If you own a website or an e-commerce agency, you need to know how to use Facebook Ad Targeting effectively. It’s a great tool to market your products, but if it’s not used correctly, you can end up wasting a lot of time and not making any conversions. So, here we are with a complete guide on how to use Facebook Ad Targeting strategy for your best benefits. 

The best Facebook advertising strategy is to successfully identify and cater to your target audience. The reason is as simple as that your brand will gain more followers if you can connect with the right customers. We will tell you all there is to run a successful Facebook advertising strategy. Some of the things we will discuss are interest-based targeting, Facebook Remarketing Ads, and how to use Facebook custom audiences. 

Facebook Custom Audiences Defined

The category of customers that will see your brand’s ads are your Facebook custom audiences. These people are generally those who have already bought your products in the past. You can upload a hashed customer link to do this. 

This list can be utilized to further market your products via Facebook ads and Audience Network, and Instagram. It’s the best strategy for Facebook advertising. 

Here’s How You Should Use Facebook Custom Audiences

As per Facebook, you can do the following to create your custom audience. 

1. Click on “Audiences.”
2. Hit the Create Audience dropdown and click “Custom Audience.”
3. Hit “Customer File.”
4. Hit “Add” to upload from your files. 

After this, there are five major parts involved. We will break each of them down so that you get a better understanding of how to use Facebook Custom Audiences as an optimum Facebook advertising strategy.

Add Customer File

First, you need to decide which format you want to upload your customer file as or if you want to copy-paste it.  If you decide to upload, hit Upload File, and then you can select your particular customer file. If you want to copy-paste, simply add it on Paste Your Content Here. Then, you can proceed to name your Custom audience along with a description. Proceed to hit Next.

Edit Data Mapping

When you hit Next, you will get to see your data’s preview on the screen. The preview is by Facebook on how they have classified your data. There are three different symbols to classify your data. 

A green tick means that Facebook understands what kind of target audience you are going for using the custom audience data you have provided. Facebook will use this information to find potential customers for you in the app. Note that your data will be uploaded only if it has this green tick. 

An exclamation mark inside a circle indicates that Facebook has not understood what kind of data your is, or it could be because you have specifically asked them to leave the matching part. Note that you can always inform them about your data and target audience. 

If you see an exclamation mark in a triangle, then that means that Facebook can not identify your data format. If this is the case, then you will have to change the data format from the Choose Format option given there. 

If you see a ton of errors and the data you have provided is correct, the. It could be because of your delimiter. A delimiter is a punctuation mark that separates your data points. If you are not using appropriate ones, Facebook might not recognize it. To change your delimiter, hover over Modify The Delimiter. Then, select another one. 

There are also three different ways that you can view and control your data preview. 

You can change your data type. To do this, hit the dropdown box. Then, choose your data type from the given options. You can even opt for Do Not Upload. It will tell Facebook that you don’t want to use this data for matching. 

Second, you can remove your data from being considered while matching. Thirdly, you can change your data format. 

Note that all pieces of data require a type to be useful. However, only some ask for format details. Check what particular requirements your data has. If a type is needed, then you will find a Choose Format dropdown. 

Remember that this is the step where you can make your final changes to your data to make it perfect for Facebook Custom Audiences. When you are done, simply follow the steps mentioned above and hit on Create & Upload.

Hashed Upload And Creation

In this method, Facebook will automatically hash the data you have and create Facebook custom audiences for your brand. This process takes a little longer than the others. While you wait for this to happen, you can keep working on your Facebook advertising strategy. 

After your Facebook custom audience is created, you can click on Done, and you will be done!

Now that you have your Facebook custom audiences, you need to know what kind it is to fully understand how to use Facebook custom audiences to your advantage. 

In general, there are three kinds of Facebook custom audiences. They are:

Facebook Lookalike Audience

This category of the audience will look like a Facebook custom audience that you might have already saved. Their interests and demographics will be similar to each other. 

This is one of the best strategies for Facebook advertising because if you have saved a Facebook custom audience, that would mean that you know that category works for your brand. In other words, the new custom audience you have will match your already existing customers. 

One tip you can use for a successful Facebook advertising strategy is to start your Facebook campaigns with a 1% audience size. And as your reach expands, you can increase your percent gradually until you are above your current budget. Note that the audience size ranges from 1 percent to 10 percent. 1 percent signals the highest interest and demographic similarity between two audiences. 

