How To Do Facebook Targeting: A Complete Guide
Facebook has one of the most advanced targeting systems of all social media networks. It is that powerful because it knows so much about users: their interests, demographics and other information necessary to target them with relevant ads.
It is important to note that Facebook does not sell its data, so advertisers must use the targeting tools available on the platform to tailor their ad campaigns. Doing so will help increase conversions and reduce costs per conversion (CPC).
More on that later, for now, let’s cover the basics.
What’s Facebook Targeting?
Targeting is the process of placing your ads in front of specific types of users. For example, you can target people with interests in a particular topic (fashion), based on age, income, and other factors. We refer to this as ‘interests.’
Because Facebook has such detailed info about its users, it allows you to target incredibly specific niches.
For example, if I wanted to find people who are interested in fashion design and live in Jurong, I can use interests targeting and select these two things:
=> Fashion => Jurong (Singapore)
Doing so will allow me to deliver my ads only to users who fit both of these criteria and only in Jurong.
This is a basic example but you can imagine how powerful it becomes with more niche ad sets like this one:
=> Vegan => Fashion => Jurong (Singapore)
=> MBA => Marketing => Yishun (Singapore)
Why Do We Target Users?
Targeting allows you to narrow down your audience to a more specific group of potential customers or users of your products or services.
For example, if I wanted to promote my new vegan fashion line, it makes sense to target users who fit the bill — vegans (interests), are interested in fashion design (job title), live in Jurong (location), and are into healthy living (lifestyle).
The narrower your targeting, the more relevant your ads will be.
10 ways Facebook ads Allows you to Target Users
Facebook has a treasure trove of targeting options that you can use to set up your Facebook ads. Here are 10 different ways to go about it.
- Gender (male or female)
- Age (from 13 to 60+)
- Location (country, state/province, city)
- Language (English, French… Spanish?)
- Device used (mobile phone, tablet or desktop computer)
- Pages liked by the user (“Likes” on Facebook are specific to each user).
- Likes and unlikes. This is a bit different from Likes above, in that you can target people who like or dislike specific pages — for example, if you’re advertising concert tickets, you might want to target users who have liked the Facebook page of your favourite band but also those who have not liked it, because they are more likely to buy tickets.
- Turn on/Turn off. This method allows you to target users who have turned on the Facebook feature that allows advertisers to show them ads based on their offline purchases and other activities (recently bought DVD player, how often they go out to restaurants…)
- Frequency cap allows you to target users who have been shown your ad more than a specific number of times.
- Relevant post audiences. This is based on the Facebook “Reach Generator” feature that is free and will help you spread your message with visitors that are relevant to it.
How you target users can either make or break your campaign.
Targeting too broadly will get you fewer clicks, but more targeted ads are likely to be more effective.
The right way is to find the golden middle ground that lets you get the best of both.
A recent study found that most people are more likely to click on an ad if it’s “quite specific,” since they tend to feel a closer connection with it and therefore believe they will be more likely to find something relevant within it.
In terms of age and gender, some general guidelines might help.
For example, the best-performing ads on Facebook tend to be those that appeal to women between 25 and 54 years old (known as the “mommy demographic”) and men between 35 and 55 years old.
When it comes down to it, you can’t go too wrong as long as you take the time to figure out what appeals the most to this audience group.
Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies Only Pros Use
These ten Facebook ads targeting techniques are not for hobbyists but large-scale marketers who understand the value of Facebook ads and how profitable of a marketing channel it is.
When implemented correctly and in the right situations, these ten Facebook ad strategies can boost your ROI to a level that you never thought possible:
1# Lookalike Audiences with Custom Creative
One of the most underutilized Facebook ad targeting features is Lookalike Audiences. The way it works is you upload a custom audience to Facebook and then they find people who are similar to those people. This could even be your fans or website visitors, but it’s more likely that the generated audience fit into your ideal demographic.
Here’s an article you want to read to find out more about Facebook lookalike audience:
2# Audience Lists
Audience lists are a great way to make sure you’re only targeting the right people with Facebook ads. If you use the Interest Lists feature in FB, then this will auto-populate your custom audience. You can also target desktop users or mobile users separately to drill down who sees your ad.
Because not so many people are using this targeting technique, it’s not well-known. But it works very well for certain types of niche businesses.
3# Geotargeted Ads
When you’re in a big city, it can be very helpful to separate the ads you’re showing based on where someone is located. Facebook makes this easy by giving you a target location dropdown and even has advanced options to exclude certain zip codes or even specific towns from your targeting selections.
