Ultimate Guide To Facebook Ad Targeting

This comprehesive Facebook Ad Targeting guide was developed to help creative professionals get the most out of ad spend budget.  Social media gives us the tools to really get to know our customers. With a comprehensive customer persona in hand, you can go far beyond basic demographics like age and gender, to target people with specific job titles, interests, and even behaviors.

Getting to know your customers is easier than ever, and Facebook gives you all the tools you need to reach the people most interested in your product or service.

Targeted advertising reduces your adspend and increases your ROI. Here’s how to ensure your ads are shown only to your most likely buyers.

Creating Facebook Audiences

On the top right of your business page, you’ll find a drop-down menu. On the menu, click “Create Ads.” This will open the Ads Manager.

From there, you’ll first define your objectives by answering a few questions and setting a budget. When that’s done, your Ad Set is unlocked.

On the left side of the page under “Ad Set,” you’ll find “Audience.” When you create an audience and save it, you’ll find it here under “Use a Saved Audience” for future campaigns.

Custom Audiences

Every business person knows that your best customer is a repeat customer. Using the Custom Audience feature, you can target groups of people who have already interacted with your brand in some way. Your choices are:

Customer File – Upload your customer list from a saved file or copy and paste data. You can also import a list directly from an integrated program.  Facebook offers guidelines on how to format your customer info.

Website Traffic – Create a list of people who visited your website or took specific actions using Facebook Pixel. Your choices are all website visitors, all visitors to a specific page, or visitors by time spent on your site. You can also exclude visitors by the same criteria.

App Activity – Create a list of people who launched your app or game, or took specific actions.

Offline Activity – Create a list of people who interacted with your business in-store, by phone, or through other offline channels. You can also track people who participated or showed interest in your events.

Engagement – Create a list of people who engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram. Engagement markers might include likes, comments, event interests, or shares.

Lookalike Audiences

Your custom audience can be useful in other ways. Imagine that you build a custom audience and discover it represents your ideal customer. The people on this list share a lot of common points: they like the same music and have similar hobbies, they are within an age range, and meet several other criteria that defines people most likely to become customers.

Working from an existing customer list gives you a detailed and accurate profile of your real customers. Lookalike Audiences find people who meet the same criteria, buy the same products, and have the same interests as your customers.

Working Without a List

Once you have your base audience defined and saved to a list, you may want to refine it further, or you may not have a list to use as a base. No problem! You can narrow your list with additional criteria, or simply use criteria to target a general, undefined audience.

Audience Targeting by Location  

You can choose to show ads to people in very specific areas, from country down to a specific address radius, which means, for example, you can target people in one zip code or even in one neighborhood.

You can also use a DMA (Designated Market Area), or several. Just separate locations with commas or semi-colons:DMA: Honolulu, Fairbanks, Biloxi-GulfportCity: Menlo Park, California; Paris, FranceState or region: Florida, Texas, Auckland Region

The default targeting setting includes everyone in the designated location, but you can also target by recent check-in to identify people visiting the area or who have recently visited, or limit your targeting to only people who live there.

Demographic Targeting

Demographics include basic information, like age, gender, marriage status, and native language. Facebook allows you to dive deep into personal information to target people by political affiliation, job title, specific interests, and life events.

By interest -To get the most of your targeting, look past the basics, and find people whose interests align with your industry, products, or company values.

By event – You can also find people who have experienced a specific life event, like a job change, graduation, marriage, buying a new house, having a baby, or any change in life status that might spark a purchase.

By behavior – The most interesting and possibly most effective method of targeting, Behaviors are defined by a number of factors. Facebook analyzes what people do: what they buy, what events they are interested in, businesses they engage with. You could launch a Facebook campaign targeting people who read industry publications, donate to charities your company supports, or find people planning a destination wedding in the Caribbean next year who are shopping for luggage and tropical clothing.

Using these features can get really interesting when you start considering all audience targeting possibilities. You could start with a lookalike audience, target people who engage with your competitor’s Facebook Fan Page, and then create an ad that addresses their specific weaknesses. For example, you could identify people who complain on social media about your competitor’s terrible customer service with an ad that features your reputation for stellar customer service.

Optimizing Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns with Integrated Programs

Facebook works great with other marketing tools you are probably already using. Options include direct integration, where you connect your CRM, email campaign software, or lead program with Facebook advertising, Third-party Integration that uses a bridge program like Zapier to make a connection or many connections that can’t be done directly, or using a Facebook Marketing Partner, a program designed to optimize Facebook campaigns.

Placement

With your high-performing list ready and your ad created, it’s time to make the final decisions. Facebook offers you two options for placement, Automatic Placements, where Facebook places the ad for you, and Edit Placements, where you choose where on the page your ad will appear. 

When you choose Edit Placements, you are presented with a lot of options, which include Instagram and Messenger placements. When you’re just starting out, keep it simple by choosing Facebook Feed. This places your ad in the middle of the page, where the largest number of people are likely to notice. 

Budget & Schedule

Finally, you’ll set your budget and choose how often you want ads to appear. If it’s your first try, ease into it by setting your budget at no more that $7 per day. That will work out to a little more than $200 per month. Not too scary, and it will be easy to track your results. If your targeting is off, you’ll know…and have a chance to tweak it without breaking the bank.

In 2016, Adspresso found that the average CPC (cost-per-click) for Facebook Ads was 27.29 cents. You’ll need to set a bid amount for CPC, and it makes sense to set the amount a little higher than average to ensure you get the exposure you need. The higher your bid, the more exposure you’ll get. Facebook recommends 64 cents, a perfectly sensible amount.

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