6 Facebook Ads Targeting Tips

Facebook ads are considered as one of the cheapest ads online since they help reach a larger audience with lesser budgets as compared to the other social media platforms. Most of the campaign types on Facebook use a fixed charge system instead of the infamous ‘PPC’. However, if not managed properly, these campaigns can drain your budgets fast without collecting relevant leads which may be converted.

Here are a few methods you can follow to get the maximum conversions out of your Facebook ads without having to spend thousands of dollars in ad-spend.

1. Identify Your Overachieving Content

We all know for a fact that not all content we post on any platform shines out and attracts a lot of traffic. Less than 10% of the content present on your website performs unusually well and achieves high conversion rates. To get the maximum out of any ad campaign, you need to identify this overachieving content of yours and repurpose it as a Facebook ad. Getting to the specific piece of content might require some extra effort and you may have to run a lot of Social Media Analytics to figure it out, but once you get your hands on it, do not let it go. This content is already capable of attracting so much leads and conversions without any sponsorship, and the things it will be able to achieve when sponsored are only limited by imagination.

2. Audience Insights: Use Your Competitors’ Audience

Facebook Audience Insights can be really helpful if you’re having trouble getting to the right audience for your ad. The tool will provide you with all the relevant data to get to new followers and potential customers.

An efficient way of using Facebook Audience Insights would be to find out who your direct competitors are and start marketing to their already established audiences. Here is how you can do this,

• Open the Audience Insights Dashboard and select ‘Everyone on Facebook’.
• Select basic targeting options according to your audience persona under the ‘Create Audience’ tab.
• Click on ‘Page Likes’ to find out the pages your audience likes.
• Type one of your competitors’ names in the Interests box back in the ‘Create Audience’ tab.
• Copy the demographic information that comes up on the right side of the screen.
• Use this information to create new demographics insights and test it against one of your existing audiences.
• Click on ‘Save’ and you’re done.

3. Use Layered Targeting aka ‘Narrow Further’

Facebook offers a couple of basic targeting options which include demographics, interests, and behavior. Digging deeper into these options, you can find our pretty granular details. You can click on either one of these to find out the layers underneath. Using these layers in your audience preferences helps you get to a very specific group of people and filter out all the irrelevant people. For instance, if you are a daycare center selling babysitting services, you could easily target people who are parents and work in offices through the layered demographics tab. 

4. Use Ad Relevance Diagnostics

Facebook recently updated its relevance score with three new ‘Ad Relevance Diagnostics’. These included, Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking, and Conversion Rate Ranking. Make sure you use these diagnostics and rankings to check your strategy and correct it if need be. If your ads aren’t doing well in terms of reach, engagement, or conversions, here are some ways you can make them do better.

• For a low-quality ranking, try to change the target audience to one that may appreciate the specific creative in the ad more than the current one.
• If the engagement rate ranking is low, try refining your ad targeting to reach people more likely to engage with the post. Going back to ‘Audience Insights’ might be of help here.
• Lastly, if the conversion rate rankings are low, try targeting ‘engaged shoppers’ who are already interested in your product or service. You can easily set this up under the ‘Purchase Behavior’ tab.

5. Always Stay Ethical

Facebook Ad Campaigns and other relevant platforms aside, this is the one rule that applies to almost all kinds of advertisement campaigns, online or offline. While operating in the marketing departments, there is always a temptation to get your hands dirty, and in some cases, this might even work in the short run. In such cases, you need to realize that your reputation is of the utmost importance in the eyes of potential consumers. Not only will such activities reduce your worth but might also get you blacklisted from Facebook.

• Avoid Controversy

Do not make statements or even take sides on controversial topics, and do not put down another group to advance yours. Your intended audience might appreciate such stuff, but they are not the only ones who will be able to view these ads. A controversial ad may go viral in a matter of minutes and ruin your reputation for good.

• Using Purchased Contacts

Using contact details such as phone numbers and emails purchased from a third-party source has zero-tolerance with the community guidelines on Facebook ads. But this is not all. If your audience gets the slightest notion that their data was copied off of some contacts list, not only will they steer away from your page, they will try to avoid any and all interaction with your brand.

6. The Takeaway

Facebook keeps getting updated frequently and the ad settings and features too keep getting changed. This may affect your ad campaigns and the budgets you dedicate to them but if you too stay update on such details, you can easily play around with the new additions and make them work for your benefit. Following these tips might not land you into the maximum conversion rates but they will surely help you improve your current strategy and proceed in the right direction.