Running Facebook ads with a high impression rate isn’t enough to consider your ads successful. Creating Facebook ads that perform starts with defining who exactly you hope to view your ad campaign. Above all, you want to target the right Facebook users who are interested in your product so you can see an actual return on the money you spend on your ads. Luckily, we’ve compiled a quick and easy guide to the different types of Facebook audiences! Read through this guide to find the right audience that works for you.
Creating Facebook Audiences
Before you dive into this guide, you’ll want to understand where to go in your Facebook ads account to set up your audiences. In the Facebook Business Manager, navigate to “Business Settings” and then “Audiences.” From there, choose one of the three audience options we dive into below.
Custom Audiences
Why should you use this audience?
Custom audiences are powerful tools for targeting specific groups of Facebook users based on information that is specific to your business. By nature, this type of audience pulls a more targeted group of people that have existing relationships with your company, so there’s a higher chance that they will respond to your ad with an action you want them to take.
What types of custom audiences can you create?
You can create custom audiences in four main categories: customer files, web traffic, app activity, or Facebook engagement. This means that you can:
- Create a custom audience based on a list of customer data you’ve imported into your account
- Create an audience from your Facebook Pixel which tracks your web traffic
- Group people based on activity on your mobile app (if you have one)
- Create an audience of people who have interacted with a Facebook video or post of yours, have saved any of your content, or who like your Facebook Page
If you haven’t set up your Facebook Pixel yet, here’s a guide on how to get that process started!
How do you make a custom audience?
Once you’ve selected “Custom Audience” as your audience type, you’ll see a list of options from which you can choose. Select one of those options to create your custom audience. To use website views, you’ll need to have your pixel configured.
Saved Audiences
Why should you use this Facebook audience?
Saved audiences allow you to create Facebook audiences base on demographic data. There are so many targeting options with this one and it allows you to widen your net of impact to users who have not yet interacted with your business.
What types of saved audiences can you create?
When you’re putting together your saved audience, you can target your audience using their location, age, gender, income level, or general interests. You can also use behavior-based targeting to specify people who have liked certain events or based on life events that they have saved.
How do you make a saved audience?
Select “Saved Audience” as your audience type and then set your filters on the next screen. You can set location data and parameters like whether or not the user lives in the area or is traveling there. You want to target based on how you think it will impact your campaign, but not make the audience too small that your ad won’t serve to as many people as you’d like.
Lookalike Facebook Audiences
Why should you use this Facebook audience?
Lookalike audiences are perfect for capturing new traffic that highly converts. Why? They take the specifications from your custom audiences and pull Facebook users who match the same criteria as your custom audience.
With lookalike audiences, you are only targeting people that are quite likely to be interested in your campaign, which is so helpful when every budget dollar counts!
How do you make a lookalike audience?
Choose “Lookalike Audience” as your audience type, then choose a custom audience that you’ve created as your source. Choose the location where you want to pull similar users to your custom audience. Set your audience size, and then hit submit. There you are – a nice lookalike audience to whom you can run your beautiful ads.
Ultimately, how you smartly target your audiences directly impacts your return on investment for your ad campaigns. You want to make sure your ads are relevant to the people who see them in their feed or on their stories, or else you’re wasting your ad budget.
