Facebook Targeting

Ad Sets and Audiences

In the previous episode of our Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads, we covered Campaigns, Ad Sets and Ads. We have also talked about Facebook Campaigns and Marketing Objectives. Next is Ad Sets and Audiences.

Prior to placing your Facebook Ads, you should always create audiences using Facebook Audiences in the Ads Manager. Audience targeting is one of the most powerful features of the ad platforms and what makes Facebook one of the most advanced advertising networks available to marketers. While you can do your targeting while creating your ads, we believe targeting should be done before the actual placement of the ads. Do your research. Understand exactly who you want to reach and then work with Audiences to define those targets.

Facebook Audiences allows you to create three types of audiences: custom audiences, lookalike audiences and saved audiences. Today we are going to conquer custom audiences. In future episodes, we will talk about the power of lookalike audiences and how to create saved audiences.

As of April 2017, there are four types of custom audiences.
 Customer File
 Website Traffic
 App Activity
 Engagement on Facebook

Unlike other audiences, custom audiences are not defined by chosen criteria. Instead they come from other sources. Those sources are the difference between the different types of custom audiences.

Customer File

The customer file custom audience is extremely useful. I often recommend that most businesses use this audience as part of their overall advertising strategy. The customer file allows you to import a list of email addresses. Facebook then looks to match those email addresses with the email addresses they have on file for people’s accounts. If you are a user of MailChimp, you can directly connect your account to Facebook ads and it will automatically update.

Website Traffic

Website remarketing, or advertising to individuals who have visited your website, is another very powerful tool. Facebook allows you to insert a piece of code on to your website so that when those visitors return to Facebook, they will see your website. You can also be creative and advertise to only people who have visited specific pages on your website.

App Activity

The App Activity is the custom audience allowing you to create a list of people who have taken a specific action in your app or game. This is very close to the website traffic audience except that it deals with apps instead of your website. Of the four types of custom audiences, this audience is the one in which I have the least experience because it only deals with app developers.

Engagement on Facebook

The Engagement on Facebook audience is the newest of the Facebook Custom Audiences and it is one of the most awesome. You have different types of engagers that you can target.

• Video – This custom audience allows you to target people who have spent time watching your videos online. If you publish Facebook videos regularly, this is an audience that you should be experimenting with. You choose the specific videos you want to target and then one of the following criteria:

1. People who have seen at least 3 seconds of your video
2. People who have seen at least 10 seconds of your video
3. People who have seen at least 25% of your video
4. People who have seen at least 50% of your video
5. People who have seen at least 75% of your video
6. People who have seen at least 95% of your video

• Lead Forms – This custom audience allows you to target people who have filled out a lead form that you have created through Facebook. Lead forms are an often overlooked feature of Facebook Business Pages that allow you to collect information from users.

• Canvas – Facebook created the Canvas – a way to tell a story using a combination of different components including text, links, carousels, videos, buttons and product feeds. You can now advertise to visitors who have some sort of engagement with a canvas.

• Page – This is one of the best additions to the Enagement on Facebook custom audience. You can now target visitors who have had some sort of engagement with your Facebook page. Here are some of the options that are offered by FB Ads…

1. Everyone who engaged with your Page – This includes anyone who has visited or engaged with posts or ads on your FB page including FB Messenger
2. Anyone who visited your page
3. People who have engaged with a specific post or ad
4. People who have clicked on a specific Call to Action button
5. People who have messaged your page
6. People who have saved any of your pages or posts

Facebook Custom Audiences are extremely powerful. For many campaigns, they may not be your primary audience but they are incredible secondary ads. So a strategy may include using saved audiences to bring new people to your page or website, then using a custom audience to move those individuals along the sales/marketing funnel.