6 Tips for Effective Facebook Audience Targeting

If you’re going to be successful using Facebook for your small business, you need to understand the platform’s audience targeting. Facebook has arguably the most powerful targeting tool of the social media outlets. Harness this ability, and you can see a great increase in your ROI.

You can create audience segments in the campaign setup phase, or through Audience Manager (found in the Ads Manager on your page). Let’s take a look at Facebook audience targeting so you can rock those ad campaigns.

Know Your Customer

Facebook has a lot of users. With over one billion active daily users, if you’re not intentional with your targeting, you’re wasting money on users that will never buy into your product or service. Before you dive into your audience targeting, take the time to set up your buyer personas. These handy tools will help you with your content, ad campaigns, and customer interactions.

Know Your Options: Facebook Audience Types

Facebook has three audience types. Each presents a unique opportunity to create the perfect target audience for your campaigns. An effective strategy will use a combination of these tools to get the most of their Facebook campaigns. Here are your options:

Saved Audiences – Audiences that you can define by selecting the user’s interests, location, age, devices, income level, and so on.

Custom Audiences – These audience segments allow you to retarget people who have already engaged with your content. For example, have you ever visited a product website, only to find an ad for that product on Facebook shortly thereafter? You were part of that company’s custom audience.

Lookalike Audiences – This allows you to extend your reach by targeting people who are similar to your existing customer database. The benefit of this is you’re essentially teaching Facebook which audience characteristics are the most likely to convert.

Narrow Your Audience Efficiently

When creating a Saved Audience on Facebook, make good use of the AND/OR targeting options. These are pretty self-explanatory. “AND” targeting tells Facebook that your desired user needs to fit into multiple categories. “OR” targeting tells Facebook that you’re adding a new category of targeting. You can also exclude certain audience segments.

You’ll want to create multiple audience segments for your Ads Manager. This allows you to build and exclude certain audience segments from specific campaigns. For example, you could create a Custom Audience of past converted users to prevent your ads from reaching people who are already your customers.

Master the Art of Retargeting

One of the most powerful tools in the Facebook Audience Targeting platform is the ability to retarget users who have already demonstrated interest in your content. In order to incorporate this practice, you’ll need to set up a Facebook Pixel. A pixel is a bit of code that keeps track of those who visit your website, and sends that information back to Facebook.

The key to success with these ads is to make sure you’re creating custom copy for this audience. They’ve already seen your initial content, so you’ll want to delve a little deeper and move into the next stage in your sales pitch. Try offering a discount, free shipping, or another offer to entice your audience into converting from lead to customer.

Use Your Google Analytics to Maximize Your Audience Targeting

Even though Facebook Targeting offers fantastic opportunities to reach your audience, it still requires quite a bit of guesswork on its own. Guesswork in the marketing world means additional budget, and longer turnaround for ROI. To shorten this process, implement Google Analytics for your website.

If it’s efficient conversions that you’re after – you can find all the information you need to target your ideal audience in the Google Analytics demographic report. This tool tracks who is visiting your website, where they are from, which devices they are using, and more. You can also easily identify which blog posts are receiving the most organic interest – and which blog posts you should boost on your Facebook for maximum traffic.

Stay Tuned

One thing to remember is that Facebook changes its ad capabilities and best practices relatively frequently. Make yourself familiar with the Facebook for Business resource website for the latest information.

Do you need help with your Facebook campaigns? Schedule a free consultation with Heeren Content & Strategy. Veteran and military spouse-owned businesses receive a 15% discount on all services!

Guest Contributor: Erika Heeren is the founder of Heeren Content & Strategy. With 14 years of experience marketing and public relations, she has a professional focus on integrated media spanning 16 different industries.

Heeren works with small businesses and non-profit organizations to provide affordable, professional-quality content development, marketing, and public relations services. Her clients include local small business owners, marketing agencies, public universities, media outlets, Huffington Post-published authors, IT firms, and non-profit organizations.

A military spouse herself, Erika is an outspoken advocate for veteran and military spouse education, employment, and entrepreneurship. As a volunteer eMentor for the Military Entrepreneur Program, she works one-on-one with aspiring military-affiliated entrepreneurs to help them grow their business. She also volunteers as a digital marketing instructor with Treasure Valley SCORE.

Heeren is an award-winning writer and has been featured on NextGen Military Spouse, Veteran on the Move, Wright Stuff Radio, and Social Media Week.