6 Ways to Refine Your Facebook Ad Audience
Key takeaways
- Facebook Ads offers several features that allow you to refine your audience – Audience Insights, Lookalike Audiences, and Custom Audiences being the most commonly used.
- But you can also level up your strategy by using super granular targeting details, which can be bolstered by AI.
- And though it sounds counter-intuitive, there’s also broad targeting which expands your audience. This can help you discover potential customers your previous efforts may failed to reach.
Facebook Ads is fundamental to the digital marketer’s toolbelt, offering businesses a platform with which they can reach a vast and diverse audience. As of Q4 2024, Facebook had over 3 billion monthly active users, and 3 million businesses using its Ads service.
Both multinationals and small businesses face challenges on the platform – namely, the competition its popularity incites, and the dynamism caused by its continually evolving algorithm. These factors make it difficult for businesses to perform consistently and keep costs down in their efforts to reach those prized target audiences.
One way you can tackle these challenges is to refine your ad audience. Honing in on specific demographics, interests, and behaviours, businesses can ensure their ads reach the most relevant users. Not only will these potential customers be your most qualified leads, but it will also reduce ad spend wastage by focusing your efforts on a more relevant audience.
Audience targeting can be carried out in a wide variety of ways – Facebook has a number of features for this purpose. Plus, there are new approaches that use developments in AI and machine learning that you may not have explored yet. This blog will explore six strategies and provide tips for implementing them.
Refining your audience won’t simply help you stand out in a competitive space. The following strategies have the secondary benefits of improving engagement, providing accurate audience insights, and increasing the ROI of your campaigns. Let’s dive in:
1. Implement Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike Audiences – a tried and tested feature of Facebook Ads – enables you to reach new people who are similar to your existing customers. By using your best-performing customer lists as a source, you can expand your reach to potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviours with your current audience. To effectively implement Lookalike Audiences on Facebook, follow these steps:
1. Start by choosing a high-quality source audience, such as your most valuable customers or those who have completed a specific conversion action. Ideally, this audience should consist of 1,000 to 50,000 people to provide sufficient data for Facebook’s algorithm.
2. Navigate to Facebook Ads Manager and create a Custom Audience based on your source audience. This can include website visitors, app users, or customer lists. Ensure your data accurately reflects your target users.
3. In Ads Manager, select the ‘Create Audience’ option and choose ‘Lookalike Audience.’ Specify your source audience and the location where you want to find similar users. Adjust the audience size based on your goals (a smaller percentage of between 1 and 2% will closely match your source audience, while a larger percentage (up to 10%) will increase reach but reduce similarity).
4. Utilise Facebook’s advanced options to refine your Lookalike Audience. This includes adding filters based on demographics, interests, and behaviours to further hone in on potential customers who exhibit characteristics similar to your best customers.
5. Monitor the performance of your Lookalike Audience. You might like to conduct A/B tests to compare different audience sizes and combinations, analysing the results to discover new ways to optimise and refine your strategies.
Behind the scenes, Facebook is using machine learning to analyse your best customers’ data and find similar users. As these capabilities improve, so will the performance of your targeting efforts.
2. Utilise detailed targeting options
Facebook offers granular targeting options that allow you to narrow down your audience based on specific demographics, interests, and behaviours. This includes targeting based on life events, job roles, and purchase behaviours, which helps in creating hyper-focused ad campaigns tailored to very specific audience segments. To effectively utilise Facebook’s detailed targeting options, follow these steps:
1. Facebook Ads Manager, navigate to the Audience section and select Detailed Targeting. This feature allows you to refine your audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviours.
2. Use demographic filters to target specific age groups, genders, education levels, job titles, and relationship statuses. Select interests that align with your product or service. Use behaviour filters to target users based on their activities, such as purchasing behaviour, device usage, and travel patterns.
3. Combine multiple targeting options to create a more specific audience. Use the ‘Narrow Further’ option to add additional layers of criteria. E.g., target ‘Parents with toddlers’ who are also ‘Frequent travellers’ for a family holiday package.
4. Exclude certain demographics or interests to refine your audience further. E.g., exclude users under 18 if your product is not for children.
These detailed targeting options allow you to create highly specific and effective ad campaigns that resonate with your desired audience. To improve further, use an AI analytics tool to help identify the most relevant targeting options. AI can analyse vast amounts of user data, providing insights into demographic details and behaviours that are most predictive of engagement and conversion.
3. Create Custom Audiences
Another way to refine your targeting efforts is to use Custom Audiences – which allows you to retarget users who have already interacted with your brand. This can include people who have visited your website, used your app, or engaged with your Facebook content. This option is attractive because it utilises your own data and reaches out to people who are already familiar with your brand. Follow these steps:
1. In Facebook Ads Manager, go to the Audiences section and click on ‘Create Audience’ followed by ‘Custom Audience’.
2. Select the source for your Custom Audience. You can choose from several options –
- Website traffic (track users who have visited your website using the Meta Pixel. Set specific criteria such as people who visited certain pages or performed specific actions (e.g., added to cart)).
- App activity (target users who have engaged with your mobile app. This requires the Facebook SDK to track in-app events).
- Customer list (upload a list of customer emails, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs. Ensure your list is formatted correctly and complies with Facebook’s data requirements).