Facebook Ad Targeting Lookalike Audience Types

There are many types of Facebook Lookalike Audiences other than the ones that are similar to your current audience. You can custom create your audiences on the basis of other aspects as well. Some of them include:

1. Your website’s visitors. 
2. An audience gathered from a particular page in your website
3. The audience gathered from a particular action. For instance, if a number of people have viewed a particular video, you can target specific products to this group of people. 
4. An audience who have similar interests as the people who have subscribed to your email. 
5. An audience gathered from your Facebook follower or people who have shown an interest in your posts. 
6. Lookalike Audience of people who have liked your page. 

While the steps vary a little bit based on what kind of Lookalike Audience you want to create for your Facebook custom audiences. However, the beginning portion of all is fairly similar. 

Create Your Lookalike Audience To Run A Successful Facebook Advertising Strategy

Visit your brand’s Ads Manager to create a custom lookalike audience. Click on “All Tools”, and then expand the “Audiences” option. Then, hit “Create Audience”, and then “Lookalike Audience.”

This is where you need to pay attention because the process changes for each kind of Facebook custom audience. Choose any source that you want to base your new lookalike audience on. 

In general, your source should be a custom audience that you have already created. For instance, it could be from your email subscribers. However, you can always create it via your Facebook audience, people who are engaging with your Facebook posts, and your pixel data. 

The next step is to choose a country that you want your target audience to be from. Finally, you can choose the size of your audience. As mentioned above, we recommend that you start with 1 percent. 

You can also create multiple Facebook custom audiences to see which size is best for your Facebook advertising strategy. Check if a large audience benefits your conversion rates/CPA. 

Interest-Based Facebook Ad Targeting

This method is infamous for being risky and unreliable. That’s because, if you are not a market researcher, chances are that you are misreading a lot of data. And relying your brand’s Facebook advertising strategy completely on your not-so-solid research is a bad idea. It could mean a complete failure. 

Interest-based Facebook ad targeting is also considered the most difficult and complicated of all Facebook advertising strategies. In this method, you will be deciding who your target audience is. In simple terms, you will be creating your Facebook custom audiences, without the help of already existing data and without relying on Facebook algorithms. 

However, if you are a new brand and don’t have enough data yet, this might be your only option. That’s because this is also the only method that doesn’t ask for data. You won’t have data if you don’t get enough visitors on your website, existing customers, or enough Facebook followers. 

Create Interest-Based Audience For Your Facebook Custom Audience 

First of all, do thorough market research to run a successful Facebook advertising strategy. 

Visit Ads Manager. Then, you will have to create a “Saved Audience.” When a window pops up, you have to give your audience a name, choose a country, gender, and demographic. Then, you need to scroll to the end of the page to fill in the “Detailed Targeting” section. In this details section, you can choose some specific characteristics for your target Facebook custom audiences. Some details can be certain behavior, age range, or interests. We also suggest that you look through all the options given through “Browse” so that you create a good Facebook advertising strategy. 

We recommend that you be very specific in your details. These can be keywords or buzzwords because if you give too broad categories, your ad will get lost in the sea of ads that Facebook gets. Combine different keywords that are the most relevant to your brand. 

Remember that interest-based custom audiences are completely about finding genuine audiences who you can, ideally, turn into a loyal customer. It’s all about finding those people who are genuinely interested in what you are selling. That’s why you need to be smart in locating them. For instance, if you have a t-shirt with a print of a cat and James Bond, you need to find people who are interested in both cats and James Bond. You can do this by adding these two keywords in your detailed targeting description. 

Some Facebook Advertising Strategy For Targeting Interest-Based Audiences

Only Go For Pages That Are Superactive

If you want to find customers, you will first need to target pages that engage with their followers and have a similar theme to yours. You need to find pages where people choose to go because they genuinely like the topic.

Look For Hidden Facebook Pages

“Hidden” Facebook pages are referred to pages that don’t show up even when you type their name. There could be a number of reasons for that. Maybe they have recently changed their name. And if you want to target their followers but can’t find them on Facebook, then you can try Targeting their audience through tags. Focus on similar tags that they use and use them in your ad. There’s a high chance that their followers will see your ad through Facebook’s algorithm if you use the right tags.

