Top 11 Proven Tips To Run Facebook Ads Targeting Effectively

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Author Henry Duy
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10m reading

One of the primary advantages of social ads over other types of advertising is the ability to precisely target your audience. Smart Facebook ad targeting allows you to reach out to those who are most likely to be interested in your brand. In this article, I will explain the basis of Target Facebook Ads and tips for doing this

Target-facebook-ads
Target facebook ads

Target Facebook Ads: A Complete Guide To Achieve Success 

What is Facebook Ads Targeting?

Facebook adverts Targeting is a method of ensuring that the usual individuals who are most likely to be interested in what you are selling see your ads.

Target Facebook Ads are similar to arranging a party; you wouldn’t invite everyone you knew unless they share your interests, right? Instead, you’d choose your visitors based on their preferences. 

What-is-facebook-ads-retargeting
What is Facebook Ads Retargeting?

Facebook ad targeting works similarly, allowing you to select the most relevant demographic for your advertising. 

Using variables such as demographics, hobbies, and habits, you may target those most likely to respond to your message. 

The correct people see this not only guarantees but also saves you money in the long run, because addressing a smaller, more qualified audience is frequently more cost-effective than casting a wide net.

How do Facebook Ads Targeting work? 

Facebook Ads targeting helps you reach the potential audiences most likely to have an interest in your brand, and make purchases. There are 3 main types of target Facebook ads audiences: 

Facebook-Audience-Targeting
Facebook Audience Targeting

Core Audiences

Core audiences lay the groundwork for audience segmentation by allowing you to target ads based on certain demographics and behavioral trends. 

Age, gender, education, job title, interests, and geographic location are all common selection criteria for core audience targeting. 

For example, if you tend to promote a new Japanese restaurant, you should target people aged 20–55 in urban areas who have an interest in Japanese cuisine. 

Custom Audiences

Custom audiences on Facebook ads targeting are your hidden weapon for re-engaging with valuable prospects who have previously expressed passion for your business. 

You may establish these audiences using data like website visits, email subscribers, app users, or those who have interacted with your Facebook post, ensuring that you reach the most potential converts.

Use case: Targeting people who interacted with your website but didn’t buy anything, leading them to return and complete their purchase. 

Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences let you broaden your reach by identifying new users who share similar qualities to your existing consumers. Facebook analyzes your unique audience and finds users that resemble them, resulting in a fresh pool of potential buyers who have yet to discover your business.

Lookalike-Audience
Lookalike Audience

Use case: If you are running Facebook Ads for SaaS businesses, you can create a lookalike audience based on your current clients to generate new leads. They may participate in similar industries or share similar software. 

Most Basic Types of Facebook Ads Targeting

Behavior and Interest Targeting 

Behavior and interest targeting focuses on users’ actions and preferences on Facebook. Facebook interest targeting takes your efforts one step further, focusing on:

Interests: Target people based on their hobbies, such as exercise, travel, and cooking.

Behaviors: Select people based on their buying history, device usage, or travel preferences.

Engagement: Target advertisements to those who have interacted with your Facebook page or posts.

Behavior and interest targeting help increase engagement by connecting with users who are interested in topics related to your business. 

Demographic Targeting

Facebook Demographic targeting helps you determine the users who can see your ads. This target option depends on particular traits below:

Age: Target ads to diverse age groups, ranging from teenagers to elders.

Gender: You can choose whether your advertising is seen to males, women, or both genders.

Education: Target individuals depending on their educational background, ranging from high school graduates to advanced degree holders.

Job Title: Contact professionals in sectors or roles related to your products or services.

Location: Target users by their nation, state, city, or even zip code.

demographic-target
Demographic target

When using this targeting method, make your ads visible to people who match the demographic of your target.

 

Value-based Targeting

Value-based targeting extends beyond demographics and hobbies by appealing to your potential consumers’ shared values:

Identifying values: Begin by understanding the common values that your customers appreciate, such as innovation, sustainability, or community participation.

Crafting advertising messages: Tailor your ad creative to reflect these principles. For example, emphasize how your products or services are consistent with their values of quality, environmental responsibility, and social impact.

Building connections: By connecting your commercials with customer values, you can strengthen emotional bonds and promote loyalty among your target demographic.

Value-based targeting on Facebook enables you to build more meaningful and relevant ad experiences, hence enhancing campaign effectiveness and achieving better outcomes.

Top 11 Strategies to Target Facebook Ads Correctly 

Use 11 proven strategies below to keep conversions and keep your audience engaged:

Retarget using custom audiences

Retargeting, a crucial tactic in Facebook advertising, allows you to reconnect with potential customers who have previously expressed interest in your company. 

Using Facebook Custom Audiences, you may target individuals who have previously visited your website, explored specific sales pages, or viewed specific products. 

This strategy allows you to pique their interest and drive them closer to conversion, increasing campaign effectiveness and driving more sales.

Retargeting-using-custom-audiences
Retargeting using custom audiences

To harness the potential of remarketing based on website visits, you must first install the Facebook Pixel. This short piece of code monitors user activity on your website, delivering useful insights that feed your targeted efforts. 