4# Only Target Specific Pages
If you need to target a specific page or group, then Facebook makes it easy for you. You can create an ad targeting that exact URL, and only people who have visited that exact page will see the ad.
5# Only Go to Your Website
Quite similar to point no #4. But if you’re trying to get people to your website, then perhaps you should consider taking them there directly. This is another Advanced Targeting Option and it’s very helpful if your Facebook goals are conversions and not clicks.
6# Price Point Custom Audiences
To make a long story short, let’s say you have a high-end service for people who can afford it. For those people, you can create a custom audience and upload emails of customers who paid for your high-end product or service. From there, you can retarget them with ads on Facebook and get to sell to them at a higher price point.
7# Lookalike Audiences of Competitors
Let’s say that you’re in an industry like real estate, SEO, or recruiting. You know from looking at your competitors’ Facebook pages that their fans are similar to yours. If you can get a lookalike audience of people who like those competitor pages based on interest, then you will be able to reach the most relevant prospects for your business at the lowest cost per click possible.
8# Lookalike Audiences of Your Website Visitors
Let’s say on your website you have a whole section dedicated to “how do I become a fireman?” Then you could upload those emails or people who visited that page and create a lookalike audience. Now when someone searches on Google for “how do I become a fireman,” your ad will be shown instead of a competitor.
9# Lookalike Audiences of Your Event Attendees
If you run a conference, then Facebook is a great way to market to the people who are most likely to want more information from you so they can attend your next event. By uploading the attendees’ email list or even just their names and registering them on FB through getting Likes on your Page, you can show ads to a lookalike audience and get more people to attend your event.
10# Custom Audiences of Customers Who Bought The Same Things You’re Selling Now
Let’s say that you sell t-shirts online and have an email list of all the customers who bought from you at least once in the past 3 months. You can upload that entire email list to Facebook and create a lookalike audience of those people. Now all you need is a way to retarget them on FB with ads for your shirts!
11# Custom Audiences of Former Customers Who Haven’t Bought In The Past 6 Months
Once you’ve ever gotten someone in the door, it’s important to continually engage with them. This is when Facebook can help you market to previous customers who haven’t bought from you in a while. You could even target those people by having FB send them ads reminding them that they haven’t visited your website or store lately.
12# Custom Audiences of People Who Liked Your Page But Haven’t Visited Your Website
If you have a Facebook page, it’s important to keep engaging with those people. You can target those people who have clicked “like” on your page and haven’t visited your website in the past week or month. Not only will this help you get more email addresses for your list, but it’ll also give you more loyal Facebook fans who will see your brand when they’re browsing around on FB.
13# Custom Audiences of People Who Visited Your Website but Didn’t Buy
This is another way to get email addresses and also help you understand your sales process better. If they visit the site but don’t buy, that may mean that something is confusing about the value proposition or maybe they just weren’t ready to buy yet. You can then follow up with them to help clarify their confusion or offer more incentives like a discount code.
14# Custom Audiences of People Who Mention Specific Keywords or Topics on Facebook
For example, if you’re a doctor and you were looking to target people who are talking about how to get rid of ear infections in 3-year-olds, then you could create a custom audience from all those people who have mentioned that topic recently.
15# Custom Audiences of People Who Visited Your Website and Signed Up For A Free Trial
This is the first step to getting customers on board for your SaaS product or coaching program. Let’s say that you have a free trial where they pay $2 per month, and then they can cancel at any time. You can create an email list from everyone who signed up for the free trial and then market to those people over time that they’re close to their free trial running out.
This can be a great time to offer them some special incentive like an additional discount or bonus.
16# Suppressed Audiences of People Who Already Bought from You or Visited Your Website
Here’s an interesting use for Facebook advertising that I learned at a conference this year. Let’s say that you want to market something like classes for your yoga studio in a particular area. You can build an audience of everyone who has already done that in the past, like everyone who purchased those classes or visited the website for them. Then you can use Facebook ads to find people with specific interests and target only them with ads for those classes!
17# Audiences of People Who Clicked on Your Page but Didn’t Like It
This is the opposite of #16.
Sometimes when people come to your Facebook page, they won’t like it right away because they haven’t figured out whether they can trust you or your business yet. If that’s the case, then all you need to do is create a custom audience of everyone who clicked on your page but didn’t like it and start marketing to those people with ads.
How to Master Facebook Ad Targeting
#1 Use Facebook Pixels to Increase Conversions
Facebook pixel is a code that is injected into the code of your website. Facebook uses it to track the actions of users on your site.