Layer Your Targets

Creating a Facebook custom audience based on interest is very difficult. For this to be really effective, you need to find people who are truly interested in your product and not the ones who will just browse through for a moment and pass by. To do this, you can layer your targets. This means that you will have to use two specific keywords and target people who follow both the keywords. Chances are that people who follow two of the same keywords will be genuinely interested in your products.

Understand Your Target Audience’s Buyer Persona And Exclude Others

Your Facebook advertising strategy should focus on finding people who will be buyers and not just anyone. A bunch of buyers is far better than a thousand browsers. Focus on the keywords and your target Facebook custom audiences to get the best out of this method. 

Facebook Retargeting Ads Or Remarketing Ads

This method is one of the best ones for a successful Facebook advertising strategy. Experts have said that your ads have a 70 percent chance to convert. It is also the easiest amongst the lot. This is because, in this method, your Facebook advertising strategy will be targeted towards your Facebook custom audiences who have already visited your site and have shown an interest in those particular products. 

This happens mostly with people who cart an item only to abandon them there. By retargeting or remarketing that product, people are more likely to go back to your site and buy it. 

Set Up Your Remarketing Ad

The only condition to set up a remarketing ad is that you need to have pixel data. 

There are two custom conversions. 

1. You target people by identifying who has added a particular item to their online cart on your website. 
2. You target people who have purchased a particular item from your website. 

Collect the above data and head in to create another fresh Facebook custom audience. Base this custom audience on your website visitors. At the end of the process, exclude the customers who have finished the purchasing process and focus on people who left midway. 

And then, simply create a Facebook advertising strategy that targets this new Facebook custom audience. And voila, you will have many more conversions just like that. 

Because this is so simple and has the best outcome, this strategy is considered one of the best strategies for Facebook advertising. This is one of the ways on how to use Facebook custom audiences to its optimum level. 

Other strategies to make this method even more effective include retargeting visitors who have visited your website. Focus on people who have looked for a particular product but did not go ahead with the purchase or did not even add the item to their online cart. You can do this by clicking on the “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” option. 

Another Facebook advertising strategy you can apply is to push your blog or articles on people who showed an interest in them. Identify people who visited a web page but did not spend enough time to read the entire article. This happens when an article is particularly long. Maybe it was because they did not have much time to do that. Ideally, you should identify and target people who spent less than a minute on a particular article. There are high chances that if they see your article in one of the Facebook ads, they will click on it to finish reading, especially if they have read it halfway. 

You can also use third-party validation to retarget and remarketing your product. Marketing team experts say that people tend to buy products that they are familiar with, which often happens through some articles or video blogs. So, if you have connections with digital creators or content marketers, simply reach out to them and ask if they can publicly validate your product. 

Always make sure to put products that have third-party validation at the forefront. If a blog or an article mentions your products, feature those on your website as well. 

For instance, if you have products that you want to sell to new parents. Don’t just promote your products to new parents directly through Facebook custom audiences methods. First, warm then up by targeting certain articles at them that they might be interested in. Maybe an article with the title “5 Things A New Parent Must Own.” And you can refer to your products in this article. This way, once they click on this article, they will come under the category that has shown an interest in your products. Once that is done you can remarket your products to them and the chances of conversion will be really high. 

Facebook Ad Targeting Through Facebook Custom Audience 

The one thing that you must remember from this entire section in Facebook Ad Targeting is that your ads are just as good as your Facebook custom audiences. Quality over quantity. Remember how we told you that you shouldn’t hesitate to exclude people. 

Your products might be great, and you might offer great deals, but if your ads are not reaching the right audience then there’s no point in investing so much effort and energy on your website. 

The key is to work smart. The world has grown increasingly digital and competition has risen beyond belief. While this may sound scary, the good thing is that there has been just as much increase in the number of buyers. So, whatever your product might be, you will have an audience. The only thing is that you need to know how to locate this audience. And,  Facebook custom audiences is a great way to customize your reach, and in the process, expand your business and find loyal customers for your brand. 

Once you have this Facebook advertising strategy in control, you should focus on the offers you roll out. But before all that, your first priority should be to find an optimum Facebook custom audience target that will benefit you the most by turning those ad investments into profit conversions. 