- Engagement (target users who have interacted with your content on Facebook or Instagram, such as those who watched your videos, filled out lead forms, or interacted with your events).
3. Specify the details for your Custom Audience. For website and app activity, set the timeframe (e.g., last 30 days). For customer lists, map your data fields correctly to match Facebook’s identifiers.
4. Name your Custom Audience and save it. You can now use this audience in your ad campaigns to retarget users who have shown interest in your brand.
5. Regularly update your Custom Audiences to include new data. This keeps your retargeting efforts fresh and relevant. Use performance insights to adjust your targeting strategies as needed.
Since previous customers are already semi-qualified for a repeat conversion, targeting this group is an effective approach when you wish to maximise the impact of your Facebook Ads.
4. Employ A/B testing
The purpleplanet blog is a big fan of A/B testing – and for good reason! When improving any marketing campaign, this sort of testing is super useful because it helps you discover blind spots and the most effective approaches.
In this setting, use A/B testing to test ad copy, headlines, images, ad placement, or targeting criteria. Don’t forget the following best practices:
- Determine the specific metric you wish to improve before your test (e.g., click-through rate).
- Test only one variable at a time.
- When creating two or more versions of your ad, keep the differences minimal so any results are clear.
- Show your two or more variables to similar audience segments under similar conditions.
- Avoid making changes during the test to ensure results can be relied upon.
To save time and resources you may choose to use AI to simulate your A/B tests. Machine learning algorithms can predict the performance of different ad variations, but they must be powered by high-quality data. Additionally, they might not account for all real-world variables such as changing market conditions, unforeseen competitor actions, or unprecedented audience behaviours.
5. Use broad targeting and audience expansion
While detailed targeting is crucial, sometimes broader targeting can be beneficial. Broad targeting allows Facebook’s algorithm more freedom to find the best users within a larger group. Combining this with audience expansion features can help discover new potential customers who may not fit into narrowly defined criteria but are still likely to be interested in your offerings.
To effectively use broad targeting and audience expansion in Facebook ads, follow these steps:
1. Start by selecting broad interest categories rather than highly specific ones. This approach allows Facebook’s algorithm to optimise who sees your ad based on performance data, rather than restricting it to a narrowly defined audience.
2. For broad targeting, choose general interests, such as ‘fitness’ instead of ‘yoga for seniors.’
3. Enable Facebook’s audience expansion feature, which allows the platform to show your ads to people outside your defined interests who are likely to convert. This can be particularly useful for discovering new potential customers who may not fall into your initial targeting parameters but exhibit similar characteristics.
4. Regularly monitor the performance of these broad campaigns. If the results are positive, gradually narrow down the audience based on the data gathered, allowing you to refine your targeting without missing out on potential leads.
5. In your Facebook Ads Manager, activate the Advantage detailed targeting option. This feature leverages machine learning to identify new user segments that are likely to be interested in your ads, even if they don’t fit traditional targeting criteria.
While expanding your audience may sound counter-intuitive, these approaches can help you reach leads your efforts have hitherto excluded and open up your campaigns to more success.
6. Leverage Facebook Audience Insights
Facebook’s Audience Insights tool can provide a deeper understanding of your target demographics, interests, and behaviours, which you can then use to refine your audience targeting.
In your Facebook Ads Manager, explore the demographics, interests, and behaviours of your potential audience. Begin by selecting a specific audience, such as your page followers or all Facebook users. This provides a comprehensive overview of your audience’s age, gender, relationship status, education level, job titles, and locations.
There are countless ways to take advantage of the insights you gain:
- The ‘Interests’ section will show what your audience is passionate about. Identify specific interests that resonate with your audience, enabling you to refine your targeting to include users with similar interests.
- Understand the core characteristics of your existing audience and identify any patterns or common traits.
- Use the ‘Page Likes’ section to see which other pages your audience likes. This can give you insights into their preferences and help you find partnership opportunities or ideas for targeting similar audiences.
- ‘Location’ data identifies where your audience is based. This can help in creating location-specific campaigns or understanding regional preferences.
- Compare different audience segments. E.g., compare the interests and behaviours of your most engaged audience with those who are less engaged. This comparison can highlight key differences and help you focus on the segments that are most likely to convert.
- Segment your audience based on their engagement levels with your content. Create separate audiences for high, medium, and low-engagement users. This segmentation allows you to tailor your ad content and budget allocation according to the engagement potential of each group.
- After identifying the characteristics of your best-performing segments, create Lookalike Audiences to reach new users who share similar traits with your most engaged customers.
While you endeavour to refine your Facebook Ad targeting, Audience Insights will be your best friend. As long as you’re creative and using sufficient data, the possibilities will have no bounds!
Final thoughts
As you refine your Facebook Ad audience, remember that innovation and adaptation are key. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and staying ahead requires a willingness to experiment with new strategies and technologies. Embrace AI advancements, explore untapped demographics, and continuously test your assumptions.
By doing so, you’ll not only improve your current campaigns but also uncover insights that can drive future growth. Always think of your audience as dynamic and multifaceted, and let this perspective guide your advertising efforts toward greater relevance and impact.
To help get your new Facebook strategy off the ground, reach out to us here at purpleplanet.