It collects information on their behaviour which you can use to target your Facebook ads. The pixel also allows you to create custom audiences from people who have visited your website or app and target them with specific ads.
Lost E-commerce
If someone visits the checkout page of your site but doesn’t buy anything, this is known as lost e-commerce conversion among advertisers.
If you use a Facebook pixel, you can create a custom audience of all the people who visited your site to target them with ads for the specific products that they had viewed but didn’t buy.
So, if someone visits your website and looks at computer monitors but then leaves without buying one, you can target them with an ad for the same monitor in your Facebook ad’s News Feed a few days later.
How to Install Facebook Pixels
Navigate to “Ads Manager” (found within the menu of your Facebook account) and create a new ad campaign.
Click on “Audience” and then select “Custom Audiences.” You will see a box that looks like this:
Select “website” and click next.
On the next pop-up page, go ahead and select your website. Remember to also name your audience.
Click on “create audience” once done.
To get your pixel code, click on the three linear dots (…), next to delete followed by “view pixels.”
Next, click on Install pixel base code, and scroll down to section 1.2 of the pop-up page. You should be able to see your pixel code. It looks something like this:
Click on the code itself to copy it.
Copy the code to a text document or save it, because you will need it when installing your pixel onto your website.
Then, paste that code into all pages of your site where you want Facebook Ads manager to track conversions.
Now, all you have to do is add the code into your website and Facebook will start tracking visitors.
If you are using a WordPress website, it is better to use a third-party plug-in like Pixeli.es or Easy Facebook pixels These widgets allow you to install your pixel code on multiple pages at once rather than copy and paste the code manually for each page.
Some best practices of FB PIXELS:
- Include only 1 pixel in a file. Failure of which, one-pixel may overwrite other pixels’ cookies.
- Make sure that you added the pixel to the <HEAD> section of your web pages or to other high-level sections.
- If you add code snippets into a HTML page, make sure that these snippets are within the head section.
- Avoid placing pixels near common elements and scripts such as AdSense ads, Google Analytics code snippets, Chitika, etc. or anywhere that the pixel would be hidden by these other elements and scripts.
- Keep your pixel code clean from any styling, formatting or structure codes (like HTML tags). You can use comments (<! — –>) but don’t put your pixel code inside them. You might get unwanted characters in your pixel’s data when you send it to Facebook.
- Run your pixel code through an HTML Tidy tool (like the one built into Windows Notepad) after pasting it to make sure there are no stray formatting or structure codes in it.
- Don’t forget to remove all unnecessary spaces and line breaks in your code.
- Avoid using the same pixel for multiple websites.
- Avoid using the same pixel to track more than one action per user. You can use the same pixel over and over again for tracking a single user’s actions such as purchases, but you should not use the same pixel to track multiple user actions on different pages/screens of your website or app.
Check Your Pixel Status
You can tell if your pixel has been installed correctly by going to Facebook’s “Ad Manager” ~> “Pixel.”
If the pixel is installed right, then you will see a green “Active” next to your website. If it isn’t verified, then click on “Get Tracking ID” and try installing it again.
Note that it will take about 20 minutes before the pixel status change after installing it.
To view the performance of your conversion pixel, go to ‘Tracking -> Pixel Reporting’ in your Ad Manager account.
To learn more about how to use Facebook pixels, you can check out this guide on the official Facebook help centre: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/378714089917220
Next, set up the specific events you’d like to track. The behaviours you track are called Events. You’ll have to tell Facebook what events you’re tracking.
Let’s say you want to track Lead Generation, the first thing you’d do is toggle the lead generation button, after which you want to copy-paste the pixel code into the <script> portion of the page that you’d like to track.
After pasting the code, we need to specify our Pixel ID by going back to “Ad Manager -> Tracking -> Pixel Options.”
Note: These steps are the same for all other events. Just toggle on or off the “Set a Pixel for this event option” and then copy-paste the pixel onto your website.
2# Build a Successful Facebook Audience
Targeting Audience
Select a goal where you want to spend time and effort on your campaign, for example; if you are an e-commerce store owner then select “E-Commerce Conversions” as your main objective. Then, select the most relevant audience under the “Audiences” section based on your product category. If possible, select only the top 20-40% of Facebook users who are most likely to convert on your offer.
If you are a travel company targeting users in Jurong, then create an audience for those people. This is also true if you’re looking to target business owners in Serangoon or Moms interested in adoption in Tampines.