You can also select to exclude recent buyers, ensuring that your adverts are displayed to people who are most likely to convert. 

Implementing retargeting methods allows you to re-engage with warm leads, enhance engagement, and generate higher conversion rates, resulting in a better ROI for your Facebook ads.

Here is how to create a custom audience for remarketing: 

  • Go to Audiences in your Ads Manager.
  • Choose Create a custom audience.
  • Under sources, click Website.
  • Choose your pixel.
  • Under Events, choose which types of visitors to target.
  • Name your audience and click Create audience.
Facebook- Retargeting-Audiences
Facebook Retargeting Audiences

Find lookalike audiences by value-based Facebook ads targeting

Facebook lookalike audiences allow you to create Facebook targeted ad lists of potential consumers who share characteristics with all of those who have already purchased from you.

To add customer value into a lookalike crowd, you must first construct a customer value custom audience.

1. Go to Audiences within your Ads Manager and choose Create a custom audience

Facebook- Lookalike-Audiences
Facebook Lookalike Audiences

2. Choose Customer list as the source.

Value-based-Facebook-ads-targeting
Value based Facebook ads targeting

3. Choose how you’ll import your customer list from the options given. Then, click Next, and upload your customer list on the following screen.

4. Click Upload and Create.

Now, you can use this list to create a value-based Lookalike audience to target your highest-value potential customers:

  • Go to Audiences within your Ads Manager.
  • Choose Create a lookalike audience.
  • Choose the value-based custom audience you created above as your source.
  • Select the audience locations to target.
  • Select your audience size. Smaller numbers more precisely match your source audience characteristics.
  • Click Create Audience.
Value-based-Facebook-ads-targeting
Value based Facebook ads targeting

Target main competitors’ clients

You can discover tons of information in the Audience tab at Meta Business Suite. This wealth of data provides significant insights into your target audience’s demographics, interests, and behavior. 

Here’s a secret tip: use Audience Insights to find your competitors’ current fans and adapt your advertising to reach those potential buyers. It’s a deliberate method to acquire new leads and broaden your reach in your target market.

How to target competitors’s audiences step-by-step: 

1. Open the Audience Insight tab on Meta Business Suite and select the Potential Audience tab

Evaluate-your-top-competitors
Evaluate your top competitors

2. Click the Filter Button and change the demographic options like age, gender, location, and interest to build the targeting client persona.

3. Scroll down to the Top pages section. This section contains pages that your target audiences already interact with. 

Evaluate-your-top-competitors-2
Evaluate your top competitors 2

Go back to the Filter Selection Tool. Reset the filter and fill in the name of one of your competitors’ page in the Interest Box 

Evaluate-your-top-competitors
Evaluate your top competitors

Utilize Facebook Ads Relevance Diagnostics to enhance targeting 

Facebook stresses delivering relevant advertising, and they’ve created a complex Ad Relevance Diagnostics system to measure this. It ranks your ads based on three main metrics:

  • Quality ranking, 
  • Engagement rate ranking
  • Conversion rate ranking

As Facebook implies, “People prefer to see ads that are relevant to them. And when businesses show their ads to relevant audiences, they see better business outcomes. That’s why we consider how relevant each ad is to a person before delivering an ad to that person.”

The goal of Facebook ad targeting is to get your ad in front of the exact audience that is most likely to act on that and This is the ultimate definition of relevancy.

Facebook-Ads-Relevance-Diagnostics
Facebook Ads Relevance Diagnostics

Some ways to improve Facebook Ads Relevance:

  • Concentrate on quality, including eye-catching images and concise writing.
  • Choose the appropriate advertising format.
  • Aim for a low ad frequency.
  • Ads should be timed carefully.
  • Use A/B testing to optimize your ads.
  • Keep an eye on your competitor’s advertisements.

Remember that relevancy is not a one-size-fits-all approach. To keep your Facebook Ads extremely relevant and continuously high-performing, you must adjust your targeting. 

Test new audience groups regularly and adjust your targeting methods to guarantee you’re delivering the appropriate message to the right individuals.

By changing your approach, you can ensure that your ads remain interesting and successful, resulting in improved performance and lower costs.

Related Article: What Is CTR Facebook Ads And Proven Tips To Improve It 

Avoid Ad Fatigue

Facebook ad fatigue or ‘creative fatigue’ occurs when your ad frequency is too high, causing your target audience to see the same ads over and over again. When people see the same ad on repeat, the performance will drop which is what ad fatigue is. 

Ad fatigue will impact key metrics, including the price you pay for 1,000 impressions (CPM) and the return on ad spend (ROAS) you get.

Ad fatigue is a feature of Facebook’s algorithm that gradually reduces the performance of your adverts. 

Ad-Fatigue
Ad Fatigue

Regardless of how well your retargeting campaign performs, it will eventually succumb to Ad Fatigue. Here are some great ideas for avoiding ad fatigue:

  • Rotate your adverts by turning them on and off.
  • Change the creative of each ad (pictures, ad copy, and offer).
  • Change the targeting and campaign objectives.

Apply Life event on Facebook targeting

Facebook provides a remarkable variety of targeting choices, including for life’s most important occasions. Need to contact folks who are planning a funeral? Facebook has got you covered.

