Facebook Targeting: A Step-by-Step Scheme + 5 Life Hacks

Targeted advertising lets you selectively show a post to people based on specific interests and characteristics.

This way, out of all the users of a social network, you'll be able to choose precisely those who are potentially interested in your product or service.

For example, launch targeting toward people interested in business or finance.

And also specify age, gender, regional affiliation, down to the smallest parameters.

The advantage of the method is the most precise hit on the audience.

In addition, a campaign can be set up for a specific goal: traffic, reach, lead generation, app installation, and more.

Let's look at why it's important for you to know how to set up targeting on Facebook.

For a beginner, setting up targeting may seem like a difficult task. However, that's not the case.

Everything is accessible if you approach the matter systematically.

To start, you need an advertising account, a bank card linked to it, and a marketing plan.

You also need to figure out the goal of launching the campaign and the audience setup.

Choose the placements and locations for displaying ads (Facebook, Instagram, related apps).

Depending on the chosen placement, the ad format will change (video, image, carousel, etc.).

According to statistics, Facebook accounts for more than 45% of monthly social network visits.

Therefore, you shouldn't ignore this traffic channel.

Let's look at how to competently set up advertising on Facebook.

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Preparing to set up targeting

Like any marketing activity, launching advertising on Facebook should begin with developing a strategy.

For this, a marketing plan is required.

We'll talk about this in this chapter.

Marketing plan

This is a planning tool that contains strategic information about launching an advertising campaign.

What's included in a marketing plan?

• target audiences (descriptions of personas and avatars, collected target audiences, traffic from the site);
• commercial offer (texts for different target audiences, banner design);
• traffic channels (post promotion, remarketing, traffic to the website);
• analysis of results (A/B tests, reach, cost per click).

It's desirable for the plan to be drawn up jointly with a marketer and a targeting specialist.

At this stage it's important to work through the campaign strategy, the target audience personas, and the ad hypotheses.

However, if you don't have any helpers, you can manage on your own too.

Here it's important to understand the key traffic channels, the methods of interacting with the audience, and the clients' pains and needs.

For this, a primary marketing analysis is carried out.

Setting up audiences

By creating several target audiences in an advertising campaign, you'll be able to precisely hit the clients' pains and needs (with the help of text wording and creative design).

This is how hypothesis testing is carried out.

For example, you can create different variants of banners — separately for women and men, as well as for teenagers or couples.

Dividing audiences implies the segmentation of advertising budgets.

As a result — you can find the most effective ads and reduce the cost of acquiring clients.

To set up audiences, you need to go to the Facebook ADS Manager, the “Audiences” section.

Several types of audience are available:

• custom;
• lookalike;
• saved.

Custom audience

These are people who have, in one way or another, already shown interest in your product or company.

You can create such an audience using:

• clients' contact information (email, phone numbers);
• website or mobile app traffic (through installing the Facebook pixel, which is placed in the code).

Thus, your ad will be shown only to those who have previously visited your online resource, downloaded the app, or left a request on the site.

For more on which triggers and ads to use in remarketing, watch the video:

We also advise studying the types of promotions on Facebook.

They may complement and diversify your content strategy.

If you have clients' contact data, you can upload it as a list (a .txt or .csv file).

In doing so, each email must start on a new line.

An example of such a file:

Lookalike audience

It allows you to reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your current clients.

This way, you can take any existing audience as a basis, as well as users who liked your page or conversion pixel data.

To create a lookalike audience, specify:

• the source of the lookalike audience;
• the location;
• the audience size.

Creating a lookalike audience lets you substantially expand reach and attract new clients.

According to statistics, about 60 million active business accounts have been created on Facebook.

Therefore, it's worth taking a closer look at this traffic channel.

Saved audience

A saved audience is what you should start with if you don't have clients' contact data or you don't use the Facebook pixel. Everything is simple here.

You can manually set the targeting parameters and save them, so as not to duplicate them when launching a new advertising campaign.

When creating an audience, specify the basic characteristics:

• the audience name;
• age;
• location;
• gender;
• language.

And then move on to the detailed targeting settings.

Enter the key interests of the audience (in accordance with those you outlined in the marketing plan).

3 key tips when creating a saved audience:

• use “Suggestions” to add more interests and expand the audience reach (if necessary);
• analyze the size of the chosen audience in the right-hand box;
• test hypotheses (combine different variants of interests, test their number until you select the optimal combination).

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Setting up targeting

If you have a ready marketing plan on hand and you've worked on creating audiences, it's time to get down to the direct setup of targeting.

• Creating a campaign

To create an advertising campaign, go to the ADS Manager and click the “Create” button.

Specify the campaign name, the buying type (auction), and the campaign goal (traffic).

Turn on the “Budget optimization” toggle and specify a test budget.

The auction principle is based on the analysis of:

• the bid;
• the estimated action frequency (clickability);
• ad quality (analyzed by the algorithm across many parameters).

This is the most effective format, since it lets you lower the cost of an ad click with good ratings and clickability.

Life hack #1

To start, we recommend setting a small budget (around 1-2 dollars) for testing campaigns with different combinations of banners and audiences.

This way you'll be able to choose the combinations with the lowest cost per click, and then increase the budget.

Enter the name of the ad set and the first ad, save it in drafts.

• Setting up the ad set

After saving in drafts, access to editing the campaign, the ad set, and the specific ad will open.

The data is presented in a hierarchical structure. You'll be able to conveniently switch between them using the tree structure.

First, Facebook will offer you to review the basic campaign settings once more (goal, budget optimization).

Here you can fine-tune the parameters if you skipped this step.