It’s high time that you probably know how to get around and run a Facebook Ad Campaign which is quite profitable. In the event you still have certain questions about Facebook Custom Audiences and Facebook Advertising Strategies, this is the place to be. While many questions have already been answered over the course of time, if you still have any FAQs about Facebook Advertising Strategies, hold onto your hats!

For the uninitiated, some of the most frequently asked questions are:

1. What should be the budget allocation for my ads as a part of Facebook Advertising Strategies?
2. What should be the time duration within which the ads should be updated for the Facebook Custom Audiences?
3. What is the reason behind my CPC/CPA continuously increasing over time?
4. Is there any need for Facebook Advertising Strategies if I am already using Google AdWords campaigns?

Let’s get on with the questions then- only for you to find out your best strategy for Facebook advertising.

What’s a good Facebook Ads Budget as a Facebook Advertising Strategy?

The minimum budget that you are actually allowed from Facebook for your ads is $1 every day. Or the value comes to the amount that is twice your CPC. But, let’s say that you have a Facebook budget of $100. How do customize your Facebook Advertising Strategies to accommodate that? Truth be told, you can’t just bring out any ad that you see on any of the online portals. You should make sure that the Facebook ads that you are uploading are conducive to your agenda- and are tailor-made for your Facebook Custom Audience. For example, you might consider your goal might be to-

1. Have an audience growth that crosses 10,000 followers. 
2. Sell more than 100 Widgets in one week.
3. Attract close to 50 leads which are assured. 
4. Have an email subscription that crosses 1000. 

If you don’t know how to use Facebook custom audiences, you have to learn. But remember, every single goal you have will affect the price that you are paying. Also, there are a huge chance that you wouldn’t be able to get the same CPC if you change niches, and industries. You need to acclimatize your Facebook Advertising strategies, so it meets all your needs. There are certain industries like the entertainment sector, which comes with an abnormally low CPC. On the other hand, you have a sector like law, which commands a high advertising cost. The reason is simple- Facebook and other social media cater to the entertainment sector- you don’t log onto Facebook to look for a lawyer. 

Your advertising cost might also be affected by the number of followers you already have. If you are building something from scratch, you might find the cost much higher than already having a much-established base. 

Therefore, to build up a solid Facebook advertising strategy, you need to make sure that $100 that you have is only for a test campaign. This shouldn’t be your real budget- that is something you need to figure out later. This involves a process. 

Let’s just say that you ran a test on an ad, and your CPA came somewhere around $2. Now, if you have a margin of profit of $2, you can simply use this to scale your ad to a point where you would be relentlessly making money off it, and getting quite a mailing list. In this scenario, there is no best strategy for Facebook advertising, apart from investing a lot in this ad. 

But let’s say that you are actually losing out on money for every variation. What do you need to do now? Before you chalk out a plan, there are a few things that you need to take care of-

1. How appropriate is the audience for your ad?
2. Have you placed a good offer for your Facebook custom audiences?
3. Do you think your landing page and website are both of high quality?
4. Do you think your landing page’s message fits in perfectly with your ad?
5. Most importantly, do you still have funds to ensure that you continue with your tests, even when you keep losing money?

The ultimate Facebook ads can be created on a tight budget if you know what you want. Facebook Advertising strategies work a long way to help your Facebook custom audience get interested in your ads. 

How often should I update my ads?

When it comes to updating ads, you need to remember two very crucial things- ad fatigue, and banner blindness. They both mean the same in the long run- your ads will slowly become extremely boring, and start costing you. This is when you start rotating or changing your ads. But, no one will actually be able to tell you how often should your ads be updated- it depends strictly on you. For, according to Facebook advertising strategies, every single industry has its own time frame on when to update their ads. Although there is still a way- all you need to do is periodically review the performance of your ad. You would actually find your goals better served if you check-up every day or two to see if you can find a dip. Your Facebook custom audience might find it hard to resist your ads for the first few days, but then it might be boring even to them. 

If you want to take a look at the performance of your ads, all you have to do is head over to Ads Manager. You can choose to glance over all your ads by clicking on the ‘Account Overview’ option, or you could check the ads and their progress on the default page itself. Your default page will actually show if you have any increase in Cost per Result, or there is a decrease in impressions, or whether you have reached an ad frequency that is lower than ever before. These show that your ad campaign is suffering from ad fatigue, and the best strategy for Facebook advertising here would be to change your ad. 

