The ability to precisely target your audience is one of the main benefits social advertisements have over traditional types of advertising. Reaching the individuals who are most likely to be interested in your brand may be done with the aid of effective Facebook ad targeting.

Advanced targeting options allow you to contact potential customers who have previously demonstrated a willingness to buy and who are likely to be interested in a certain product. All of this enables you to increase conversion rates while maintaining your current ad expenditure. Additionally, demonstrate a Facebook marketer that doesn’t value a better return on investments!

What is Facebook Ad Targeting?

You may narrow down the audience that will view your advertising with Facebook ad targeting. It can increase the success of your efforts, but it will also have an impact on how much your advertising will cost. To put it simply, in order to reach a large audience, it is more expensive compared to reaching a smaller one.

Three categories of target audiences are used in Facebook’s ad targeting:

• Targeting core consumers based on their characteristics, habits, and geography.

• Custom audiences let you get in touch with customers who have already interacted with your company.

• You may target individuals who resemble your top consumers but may not be aware of your company yet using lookalike audiences.

9 proven ways for effective Facebook Ad Targeting in 2022

1. Targeting competitors’ customers using Audience Insights

There is a wealth of useful information available on the Meta Business Suite Insights’ Audience page that may aid in your understanding of your Facebook fans. This newfound information may then be used to inform your targeting of new followers and consumers.

It’s such a gold mine that we’ve written a whole post about utilising Audience Insights to improve targeting. However, the recommended Audience Insights tactic is to leverage the data offered in order to properly identify your Facebook competitors before focusing on their existing fans.

Here is a brief guide:-

• Select Potential audience from the audience drop-down menu in Meta Business Suite’s Audience Insights dashboard.
• To begin creating a Facebook audience that closely resembles your target audience profile, click the Filter icon in the upper right corner of the page and use the basic targeting choices like geography, age, gender, and interests.
• Please wait before clicking “Create audience.” Instead, scroll down to the Top pages area to check which pages already have a connection with your target audience. This list may be copied into a text or spreadsheet file.
• Visit the Filter selection tool once again. Remove all of your current filters before entering the name of a Facebook page run by one of your rivals.
• See if you can get any further audience insights from the provided demographics data to help you target your adverts more accurately.
• Based on the fresh demographic information, go ahead and create a new audience, then compare it with one of your current audiences to test.
• Alternatively, you may just click Save which will create an audience consisiting of followers of your rivals.

This is an excellent method in order to start identifying relevant people on Facebook, but you can definitely target this demographic more accurately to make sure to have the greatest fit that will align with your business and campaign goals.

2. Using Custom Audiences for remarketing

Remarketing is a great Facebook targeting technique which involves reaching out to prospective clients who have previously shown interest in buying your goods. You may opt to show your advertisements to individuals who visited your website recently, sales pages, or even specific goods using the targeting options available in Facebook Custom Audiences.

If you think that recent buyers are unlikely to buy again soon, you can exclude them. Installing Facebook Pixel is required before you can use Facebook Custom Audiences based on website visits.

Here’s how to construct your remarketing audience after that:

• Using Ads Manager, navigate to Audiences.
• Click on Custom Audience under the Create Audience dropdown menu.
• On the sources tab, select Website.
• Decide on a pixel.
• Select the visitors’ demographics you want to focus on under Events.
• Select Create audience after your audience is given a name.

3. Finding value-based audiences

You may create targeted groups of future consumers with Facebook Lookalike Audiences who have traits in common with all of your current customers. Targeting people who have traits in common with your most important clients is made easier with value-based lookalike audiences.

You must first construct a customer value custom audience before adding customer value to a lookalike audience:

• Navigate to your Ads Manager and choose Audiences.
• Select Custom Audience from the Create Audience dropdown menu, then select Customer list as the source.
• Select your customer list, then select the value column menu to select the customer value column, and then click Next.
• To upload and create, click.

You may now target your highest-value potential consumers by using this list to establish a value-based audience:

• Navigate your Ads Manager and choose Audiences.
• Choose Lookalike Audience under the Create Audience dropdown menu.
• Select as your source the value-based custom audience you defined above.
• Decide which areas to focus on.
• Determine the audience size. Smaller numbers can better reflect the characteristics of your source audience.
• Then choose Create Audience.

4. Improving targeting using Facebook ad relevance diagnostics

Based on three ad relevancy diagnostics, Facebook assists you in determining how pertinent your advertisement is to the target you have chosen:

• Quality evaluation
• Ranking of engagement rates
• Ranking by conversion rate

All evaluations are based on how well your advertisement performed in comparison to similar advertisements. People want to view advertisements that are relevant to them, according to Facebook. Not only that, businesses see greater results when they display their adverts to suitable customers.

Due to this, before presenting an advertisement to a person, we analyse how relevant each ad is to that individual. Facebook ad targeting aims to show your ad to the audience who are most likely to act on the basis of that particular ad.

The following straightforward techniques will help you raise your ranking scores on Facebook’s ad relevancy diagnostics:

• Quality first, focus on both strong graphics and precise writing.
• Apply the appropriate ad format.
• Look to employ a modest frequency of ads.
• Time advertisements wisely.
• Utilize A/B testing to get better results.
• Watch out for advertisements of your rivals.

You may utilise the ad relevance diagnostics to search for chances to enhance targeting if your advertisements aren’t working as well as you’d like:

• Low-quality ranking: Try switching the target audience to a group that is more likely to enjoy the specific creative in the advertisement.
• Improve your targeting to be able to attract folks who are more likely to engage if your engagement rate is low. Try Audience Insights for assistance.
• Low conversion rate ranking: Choose a more suitable audience. Simply choosing “engaged shoppers” under purchasing behaviour might do this. However, it may also entail focusing on those who have an anniversary coming up or who are now exhibiting a behaviour or experiencing a life event that makes your product or service particularly pertinent to them at this time.