Want to reach out to recently engaged couples who are in the process of arranging their weddings? Facebook has that too. Moving businesses can target folks who have recently purchased a new house.

Facebook’s huge data allows you to pinpoint your target demographic with great precision, ensuring that your advertising reaches the right people at the right times.

Facebook’s Life Events targeting allows you to be quite particular, down to the time window. Want to contact couples who are enjoying their first anniversary? Target newlyweds from a year ago! 

You can pick between 3-month, 6-month, and one-year intervals following a life event, allowing you to communicate with your audience at the optimal time.

Make use of Advantage+ Audience Targeting

New to Facebook ads? Advantage+ audience targeting makes this simple! 

This AI-powered feature does the heavy lifting by evaluating your previous conversions, Pixel data, and user interactions to choose the best audience for your adverts. Allow Meta’s AI to handle the job, and watch your campaigns take off!

According to Meta, campaigns using Advantage+ saw a 13% lower cost per sale, a 7% lower cost per website conversion, and a 28% lower cost per click, lead, or landing page view.

Advantage-audiene-targeting
Advantage audiene targeting

You still have some control over Advantage+, even though it uses AI to choose smart audiences. You can leave out people of certain ages or places, but for best results, start with a large group. 

Most campaigns work well with Advantage+, but for advertising, sales, or app promotions, try Advantage+ shopping or app campaigns. These use AI in more than one step. Remember to run A/B tests against other audience targeting methods to see how well this one works.

Combine two unique audience 

Not every product or promotion fits neatly into a precise demographic box. Sometimes, you just have a general idea of the audience you want to reach.

So, what should you do if the Facebook target audience is simply too large? Try integrating it with a second audience, even if it appears unconnected.

For example, let’s imagine creating an ad audience for this GoPro video featuring LEGO boats:

Combine-two-unique-audience
Combine two unique audience

Assume you have a video advertisement showcasing LEGO boats. Instead of targeting a large audience of 31.5 million people interested in GoPros or video cameras, you may greatly enhance interaction by including LEGO lovers in your targeting. 

This limits your possible audience to 6.2 million people, but they are more likely to engage with your material because they are LEGO enthusiasts. 

You can use this method with every Facebook ad: select two appropriate audience segments, combine them, and then design your ad content to speak directly to their common interests.

Use broad targeting 

New to Facebook ads and unsure about your target audience? Begin with a broad, general campaign. 

Use basic targeting, such as a broad age range and a huge geographic area, and let Facebook’s algorithms work their magic. 

After your campaign has run for a time, go to Audience Insights or Ads Manager to discover who Facebook is determined as the best fit. This useful information will help you adjust your targeting for future, more specialized advertising.

Get ultra-precise by detailed targeting 

Facebook’s targeting choices extend beyond the basics of demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can be particular, targeting typical audiences, or even narrowing your audience based on relationship status and the employment industry. 

This granular degree of targeting enables you to tailor your ads to the specific audience you wish to reach.

Facebook targeting allows you to create very specific audiences for your advertising. 

Get-ultra-precise-by-detailed-targeting 
Get ultra precise by detailed targeting

You may even target people based on life events such as recent moves, new jobs, engagements, birthdays, or anniversaries, as well as those whose friends are about to celebrate a birthday. 

The more particular you are, the smaller your audience, but the more likely they will engage with your message. Facebook will notify you if your targeting becomes too narrow, ensuring that you still reach a relevant audience.

Get-ultra-precise-by-detailed-targeting  (2)
Get ultra precise by detailed targeting  (2)

Note: If you wish to add another degree of targeting, select Narrow Audience or Narrow Further. Each item should have the phrase Must also match the selected criteria.

Find unicorn Content

In the world of content marketing, you must develop a large amount of material to identify the “unicorns” – the pieces that truly shine. Consider it a numbers game: you may need to create a large amount of “donkey” content (generic, average content) to unearth those few pieces that shine on social media and search engines, ultimately driving conversion rates.

This tip is a little different. It’s about tailoring your ad’s content rather than selecting the best Facebook target population.

Larry Kim, the CEO of MobileMonkey and an Inc. columnist, coined this term. He claims that merely 2% of your content will rank well on social media and in search engine results, while simultaneously attaining high conversion rates. He claims that content marketing is a volume game and that you just need to develop a lot of “donkey” content (you can guess what that means) to get to the unicorns.

You can’t predict who will win in advance. Instead, monitor your analytics regularly and look for material that outperforms the others. Repurpose these “unicorns” into other media (e.g., infographics, films, and advertisements) and target them to the most engaged consumers.

Conclusion 

Target Facebook Ads have an important role in determining the effectiveness of Ads campaigns. I hope that after reading this article, you can have an overview of what Facebook Ads targeting is and strategies to target the right audiences. If you have any questions or problems, don’t hesitate to contact GDT Agency. Our team of professionals is always at your service.

  • Henry Duy

    Henry Duy is the CEO and Founder of GDT Agency, and is a highly accomplished expert in Digital Marketing in the Philipines, Vietnam and the international market.

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