There are limitations and rules to what you should change. Firstly, the image has to go. You might as well tweak the text too. Remember, if your changes don’t make any difference, you simply have to understand that your Facebook custom audience has completely burned through your ads. Bring out something completely different. 

Why does my CPC/CPA keep increasing?

There are several reasons why your CPC and your CPA might be increasing. And these reasons could be completely different from banner blindness, or ad fatigue.

Niche seasonality-

There is a huge possibility that the costs of advertising can be quite high in some months and not that high in the others. 

An Extremely High Maximum Bid-

You need to set a maximum bid to avail of a good ad campaign. Although Facebook does that by itself, you can set it for yourself too. 

A Dropped Relevance Score- 

Every ad is assigned a relevance score by Facebook so as to keep track of how relevant Facebook finds it to be. If your ad is bad, Facebook will lower your relevance score and your CPC will start rising constantly. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, there are a few things that can be done. Facebook advertising strategies dictate that you make the ad more reasonable and relevant for your Facebook custom audience. Or, change your audience. 

A Lot More Texts Than is Necessary- 

Facebook had a rule in the past which restricted the amount of text you could add to an add. It was 20%; if it went beyond that, Facebook would remove it. But since there were quite a lot of glitches in that, Facebook has updated that to a slider which would show how limited the ad would be. The more texts, the fewer chances. 

You Peaked Your Ad Frequency-

Frequency is simply the number of people who have had glances at your ad. If your frequency is 0.5, it means half of your Facebook custom audience has seen it. If your frequency is 2, that means every single audience of yours has watched it twice. Remember, data predicts that your Facebook custom audience would only see the ads once or twice. If it appears on their News Feed a third time, they are probably going to hide it. And in the event that happens, you would see your relevant score and frequency dropping extremely fast. 

An Increasing Competition-

 With Facebook developing every single day- it is no surprise that you will also find several competitors vying for the audience’s attention. When that happens, Facebook will automatically increase the CPC. The only way to beat it would be to outstrip your competitors by improving your ads or simply trying out a new audience group. 

If I’m already running Google AdWords campaigns, do I still need Facebook ads?

This is where we start veering off from Facebook custom strategies and directly move into business growth. But the answer is usually the same as above- it depends. It all depends on how efficiently you are able to manage both the mediums and render them profitable. After all, it is going to just bring in more money for you. AdWords have a much higher CPA, but their CVR too is high- due to a greater intent. Facebook custom strategies dictate that people are always searching for something or the other on Google- Facebook simply connects one with entertainment and family. 

Don’t stop whatever you are doing if it is profitable. And if your Google ad is pretty successful, don’t let go of it. Although, you could try out Facebook Ads too at times- for there might be cheaper conversions for you out there. But also remember that neither of these options is very easy, or fast. You have to invest time to make sure both get success equally. 

What if I can’t find my Facebook Custom Audience?

Before you go off on a tangent, remember one thing- Facebook is used by close to 2 billion people. With that demography- your ad will definitely have an audience. You simply need to know how to tap into that. You might as well have the best strategy for Facebook advertising by creating a video ad before everything. Either you can do it or you can ask someone else to do it. After that, you need to target a huge demographic which could very well be interested in what you have to say. Next, start running the video. Set the bid at the lowest value possible- so you can garner a lot of views from the Facebook custom audience without having to fork out a lot of money. Finally, all you have to do is have a lead generation campaign for everyone who checked out your video for more than 10 seconds. 

Now, you have an audience you can work with. 

What tools are available to help me run Facebook ads according to Facebook advertising strategies?

There are a few tools that you can use to create everything- from your ads to testing out your results. Canva is one which allows you to edit images freely, whilst allowing you to create software with templates. AdEspresso is yet another software. This is actually more than just an advertising blog for Facebook- for they have tools that allow for splitting of campaigns, optimizing different elements of a campaign, and checking out advanced analytics.

 

Facebook advertising strategies can actually develop your ad and help you bring it out from a dusty corner and before your Facebook custom audience. All you need to do is know how to use Facebook custom audiences in a way that will generate loads of views for you.