The best ad in the world stands no chance against the wrong audience. You have to place the right ad in front of the correct (extremely specific) audience to win at Facebook advertising. Perhaps, in previous ads, you have targeted a very general audience, including selecting both men and women and all ages. Surely, that’s the best way to bring in the most customers. Cast a wide net, right? Wrong!
You’ll be using all your muscles (money) to pull in the large net and to sort through all the junk fish (useless, inflated Facebook metrics). At the end of the day, continuing with the fisherman analogy, you’re left with are achy muscles (more like an aching budget!) and everything smells like fish instead of dolla-dolla bills.
We don’t want to waste your day (or Facebook ads campaign) only to smell like fish and failure. We want you to succeed.
HERE ARE OUR TOP 5 Facebook Ad Targeting Tips:
1.Life Events Targeting – Did you just get married? Here’s a new home just for you!
As all good advertisers know, emotions equal money. Facebook, thankfully, keeps track of all its users’ life events so you can provide your product or service right when your audience needs it. Are you a photographer for newborns? You can target anyone on Facebook who just had a baby! Do you paint homes? Target new homeowners.
There are nearly endless possibilities to choose from under the life events targeting section. You can even target homeowners of one year ago who may now be settled in their new home enough to want some upgrades! Other timed life event options, like three or six months, are available too.
TO USE:
Under the Life Events Section, select a life event relevant to your customers. You can even layer them!
2.Layered Targeting – And we mean lay it on thick.
Layered targeting for Facebook ads is kind of like the part of the infomercial that says, “But wait! There’s more! Not only do you get A-Z, but you also get [fill in the blanks]!”
The more specific your audience, the better your chances are for converting traffic to sales. Why?
First and foremost, a targeted audience is a smaller audience, and for you, Facebook advertiser, that means less competition for the same ad space.
TO USE:
Layer your audience’s interests, life events, recent purchases, etc. Take your time here —really think of what your ideal customer would be thinking, doing, shopping for, etc.
3.Facebook Custom Audiences – Your existing contacts and customers retargeted.
Ever signed up for someone’s newsletter for a free ebook or quiz results or bought a product from a company, and now, those ads constantly appear?
There’s a method to the madness. That method is converting warm traffic into hot traffic. Since interest from these audience members has already been shown, it’s easier for these customers to turn into sales. It makes sense to spend more of the advertising budget on these folks when a new product or seminar or service is introduced.
TO USE:
Do you already have a contact list? You can use your contacts’ data to find them (target them for ads) on Facebook. Target website visitors and/or app users. A custom Facebook ads audience is an incredible way to turn previous customers into repeat customers.
4.Recent Purchases – Facebook knows what you bought last summer.
Facebook knows all. How many times have you heard humans freak out thinking their phones are listening to them based on Facebook ads that pop up in their newsfeeds?
Calm down, Nancy. No one is listening to your conversations with your sister; however, data is being collected on what you tap on, share, shop, browse, etc. Odds are, you looked up something on your phone, then talked to your sister about it. It could have been that new romance novel, the new medication you’re taking or what new toy you just bought your doggie.
In any case, Facebook, around 2013, went through quite a few changes and became a cool kid in the online advertising crowd by hanging out with major data companies.
These data companies know what billions of people purchased online, how much time the customers spent making that decision—and pretty much everything else about the masses—as long as they have searched for, purchased, played or said it online.
Now, with all this vast information, Facebook advertisers can seemingly read the minds of their Facebook ads audience. The reason targeting recent purchases on Facebook ads is so important is that the audience is actively purchasing solutions to their problems. Your product or service could—and should—be next!
TO USE:
On the Behaviors section, choose Purchase Behavior. Next, select the category of your product, service or business.
Pay attention to the number of Facebook users you’ll be able to target in each subcategory. Here, after careful targeting consideration, is where you can cast a “wide” (specially crafted) net.
5.Lookalike Audience – This is when cloning is actually okay.
And then the Facebook ads department said, “Let there be Facebook Lookalike Audiences.”
Why is this feature possibly the best ever?
Creating a lookalike audience for Facebook ads means targeting people who “look” just like your already paying customers! As with Tip 3, when you import your contacts or customer list, you can basically duplicate them based on every single demographic.
Facebook recommends choosing your top 1,000 to 50,000 customers. Sort your data based on lifetime customers and successful transactions.
Lookalike audiences will take anywhere from six to twenty-four hours to generate, but Facebook will automatically refresh the list every three to seven days!
TO USE:
Go to Audiences. From the dropdown menu named Create Audience, select Lookalike Audience. Then, select your data source!
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