Keep in mind that finding the correct audience for your advertisement is the key to relevancy. No advertisement will be applicable to everyone. Only by doing effective targeting can you keep a high relevance rating going continuously. To ensure that you’re still targeting the proper audience with the appropriate material on Facebook, test frequently and strive for a regular update to the targeting options.

5. Targeting customers who shopped via Facebook ads

The option to target users who have previously indicated interest in making a purchase through Facebook advertisements is one that is sometimes neglected among the comprehensive targeting choices for Facebook ads.

By selecting the purchase behavior Engaged Shoppers, your ad audience to people who have clicked the Shop Now button on a Facebook ad within the last week will be limited. While some Facebook users might swipe through advertising, using this option will guarantee that you are seeing those who have recently (and lately) demonstrated a willingness to make a purchase based on ad content.

To use the targeting option for engaged shoppers:

• Open an existing ad set or create a new one, then scroll down to the Audience section.
• Enter Engaged Shoppers in the search box under Detailed Targeting.
• Simply choose Engaged Shoppers.

6. Finding that unicorn content

This advice is a little unique. Instead of selecting the ideal Facebook target demographic, focus on targeting the content of your advertisement. Larry Kim, the CEO of MobileMonkey, came up with this idea. He said that only around 2% of your content will be successful in driving high conversion rates and performing well on social media and search engine rankings. He contends that content marketing is a volume game and that the only way to reach the unicorns is to produce a tonne of “donkey” material.

What unicorn content do you have then? It’s the blog article that definitely goes viral on your social media platforms, rockets to the top of Google’s search results, and floods your landing sites with visitors. Based on criteria that are often used to determine exceptional material, it is impossible to anticipate what will “go unicorn” (like great writing, keywords, and readability). Instead, you must pay close attention to your social media performance and data.

Repurpose overachieving material into a Facebook ad when you find it. Create a video and an infographic for it. To make this material even more effective, test it in several formats with your core audiences. Most importantly, make sure you match your unicorn content to the audience that is most likely to engage with it by using the remaining Facebook ad targeting advice we’ve provided.

7. Precision is important with layered targeting

There are several targeting possibilities on Facebook. The selections are first broken down into three major categories: habits, interests, and demographics. But things get rather specific within each of these groups. For example, you may choose to target parents under demographics. You might even explicitly target parents with young children.

After that, you may click Narrow Audience to add more targeting layers. You may select to restrict your Facebook target audience based on relationship status and industry, for instance, under demographics. Consider how these many targeting techniques work together to provide a highly targeted audience. You can decide to target management-employed divorced parents of young children whereby it is merely a demographics-based analysis.

You may then restrict your target market to persons who are interested in beach holidays under Interests > Travel. Then, under habits, you may even more precisely target regular passengers from outside. See where this is headed? You might design a campaign that explicitly targets single parents in management-level professions who enjoy beach vacations and regularly travel, especially if you run a high-end beach resort that doesn’t provide a single supplement but does offer a daycare service.

You can target folks who have just relocated, started a new job, gotten engaged, or married if you offer goods or services that are even loosely related to these life events. People might be targeted throughout the month of their birthday or in the weeks before an anniversary. Even folks whose pals are celebrating birthdays soon might be your target. You can see on the right side of the website how tiny your following has grown as well as your prospective reach as you expand it. Facebook will alert you if you provide too much detail.

Instead of generic company promotion commercials, this method works well for targeted promos that are tailored to a specific demographic. For maximum results, combine this multilayer Facebook ad targeting with a landing page that specifically addresses the target audience.

Note: Make sure to choose Narrow Audience or Narrow Further each time you wish to add additional degree of targeting. Every item should specify that the chosen criterion must also be met.

8. Combining unique audiences

Not every product or campaign naturally lends itself to the type of targeted Facebook advertising described in the previous recommendation. It’s possible that you are unsure of the precise demographic or behaviour groups you want to include in a certain advertisement. You simply have a general idea of the target category. What should you do, therefore, if your Facebook target market is simply too big?

Even if the second audience appears entirely unrelated, try integrating it with it. Consider developing an advertising audience for this GoPro video of LEGO boats as an example. Refer below.

We may start by attracting viewers who are enthusiastic about GoPro, videography, or video cameras. Even if the target audience is just Americans between the ages of 22 and 55, that still results in a possible audience of 31.5 million people. Now, the video in this instance includes LEGO boats. What would be the obvious audience to include in this? Yes, fans of LEGO.

That reduces the audience to a possible 6.2 million. Additionally, since viewers would be really interested in the video content and not simply the product included in it, there would probably be a far better engagement rate. In this situation, we started from an existing video and worked backwards. However, you might also choose two unconnected audiences to mix, then produce a specific piece of content to address that audience.

9. Consider using broad targeting

What if you’re just starting out and are unsure about your target market? We’ve written a whole blog article about how audience research might help you begin to determine this but by starting with a wide Facebook ad targeting plan, you may also pick up a lot of knowledge. Instead of conversion-focused advertisements, this works best for brand awareness campaigns, but over time, the knowledge you get can help you improve your conversion targeting approach. Make a fresh brand awareness campaign with some very basic targeting, such a wide age range inside a big geographic area. Then, Facebook will utilise its algorithms to decide which users would respond best to your adverts. You may check Audience Insights or Advertisements Manager to see the demographics Facebook picked for your ads and how they performed after they have been running for a time. You may use this to learn how to develop your own target markets for next campaigns.