Facebook Advertising Audiences 

With over 40million Facebook users within the UK, it’s no surprise that companies are using Facebook Ads within their Marketing Mix. There are several different Audience types available to those using Facebook Advertising that can be utilised to reach existing or potential customers.

Facebook Audiences are categorised in the following way:

Custom Audience

A Custom Audience is made up of Facebook users who have already engaged with you. This will be your warmest audience or ‘Remarketing Audience’. You can create a Custom Audience using the following sources…

Website

Use the ‘Facebook Tracking Pixel’ to create an audience of those who have previously been on your website. This can be all visitors, those who have visited specific web pages or you can even target users by how long they have spent on your website. You can also generate audiences based on Pixel ‘Events’ such as those who have triggered ‘Pageview’, ‘Search’ or ‘Lead’.

Customer List

Upload your existing customer data to Facebook to target super specific audiences. This can be as a .CSV or .TXT file and you must include one main ‘identifier’ to be able to match a Facebook Profile. The more identifiers you include, the more accurate your targeting will be.

Identifiers include:

• City
• County / Region
• Country ZIP / Postcode
• Date of birth
• Year of birth
• Gender
• Age

App Activity

Reach those who have previously engaged with your App. This could be from opening it, being an active user or by the purchase amount from in-app transactions.

Offline Activity

If you have set up an Offline Event Set and are logging Offline Activity for those who have completed transactions instore then you can use this data to create an audience. This will enable you to reach your offline audience online and will likely allow you to market to them with a smaller budget and better targeting than most offline marketing methods.

Video Engagement

This audience will be made up of users who have engaged with a video that you have shared organically or as an Ad. This can be those who have watched anything from 3 seconds to 95% of the video (with several options in-between). You can also select the exact video they watched to narrow down your targeting even further.

Instagram Business Profile

Target users who have interacted with your Instagram Page, Posts or Ads. This could be a way of reaching your Instagram audience on Facebook or simply to grow your Instagram account.

Lead Form

This audience will include those who have previously opened or completed a form from one of your Lead Generation Ads. This could be either those who opened but didn’t submit, opened and submitted or both, within your set timeframe. You can also select the specific form to tighten your targeting.

Events

This audience will be users who have recently interacted with one of your Facebook Events. Your targeting can include several variants including those who responded with Going / Interested and Bought Tickets, for example.

Instant Experience

Target individuals who have previously opened, or clicked a link within, your Instant Experience (Canvas) Ad. You can choose which Instant Experience this was to be extra targeted and ensure what you are remarketing to them is relevant. This will increase the chances of high results on your next campaign.

Facebook Page

Engage with those who have visited your Facebook Page, sent a message, saved a post or several more actions.

Lookalike Audience

This is an audience created by Facebook using a ‘Lookalike Source’ which may be an existing audience or data source. You can then select the region or countries that you would like to include in this audience. Finally, select the number of lookalike audience you wish to create and the match % from 0% – 10% with 1% being the most similar to your source audience. Increase this percentage to create a bigger, broader audience.

Special Ad Audiences

These are for campaigns in ‘Special Ad’ categories such as credit, employment and housing. They use existing information about your most valuable customers and allow you to reach those with similar behaviour. As with a Lookalike Audience, you can select your Source, Audience Location and Match %.

Saved Audiences

Use your existing knowledge and insight of your target customers to create your audience using the Facebook Targeting options. You can then ‘Save’ this audience so it’s readily available within your Ad Set when you come to build your Ad. This audience allows you to add a mix of the following:

Locations

You can choose to ‘Include’ or ‘Exclude’ specific locations by town name or postcode.

Age

13 – 65+

Gender

All, Men or Women.

Languages

Use this to reach people who speak a language that isn’t common in your specified locations. If you’re targeting people who speak English and live in Ireland, for example, you can leave this blank.

Detailed Targeting

This targeting option allows you to reach users depending on their Demographics, Interests and Behaviours. It’s recommended you spend some time researching keywords associated with your target audience to see what is available on Facebook.

Connections

The ‘Connection’ options are:

• People who like your Page
• Friends of people who like your Page
• Exclude people who like your Page
• People who have used your app
• Friends of people who have used your app
• Exclude people who have used your app
• People who have responded to your event
• Exclude people who’ve already responded to your event

On the right-hand side, you will be able to see your ‘Potential Audience’ size. Consider your audience size and how long you will be running the campaign for when choosing a budget. It’s important to have enough budget to reach a good percentage of your audience with a decent frequency too. This will increase your chances of good results.