There’s more to Facebook advertising than just creative or funny advertisements.
Having an eye catching and memorable ad is always a bonus, but is that ad being seen by the right people?
It’s not enough to have a great ad, you also need to target the right audience. There’s a wide variety of audience development and targeting methods that’ll give you the extra edge on any advertising platform, however; today we’ll focus on 4 essential methods of audience targeting that’ll be sure to get your marketing hoppin!
Not a fan of reading? Check out the video below for a brief overview of this article:
Detailed targeting is the most fundamental form of targeting on Meta. You’ll find it in the ‘Audience’ section of ad set creation, it will allow you to refine the group of people Meta will show your ads to. There’s a plethora of metrics you can use to target specific groups; interests, behaviours, employment industry and status, the list goes on.
But how do you utilise detailed targeting effectively?
The answer is simpler than you expect.
It’s always easiest to start with the big groups, so start with figuring just what age, location and/or gender you want to target. Once these are out of the way, you’ll be ready to start nailing down the specifics. These will need to be based on what product or service it is you’re advertising.
The final question you may ask is, what are the detailed targeting options based on?
To break it down simply, Meta may base the targeting options on:
The last option you’ll want to consider is ‘Detailed Targeting Expansion’. This will allow Meta to go beyond the specified data you’ve entered when it believes that it can get a result, we generally recommend leaving this option on unless you want your targeting to be hyper specific.
Detailed targeting is the most basic of targeting options, and it’s one you’ll likely come to grasp the fastest. Basic or not, there’s no denying just how important getting these targeting options right are.
Of course, our next 3 methods will get a little more complicated.
Bear with me.
Ever search for shoes and find yourself being bombarded with shoe ads for the next few days?
Congratulations, you just discovered re-targeting!
What is re-targeting? Let’s find out.
So first, let’s focus on what exactly retargeting is by breaking it down into 3 simple points, retargeting allows you to:
Retargeting starts with finding people who have already engaged with your business. Depending on the type of data you wish to use to create your retargeted audience, you’ll need different methods of collection. For example, if you’re retargeting people whose data you’ve collected through a CRM, you can use that data to reach those exact people with your ads on Meta.
Alternatively, you can install the Facebook Pixel to your website. This will track the types of action people perform when engaging with your brand, it can track Facebook ads they interacted with before visiting your site or what items they add you their basket on your online storefront. There are many methods for capturing your audience, but today we will focus on the Pixel method.
Next, you’ll want to specify the people you want to retarget. Your Pixel can automatically add people to a Custom Audience based on the specific actions you’re most interested in targeting, such as people who visit your site’s home page or people who view a product but don’t quite go on to make a purchase.
This will help you create ads that are relevant to where people are in their customer journey, allowing you to identify exactly where people are falling off your site.
Now that you’ve identified where customers are getting interrupted or losing interest, you can focus on fixing any gaps in your customer journey and giving them that final push.
Retargeting is a valuable way of keeping customers who’ve already proven that they’re interested coming back.
Whether you’re fixing holes in your customer journey or planning to run a sale to entice existing customers, retargeting is an essential method of Meta marketing that you must take advantage of.
If you’re in the advertising space, you’ve likely heard of Lookalike Audiences on Meta, but do you understand what they are?
Lookalike audiences use existing customer data as a source to create a new audience, using characteristics of your existing customer base to reach new people that are more likely to be interested in your business.
When using a Lookalike audience, your ad is delivered to people that ‘look like’ your existing customers.
When creating your lookalike audience, you’ll be prompted to choose a percentage range. This will determine just how closely you want your lookalike to match the source audience.
Depending on your goals, you may want to set a higher or lower percentage. Smaller percentages will match more closely to the source audience whereas larger percentages will broaden the search and create a bigger audience, though it will be more diluted.
While lookalike audiences may sound complicated at first, they’re deceptively simple for such a valuable tool of customer base expansion.
You can create 500 lookalikes from a single source audience, so don’t be afraid to experience with tighter or more broad lookalikes to ensure you’re getting results.
Meta Funnel Audiences are quite a bit more complicated than the other topics we’ve covered here, but they’re a powerful tool when used correctly.
As we all know, the likelihood of someone buying a product or service the first time they’re served an ad is quite rare compared to multiple touch-points of different content, and funnel targeting allows us to take advantage of that exact fact.
But if funnelling is so effective, then why is it so uncommon?
Funnelling is an uncommon strategy due to its complexity. With so many moving parts and different ad sets, it’s easy to make a mistake somewhere in the process.
So, let’s dive into what exactly a funnel is.
On a base level, an ad funnel consists of multiple different ad sets under a campaign that uses views/engagements/etc from other sets to funnel those people into the next sets, as they’re more likely to engage with more content once they’ve engaged once.
We’ll use a 5-part video series as an example:
So, we’ve made 5 different videos that link to an article on your website. Our goal with creating a funnel will be to use engagements and views on Video 1 to create an audience to advertise to on Video 2.
After that, we’ll use the views and engagements from Video 1 & Video 2 to create an audience for Video 3 and so on and so forth.
As you can see, what we’ve done is created a metaphorical funnel that will send users down the rabbit hole after they’ve engaged with one piece of funnel content, they’re then placed into live audiences and will be more often targeted with your advertising content.
This allows us to target every stage of the customer’s buying journey:
When you’re not using a funnel, you run the risk of wasting ad budget on the first stage, ‘cold audiences’,
who aren’t ready to engage further with your business. By repeatedly targeting customers who did engage and sending them down the funnel, you’re utilising your ad budget more effectively and building a stronger, more loyal customer base.
It’s not always best to go straight for the sale as, quite often, the long game tends to be more prudent.
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