How to choose an effective targeting strategy for Facebook ads

Facebook advertising is an indispensable tool for businesses within all industries and of all sizes.

Whether you're an established service provider or a startup e-commerce store, implementing a strong Facebook advertising strategy with effective targeting will ultimately improve your awareness and conversions.

So, let's dive into the steps you should put in place to set your Facebook ads up for success.  

Who are your target audience?

For any business, the first step towards Facebook targeting success is to understand and define your target audience clearly. To do this, you should consider the customer base you have already built - no matter what size that may be.

With this information, you should be able to determine their demographics, behaviours, interests and preferences. Things like their age, location, occupation, gender, income, interests and hobbies should also be thought about at this stage.

The more in-depth understanding you have of those who may purchase from you, the better you can align your content, ads and other marketing efforts to impact them. 

Have you considered audience insights?

One of the reasons Facebook ads are loved by so many is for their powerful tools, including their audience insights. Whether you run your Facebook marketing efforts in-house or with the help of a Facebook advertising agency, audience insights will help marketers understand target audiences better.

With the help of this tool, you can gain in-depth, valuable insights into the demographics, interests, and behaviours of your audience - and as mentioned earlier, this is incredibly important when creating your Facebook ads strategy.

Targeting the wrong person at the wrong time does not and will not lead to conversions. At this stage, exploring multiple segments, identifying patterns, and analysing user characteristics will help you find a targeting strategy that works for you.  

Now, let's segment your audience

You will probably know this already - not all Facebook users are alike and take the same journeys through the platform. They also do not share the same interests and expectations.

This means that targeting everyone the same way will likely see little to no results. To overcome this, you will need to segment these larger audiences into smaller, specific groups who share similar or the same interests and characteristics.

Doing so will enable you to tailor specific ads to specific people based on the information we have about their preferences. Tailoring your ads in this way increases relevance and engagement and, therefore, leads to more clicks and conversions.

You may even consider separating ads into ad sets for different audiences to test which ones resonate with these different segments the best. 

Start utilising custom audiences

Utilising your existing data, website visitors and engagement; you can create custom audiences - again, this is one of the many useful features that Facebook ads provide. With this in mind, you can implement this to target users who have already shown an interest in your products or are aware of your brand.

With these custom audiences, you will have the benefit of delivering highly targeted ads to the right users at the right time. These users will be at different stages of the customer journey; some may be at the awareness stage, and some could be moments away from hitting the purchase button. 

Don't miss the lookalike feature

As I mentioned previously, Facebook offers marketers and business owners extensive options when it comes to targeting. Now you have your custom audiences, it's time to think about Lookalike Audiences, too. Your existing audience will have their own demographics and preferences.

However, this is just a small group of people on Facebook with those interests - there are millions more. Creating a Lookalike Audience will reach new users who share these characteristics with your existing audience.

With the use of your data, Facebook will be able to identify and target other Facebook users who are likely to buy your product or service. This feature is incredibly important for businesses looking to expand their reach while ensuring their targeting remains relevant with a high potential for future sales. 

Test, optimise and repeat!

Achieving results from effective targeting will not happen overnight. This will be an ongoing process that requires time, effort and investment. You will need to continuously test and optimise your targeting, copy and content to ensure it is performing and achieving results.

You should experiment with various criteria, formats, creatives and messaging to identify what resonates with your audience segments. Monitoring the ongoing performance of all of your ad sets will allow you to track metrics, click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend.

With this data, you can adjust your Facebook ads accordingly to maximise their effectiveness.

To conclude, with effective Facebook ad targeting, you can drive success for your business. With a well-defined target audience segmented appropriately, and with the help of Facebook's powerful ad tools, you can test and optimise campaigns that produce results and have maximum impact.

With a strategic mindset, you can achieve the full potential of Facebook advertising with the right message for the right people at the right time.

You may also utilise an advertising DSP to help you with your marketing efforts.