Traffic is one of the most popular goals. But Facebook doesn't limit your choice.

You can set a different goal corresponding to your advertising activity.

Next, we get down to setting up the ad set.

If your goal is traffic, we recommend using the following settings.

Specify the start date and, if necessary, set spending limits for the ad set.

Now we get down to the audience settings.

Two options are available here:

• choose an audience from existing ones (if you've previously already created a custom, lookalike, or saved one);
• create a new audience in the ad set settings window, specifying the needed targeting parameters.

Life hack #2

You can save a newly created audience at the ad set setup stage in order to reuse it if necessary.

For this you don't need to close the ADS Manager and go to the “Audiences” section.

Just click the “Save this audience” button.

We choose the placements.

This is a very important step, since this parameter determines on which platform and exactly where your ad will be displayed.

In addition, it affects the ad format.

Be sure to switch the toggle to “Manual placements” and get down to the setup.

Choose the type of devices for showing ads, as well as the platform.

We remind you that, like Google Adwords, Facebook has access to advertising not only inside the social network, but also in apps, as well as on Instagram.

For example, with such settings, impressions will be carried out on all devices, but only on Facebook (since we manually disabled impressions on other platforms).

Next, you need to choose the ad placement.

Let's say we're only interested in the Facebook feed and stories. In that case, you need to manually check the boxes in the corresponding fields.

The next step is display optimization.

Here you can choose the strategy by which Facebook will spend your advertising budget.

3 display options are available:

• oriented toward clicks (in this case Facebook will show the ad to those who are most likely to click on it);
• oriented toward impressions (the algorithm will strive to show the ad as many times as possible);
• oriented toward landing page views (in this case the algorithm will show the ad to users who will potentially follow the ad link and wait for the page to load);
• oriented toward daily reach among unique users (Facebook will show the ad up to 1 time per day per unique visitor).

By default, the first option is set. We recommend leaving it, if this doesn't contradict your strategy.

Life hack #3

Many beginners make a common mistake, confusing display optimization with paying for clicks and impressions. These are different things.

Display optimization is a guideline for the social network's algorithm and nothing more.

If you want to specify what exactly you're going to pay Facebook for (for clicks or impressions), choose the “Show advanced options” item and enter the necessary data.

In doing so, keep in mind that pay-per-click isn't available to everyone.

Facebook provides this option only to verified accounts that have already operated by the social network's rules for some time.

After completing the setup of the test ad set, click the “Publish” button and get down to setting up the ad.

• Setting up the ad

Depending on the previously chosen placements, Facebook will offer you several available ad formats.

In this case these are:

• a single image or video;
• a carousel;
• a collection.

Next, we get down to directly filling out the ad.

• Choose an image (or images for a carousel, as in our case).
• Fill in the fields with the headline and ad text. Specify a link to your site (or profile), depending on the goals of launching the ad.

Life hack #4

Watch the quality of your content.

• familiarize yourself with the format of images for uploading;
• come up with a headline and ad text (it's desirable for them to be concise and informative, and also use calls to action);
• check the correctness of the ad's display in the preview box.

Beginners often ignore these requirements, as a result of which, when the ad is shown, only part of the image is displayed, which negatively affects conversion rates.

After filling out the ad, click the “Publish” button.

If all the fields were filled out correctly and no errors arose during the campaign creation process, your ad will be sent to moderation.

After passing moderation, impressions will begin (taking into account the previously set impression launch timer).

If you want to get clients not only from contextual advertising and targeting, but also through organic results, we recommend carrying out an online site optimization quality audit.

Recommended reading:

1. How to run a group on Facebook: Instructions

How to track effectiveness

The key performance indicators of targeting.

Which ads work better.

How to adjust your advertising strategy.

Read in this chapter.

In the ADS Manager, detailed statistics on each ad are available to you.

Here you'll be able to see:

• reach;
• the number of impressions;
• the cost per result (a link click).

Thus, after conducting A/B testing, you'll be able to choose the most effective combinations of ad banners with audiences and increase the advertising budget.

Which ads work better

This is a question that even the most experienced targeting specialist won't be able to answer.

Targeting on Facebook is, above all, the development and testing of hypotheses, as well as the analysis of results.

You need to take into account that part of the advertising budget will have to be spent on conducting tests.

Life hack #5

Many beginners give up after running 2-3 unsuccessful test ad campaigns, believing that their target audience isn't on Facebook.

Don't make this fatal mistake. Remember that even experienced experts sometimes spend days, or even weeks, choosing the optimal combination of banners and audience settings.

How to find an effective strategy:

• make several creatives;
• create several saved audiences (with different combinations of parameters);
• launch campaigns with a small budget (of 1-2 dollars);
• choose the ads with the minimum cost per result;
• disable ineffective impressions;
• increase the budget for effective ads.

If, after conducting the tests, you still can't achieve the desired cost per click, review your marketing plan and work on the persona of your target audience.

Conclusions

The main advantage of targeting on Facebook is the ability to precisely hit your target audience.

Here you can set up everything down to the smallest parameters in order to show ads only to the right people.

The social network offers broad possibilities for setting up target audiences.

This way, you can reach people who have previously visited your site by using the Facebook pixel, create an audience based on a contact list, or simply specify the necessary parameters in the interests field.

Facebook supports showing ads inside the network, as well as on related platforms (apps, Instagram, etc.), which lets you expand reach to the maximum.

Even a beginner can handle setting up targeting.

The main thing is not to despair and to be ready to test numerous hypotheses.

If you use several traffic channels and want to track their effectiveness, we recommend using the UTM tag generator.