People ask me all.the.time— who the hell do I target in my ads, how do I know what the best audience is, and where do I even start with reaching the right people on Facebook???
While the answer to most of these questions usually comes down to testing… I do have a relatively simple 3-step process that I use when I’m setting up campaigns and Facebook Ad funnels for my clients.
You can use this 3-step process to relatively quickly and cost-efficiently discover the best targeting parameters to use in your ads, in order to find the exact people on Facebook that will become leads, spend money with you, and turn into loyal long-term customers…
Which is the goal, right?
Step #1: Research
Regardless of what your business entails, whether product-based or service-based, even if you know exactly who your audience is— there are still likely 100’s or even 1000’s of different ways to get at that audience through Facebook Advertising.
To get a sense of the available targeting parameters that might be a fit for a particular business, I’ll usually head into the Ads Manager as though I am creating a new campaign, and start by typing in a relatively generic interest into the Detailed Targeting box at the ad set level. Facebook then spits out related suggestions. (For example, I was just setting up a new campaign for a client that sells perfume, so I began by typing “perfume” into the Detailed Targeting box— which gave me more specific suggestions of interests to target, like FragranceNet.com, The Perfume Shop, etc etc.)
Next I’ll go to Google and start searching for related organizations, associations, media sites, public figures, etc that my target audience might like on Facebook.
Basically what I’m doing here is building out a very comprehensive list of all the different ways I might be able to reach my/my client’s target audience through the interest and behavior parameters available through the Ads Manager.
Step #2: Split-Test
Once you have your list ready to go, step #2 is running ads to each of those different audiences (via different ad sets) to see which performs best. I’d suggest starting with a minimum of 3-5 different audiences to split test.
This is important: select just ONE interest/behavior/public figure/etc per ad set.
I see so many people who just pile on hundreds of interests into the Detailed Targeting box— a huge disservice to your campaign and ad spend.
When you select just one parameter (layered on top of any baseline parameters, like age, gender, location, etc.), you ensure that you’re really able to segment out the different options that you researched in step #1, so you can really get a clear sense of what is working and what is not.
If you group everything together, Facebook isn’t going to tell you if there’s a particular interest within that group that is actually driving the majority of results. In that case, not only do you not learn anything, but also if you have 1-2 interests that are driving those results, but your budget is being spread/spent across all of the parameters you’ve grouped together — this ultimately drives up costs and makes your ad spend less effective, compared to if you broke out each parameter into its own ad set, tested ’em side-by-side, and paused (i.e. stopped spending on) the under-performing, budget-sucking audience options.
So, to reiterate— split test the audiences you compiled from step #1. Then turn off the “losers.”
Step #3: Analyze & Adjust
Once you’ve discovered which audiences are working, you can take it all a step further and start looking at your results through a demographical breakdown.
For example, let’s say you’ve done your split testing across a couple of different interests and found one that works really well. What you’re actually able to do in your Facebook Ads Manager is see a breakdown (by age, gender, location, etc.) of where you’re getting the majority of your conversions from.
So if you’re getting profitable conversions from a particular audience, but then find that, for example, most of your conversions within this audience come from women 34-45 years old, it would stand to reason that narrowing your targeting to only women in this age range would maximize your spend and improve results. In summary — analyze the data, and adjust accordingly.
Continue to research, split test, and analyze… and you’ll always be able to find your perfect target audiences.
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