Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful mediums to get targeted traffic to any website however it’s not just that simple. The fact that most advertisers don’t get the desired returns by spending their money on Facebook advertising.
What could be the reason that most Facebook advertisers don’t get desired results from their campaigns?
Well, there are several reasons for the underperformance of a Facebook ads campaign and the most important reason being ‘inappropriate audience targeting’.
In this blog post, I am going to share 5 powerful ways to target the appropriate Facebook audience. Following these tips, you will be able to get not only a targeted audience but also reduce the Facebook advertising cost.
#1 Recent Purchasing Behavior Among Facebook Users
How does the audience of ‘Purchase Behavior’ helps you to get your targeted audience?
By selecting the ‘Purchase Behavior’ option for the audience selection, you choose those users who have online buying behavior.
Got some ideas?
Ok, let’s take an example.
John sells men’s apparel in his eCommerce store and now he wishes to get targeted traffic to his website using Facebook advertising. An ideal buyer’s persona for John’s business would be
a. Male or Female (females can buy men’s apparel to gift their boyfriends, husbands, father, or brother).
b. Users who are familiar with online purchasing.
Now here’s the need of selecting ‘Purchase Behavior’ as ‘Engaged Shoppers’ for John’s targeted audience along with the other options like Gender and Age selection.
Purchasing behavior subcategories further include Clothing, Food & Drinks, Health & Beauty, and a lot more. Not only that. But with each broad subcategory, you can further drill down into types of behavior; for example, choosing Buyer Profiles will then let you target Fashion lovers, Foodies, etc.
#2 Life Events Targeting
Another powerful way to target people is based on their life events.
A wedding photographer may want to target users who recently got engaged.
A moving services provider may want to target users who’ve recently purchased a new house.
A jeweler may be interested to target users who are celebrating one-year anniversary.
An online gift store may want to target users who’ve recently gotten into a relationship.
An online store selling men’s formals may be interested to target users who’ve recently got a new job.
Like some of the above instances above, there are endless opportunities for businesses to find and advertise their products & services in front of their targeted audience.
#3 Facebook Custom Audience
Facebook Custom Audience is an advanced feature through which you can connect with:
a. Your existing contacts (Customer File)
You can create a Facebook Custom Audience by choosing the ‘Customer List’ option and uploading the emails and other details of your existing customers/contacts in CSV/TXT format.
This will allow you to advertise your products and services to your existing customers to whom you may wish to up-sell your other products or renew the same product if your product is based on a subscription.
b. Your website traffic (Website Traffic)
Yes, you can create a Facebook Custom Audience for the users who visited all or some of the web pages of your website. You also have the option to exclude some pages, if required. For eg., if you wish to create a Facebook Custom Audience for the users who did visit your website but didn’t take any action. So you can target all the users who visited your website but didn’t visit the ‘thanks’ page that appears after the subscription is confirmed.
c. People who have taken a specific action in your mobile app or game (App Activity)
Similar to the website traffic, you can also create a Facebook Custom Audience for the users who installed your game or app and did take a specific action.
d. People who have taken a specific action in offline activities (Offline Activity)
You can also create a Facebook Custom Audience based on some offline action taken by people like phone calls etc.
e. Users who did engage with your content on Facebook (Engagement)
You also have the ability to create a Facebook Custom Audience based on the engagement that users did with any of your Facebook content like Videos, Lead Forms, Facebook pages, Instagram Business profiles, Events, etc.
There are really numerous opportunities for you to create a Facebook Custom Audience and advertise your business in front of them like a pro.
#4 Lookalike Audience
Now, this is my favorite pick.
Why it’s my favorite?
By creating a lookalike audience, you get an opportunity to reach thousands and even millions of people who share a similar profile as your ideal audience.
How do you generate your ideal audience for creating a Lookalike audience?
As I’ve shared above the process to create a Facebook Custom Audience is based on the contacts list that you have or the traffic that your website receives. Now the next step to expand your custom audience is to create a lookalike audience.
What does Lookalike audience do?
When you select the option of generating a lookalike audience, Facebook does the heavy lifting for you and finds millions of users who share a similar profile to your custom audience.
While generating a lookalike audience, you can make the audience larger (more broad) or smaller (more specific and similar to your original audience). You have the option to select the size of your lookalike audience between 1% (more specific) to 10% (more broad). For me, a range between 3% to 5% works well.
#5 Layered Targeting Options
If you want to create an audience that’s more specific to your ideal buyer’s profile, you can use the combinations of behaviors, demographics, and geolocation data to reduce your audience to as precise as possible.
You also have the ability to match ad creative and offers to smaller audiences created using combinations of data.
For eg., if you have a specific offer for the males who fall in the age range of 30-35 and you have another offer for the women who fall under the age group of 25-30, you can create a layered audience by selecting the gender first and then defining the age group.
