Who should I target? How much should I spend? When should I run my ads?
If you’re new to Facebook advertising, and you’re asking yourself all these questions, don’t worry — you’re not alone.
Today we’re going to help you answer that first one, with these five Facebook ad targeting tips guaranteed to boost the ROI of all your campaigns.
1. Deliver ads to your customers first
The more relevant an ad is to a prospect; the more likely they are to click on it. That’s why you should focus your efforts on existing customers first.
With Custom Audiences you can upload a list of phone numbers or email addresses that Facebook will serve ads to.
Research has shown that Facebook Custom Audiences have the potential to produce sky-high ROI.
Instead of sailing into uncharted waters, start with the audience you know will find your message highly relevant.
2. Serve ads to your fans
Facebook whiz Jon Loomer saw his ROI jump 35 times when targeting his Facebook fans over his non-fans. Take a look at these graphs he compiled comparing the two audiences:
As the first graph shows, he spent around $50 on the non-fan group and didn’t make a single dollar in revenue. With the fan audience, though, he spent $207 and earned $9,481 in revenue.
Why would there be such a contrast in spend and revenue with the two audiences?
It’s pretty simple when you think about it: Your fans have already liked your page. They’ve already expressed an interest in what you have to offer. Along with your custom audiences, they’re some of the most qualified groups to target.
3. Learn Facebook’s Power Editor tool
When you run Facebook ads for your business, there are a few different ways to go about it.
You can create an ad by clicking “Create Campaign” or “Power Editor” in your Ads Manager as well as clicking the “boost post” button at the bottom of one of your posts:
Spend less time boosting your posts and use Facebook’s self-serve ad tool to run your promotions, and devote more time using the Power Editor. With it you’ll be able to:
- Target audiences with more options
- Create ads faster
- Optimize better than ever before
It’s the tool used by professional marketers to deliver highly targeted ads, and it’s not difficult to learn. Take the time and give yourself a leg up on your competition.
4. Use Audience Insights to nail down your target demographic
Facebook offers a number of tools to help you nail down your target demographic. One of the most powerful is Audience Insights.
It’s accessible via your ads manager under the “Tools” drop-down:
Once you click, a dialogue box will appear that will give you the option to:
- Learn more about people connected to your page (use when you want to learn information about people who are already connected to your Facebook page)
- Learn more about everyone on Facebook (use when you want to learn about all Facebook users)
Click “Everyone on Facebook” and then use the left sidebar to input age, sex, location, or interests, (and don’t forget all the other targeting options under the “advanced” drop-down) to learn more about a specific audience.
For example, you’ll see that Facebook classifies the majority of women aged 30-35 who live in San Francisco as living the “Established Elite” lifestyle — couples and singles. With no school-age children at home and the second highest income in the country, these households have enormous disposable incomes and pursue correlating luxuries and activities.”
If you look on that top menu bar next to “Demographics,” you’ll also see that Facebook can give you information on the pages your audience likes, the locations they’re in, the activities they take part in, their household, and their purchase habits.
If you haven’t narrowed down your target audience for your Facebook ads, this is the perfect place to start.
5. Use Facebook’s Graph Search to learn even more about your audience
Facebook’s search is a lot more powerful than most people realize. Using Graph Search, you can find people, posts, pages that are related to your keywords. It’s a great way to discover more targeting options for your ads.
Try typing in “Pages similar to (one of your brand’s competitors).” Here are the results I got when I typed in “Pages similar to Mashable:”
Or try “Pages liked by people who like (your business, or a competitor’s)” Here, Facebook tells me that people who like Mashable also like the pages “Humans of New York” and “Ted.”
Click here to learn more about the capabilities of Facebook Graph Search.
Tying it all together
Armed with these Facebook ad targeting tips, you’ll be able to pinpoint the people on the social network who are interested in your business — and deliver them targeted ads that are highly relevant to their wants and needs.
Just remember that highly relevant Facebook ads won’t produce any revenue without optimized post-click landing pages to complement them. To create and deploy yours quickly and efficiently, create them with Instapage today.