade users to buy anything from your store.

Rather if your site has limited traffic, you may need to be a little more liberal with your custom audiences. Ideally, your custom audience should consist of at least 1000 people.

For instance:

You could wish to include users who viewed the sales page but did not make a purchase. For example: if just 100 visitors visited your checkout page but left without making a purchase.

  Note: If you want to deliver an advertisement to website visitors who have filled out a form but have not yet made a purchase from you, you must already be tracking both the submission of the form and the purchase event. This is because your ability to target specific audiences will depend on how finely you have set up your tracking setup.

You should adhere to “blog017 – Setting up FB Conversion Tracking” if you are not currently tracking your primary objectives.

• Website Users

            Visitor participation by:

•  Any;
•  Duration;
•  how many pages were seen;
•  duration of visit;

• Page views including:

            Any;

            site visits;

            Sales/Product Pages;

            Checkout;

            Checkout Page;

            Register page;

            Price List;

• leads with:

            Any;

            various funnel phases;

            Page;

            Page views for a particular category;

            browsing your website;

•       Add to carts using:

                  Any;

                  high worth;

                 Category-specific;

•        customers by:

                   Any;

                   High-Value Buyers

       Contact Records

      Existing clients or leads;

        Activity on email:

         – opened a general or particular email;

         – clicked a specific email or any email;

Clients/leads from the previous X days:

Example:

• Within 0 to 15 days after becoming a lead;
• 16 to 30 days after a lead is acquired;

Engagement

Viewed a certain percentage of a particular video;

   -Observation: Only applies to videos posted to Facebook or Instagram;

Opened a form but did not submit it;

  -Only for Lead Ads, please;

Opened and delivered a particular form;

  -Only for Lead Ads, please;

Clicked or opened a certain Instant Experience;

Those who interacted with your Instagram business profile or Facebook page;

Visitors to your website or Instagram business profile;

Although people who messaged your page or business profile on Instagram;

Individuals who participated in a particular way in any one of your events;

 -Note: Only Facebook Events;

Use of Apps (out of the scope of this blog)

Offline Behavior (out of the scope of this blog)

 Note: Remarketing windows should be used differently depending on your brand, audience, and funnel stage:

For instance: An audience for current clients,:

 – 0–5 days after purchase: A video thank-you ad soliciting a review;

 – cross-sell and upsell ads six to thirty days after the sale;

 – 31–60 days after purchase: Repeat purchase advertisement (based on the buying cycle of your product/service)

  Note : As soon as you have determined your initial custom audience, remember to constantly take the following actions:

1. Use layers for targeting
2. Identify overlapping audiences;

Choosing your similar-looking audiences

Any of the audiences from the list above can be used to produce lookalikes (custom audiences). In general, you should start with your most valuable audiences. And, then move on to the rest as your business grows, or whenever you wish to diversify your audience base or test out new audiences.

Going down this list from the top to the bottom might be an excellent place to start:

•  Best clients;
• All clients;
• Place in Carts;
• Top Leads;
• Every Lead;
• Views of the pricing/checkout pages;
• 2 pages were seen;
• Views of pages

Choose the least lookalike percentage (1%) to start. Increase it if you have already discovered that audience to be profitable and wish to continue scaling it without switching to another one.

Furthermore you can use blog 031: How to Generate a Lookalike Audience on Facebook to create lookalike audiences.

 Note: After defining your initial lookalike audience, remember to constantly take the following actions:

1. Use layers for targeting
2.  Identify overlapping audiences;

Use layers for targeting

1. Make sure you have chosen the right demographics and area as well:

    Remember: While most businesses should choose their region and language, some demographics, like age and gender, should only be chosen if there is data to support excluding that group. When unsure, it is typically preferable to keep those gaps sufficiently large.

2. Make sure to remove that group from your audience. If you do not want to display your advertisement to those who have already taken the necessary action.

          For instance, if the objective of your advertisement is to entice people to fill out a form and become leads, be sure to exclude people who have already signed up from your target audience.

3. Although if your audience is too large or you are certain that it is, it might be wise to somewhat narrow it.

         Example:1% of persons who have visited Airbnb and are also interested in Hotels.com are similar folks.

Examining (potential) target audience overlap

1. Click “Audiences” in the sidebar of all tools in Ads Manager.

2. Click “Show Audience Overlap” after choosing the audiences you will be examining.

3. You will receive a report detailing the percentage of overlap between your audiences:

           Note: You will not be able to assess the audience if it is less than 10,000 people.

4. If the audiences in your Ad Sets have a high percentage of overlap, you might wish to either combine the overlapped audiences into a single audience. Or alternatively, refine your audiences in a way that lowers the proportion of overlap between them.

           Note: When compared to the size of the entire target audience and the percentage of overlap you are experiencing. The number of people each day you plan to reach with your budget will determine if you need to complete this stage.

An severe case of overlap that needs to be addressed:

   -80% of audience A and audience B overlap.

   -There are 10,000 persons in Audience A and 10,000 in Audience B.

   -Finally You are intended to reach 7,000 people each day with your budget.

In this case, the large overlap % would undoubtedly affect the performance of your Ad Sets. It makes more difficult to optimize your account and producing subpar results for both Ad Sets.

An extreme case where overlap should not be an issue.

 -10% of audience A and audience B overlap.

 -There are 1 million people in Audience A and 1 million people in Audience B.

 -You are required to reach 100 people each day with your budget.

It is doubtful that overlap in this case will have a noticeable impact on your account. Resultantly, it might not be worthwhile to worry about it.