To learn more about creating and optimizing audiences, read this guide on the official Facebook help centre: http://tinyurl.com/zl9lbfj
Tracking Conversions with Custom Conversions
When your ad is live, you’ll be able to view its status under “Ad Manager -> Campaigns -> All Campaigns” and check how many leads/orders your ad receives. However, if you want more granular information about your Facebook ad performance, then you can create “custom conversions.”
Here is a guide on how to create custom conversions in Facebook Ads manager: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/143417180304497
When you create a custom conversion, Facebook will provide you with its pixel code that you must paste into the website where the conversion takes place.
Tips for Creating Campaigns and Posts on Facebook
Now that we’ve reviewed how to track our campaigns and create ad sets, let’s discuss how to build your Facebook campaign by creating the most relevant ads.
Understand Your Audience: You should know who you are targeting with your ad (i.e., age, geography, interests), what actions people at this target audience perform on Facebook (i.e., click on photos, post status updates, watch videos), and how often they perform these actions. For example, you will want to create different ad sets depending on whether your audience engages in an activity once a month or every day.
For example:
Audience = People that like camping and live in Tampines
Interests = Hiking, mountain biking, Geography = Tampines
Select the Right Campaign Objective: Your campaign objective defines how much you are willing to spend and what Facebook calls the type of action you would like people to take after viewing your ad.
For example, if your goal is to improve brand awareness but also generate leads for your business, then select “Brand Awareness” as Automatic Placements, “Website Conversions” as Trackable Events and “Lead Generation” as Custom Conversions. You will need to write compelling ad text to persuade people that your business is the best choice without being pushy or spammy.
For example:
Audience = Tampines
People Interests = Camping
Geography = Tampines
Automatic Placements = Brand Awareness
Custom Conversions = Lead Generation
Target the Right Audience Based on Interests: Facebook offers easy options to select interests (i.e., music, technology, food) and basic demographics (i.e., age, education level, household). However, keep in mind that these suggestions are generalized based on user behaviour at large.
You will want to target specific pages and groups based on your marketing campaign objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase social engagement on a certain post, then select the interests of that Facebook page. On the other hand, you might want to promote an app or offer in business pages or groups to generate leads.
For example:
Audience = People who like climbing
Interests = Climbing
Geography = Tampines
Automatic Placements = Brand Awareness
Custom Conversions = Lead Generation
Create a List Based on User Behaviour: Facebook not only allows you to target your audience based on their interests and demographics but also by what they do on Facebook. For example, if your goal is to promote a single post or an event on Facebook, you can select the descriptive action (i.e., viewed photos of someone’s vacation) and target all of those people who have performed this specific action in the past 30 days.
For example:
Audience = People who went on a vacation
Interests = Hiking, camping
Geography = Tampines
Automatic Placements = Brand Awareness
Custom Conversions = Lead Generation
Create a List Based on Demographic Information: Facebook provides more than just basic demographics. It also allows you to target people based on their job title, industry, education level and relationship status. For example, if you are promoting a job opening at your business, then you can target all of the people who work in related industries or have the same education level as your targeted position. If you are looking for customers to organize an event, then select “Single” as marital status and create an ad set focused on single people.
For example:
Audience = People who work in Technology and write code
Interests = Technology
Geography = Tampines
Create a List Based on Demographic Information: Facebook provides more than just basic demographics. It also allows you to target people based on their job title, industry, education level and relationship status. For example, if you are promoting a job opening at your business, then you can target all of the people who work in related industries or have the same education level as your targeted position. If you are looking for customers to organize an event, then select “Single” as marital status and create an ad set focused on single people.
For example:
Audience = People who want to visit Mexico
Interests = Travel
Geography = Tampines
Create a List Based on In-Market Behaviour: Facebook allows you to target people based on recent behaviour. For example, if you are creating an ad for a music store, then select Music Streaming as “Recently liked” interest and pick top artists to showcase your recommendations.
All of these targeting options not only make your ads more relevant for the people who see them, but they also help to lower the cost per result (i.e., conversion).
Focus on Automatic Placements: To improve attention and engagement, Facebook will display your ad in locations that are most important to users. This is known as Automatic Placements. For example, if you are promoting a restaurant in San Francisco, Facebook will automatically display your ad on users’ home pages.
If you really want to improve the visibility of your ads, then take advantage of Instagram Ads that can be highly effective for promoted posts and by selecting specific hashtags to target people who follow similar accounts.
If you know your audience and objective well, then experimenting with Facebook ad targeting can definitely help to improve the ROI of your campaigns. In addition, this will also help you to understand who your customers are and what they do on Facebook. We want to hear from you. Do you have any questions or comments?
