Check out this post to learn what is a Facebook target audience – and how to find one. In this article, you’ll see: 

• How in-depth Facebook’s reporting goes to help you find the right audience
• How to narrow down the number of people on Facebook for the best ad targeting
• How to navigate Facebook’s Audience Insights feature

Discover How a Facebook Target Audience Zeroes in on Your Perfect Customer Base

Did you know that Facebook knows more about you than you do?

It’s true!

We put everything from major life events to what kind of grocery items we buy on Facebook. 

All of this information lives on social network, and smart marketers know how to use it. We want to show you how to take advantage of it too. 

Facebook is an incredibly intuitive site, and that goes doubly for its Facebook Ads platform. One of the best ways to utilize Facebook Ads is by targeting an audience for those ads. 

Being able to find a Facebook target audience is great for small businesses who don’t have a national brand recognition. It can help you determine who is most likely to click on the ads you’re paying for. 

Let’s go through how to find a Facebook target audience that can help your small business grow!

What’s a Facebook Target Audience?

First, what do we mean by “target audience?” All that means is the market you’re advertising to. Your target audience should be the people who are most likely to buy your product or service. 

Facebook currently has 2.6 billion users worldwide. And, as great as your business might be, not all of those users are looking for your products. 

So, we have to narrow down the field.  

How do we do that? Facebook has a pretty epic tool at your disposal called Audience Insights. This powerful tool cuts through the massive number of users to find the right ones for you. 

Audience Insights lets you pinpoint exactly who would be interested in your business. You can set up your ads to display for people based on a bunch of different criteria, including: 

• Location
• Demographics
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Fans of a Facebook page. 

These criteria boost the likelihood of your ad not only being seen but clicked on as well. As you might be aware of, Facebook Ads operates on the pay-per-click model. That means you pay Facebook every time someone clicks on your ad. 

But here’s the catch. What if someone sees your ad, thinks it’s for a product they would like, clicks on your page, and then does nothing? 

Unfortunately, that click and non-conversion cost you money. 

That’s why it’s important that your ads are only seen by those who have a high probability of not only clicking but acting on your call-to-action as well. 

How Do You Set Up Your Target Audience?

Now that we know what a Facebook target audience is, let’s look at how to set one up. Follow these steps to get started:

Go to Facebook Business Manager and click on the menu on the top left side of the screen. Then select “Audience Insights.” 

You will be prompted to select your Starting Audience. The two options are Everyone on Facebook or People Connected to Your Page. 

Going with Everyone on Facebook helps you find a broader audience and gives you more people to choose from. 

However, if you have, say, a loyalty offer you want to advertise, that would be a good reason to use People Connected to Your Page. 

Once you’ve selected your preferred option, then it’s time to narrow down the field. You can filter your audience based on these criteria: 

Location

You can target your audience based on the country, region, or city in which they live. If you own a small business, then this is a great option because you probably have a limited service area. 

Demographics

Here’s where you get to target your ad recipients based on age, gender, income, marital status, and many other options. 

This is a particularly handy section if you have a specific type of customer. Maybe your product is an energy drink tailored for 18-35-year-old men. You should target those kinds of consumers because they’re best suited for your product. 

Interests

This section is where we get ultra-specific. You can tailor your ads to what people enjoy. Facebook determines this based on what pages they’ve liked and who they follow. The interests you can choose from are: 

• Business & Industry
• Entertainment
• Family & Relationships
• Fitness & Wellness
• Food & Drink
• Hobbies & Activities
• Shopping & Fashion
• Sports & Outdoors
• Technology

But it doesn’t stop there! Within each category of interest are several subcategories. For example, if someone has an interest in Business & Industry, that means they might like things such as advertising, banking, economics, healthcare, higher education, and more. 

Behaviors

This section is even more specific. It can target for everything from purchase behaviors to the type of device a person is using. 

Here’s a big list of what kind of behaviors you can filter for: 

• Automotive
• Business-to-Business
• Charitable Donations
• Digital Activities
• Expats
• Financial
• Job Role
• Media
• Mobile Device User
• Purchase Behavior
• Travel
• Residential Profiles
• Seasonal & Events

And the best part is—just like interests—each individual behavior has subcategories relating to it. 

For example, consider the Automotive category. Within that behavior you can filter for things like, motorcycles, owners, new vehicle buyers, new vehicle shoppers, and purchase type. 

So, let’s say you sell car seat covers. You would probably be looking at new vehicle buyers since they likely need your product. You can target them with an ad to spruce up their new car with a brand-new seat cover!

With how detailed and involved Facebook’s interests and behaviors can be, they are vital to any Facebook advertising strategy. 

How Do You Find Your Facebook Target Audience?

But how do you go about determining what that audience will be? Remember, you want to be as specific as possible; otherwise, you’re just wasting money. 

Building an audience on Facebook requires knowing who your target audience already is. 

When determining your target audience, there are a few factors to keep in mind, including historical data, trends, and surveying your existing customers.

You should also review the psychographics and demographics of your audience. Psychographics refers to classifying people based on attitudes, aspirations, and challenges. And, as you saw in our section above, demographics focuses on age, gender, marital status, and income. 

These insights are crucial, not only to your Facebook Ads, but also to your business as a whole. Once you have this information, you can begin targeting those same people with all of your advertising! 

What are Helpful Hints for Facebook Audience Targeting?

There’s going to be a little bit of trial-and-error when it comes to Facebook Ads and the audience who is reading them. Still, with patience and retooling, you can have ads that reach the right people in no time! 

Here are some ways you can do that already: 

Look at Life Events

Major life events are all over Facebook. From new relationships to graduations to weddings, people love to celebrate these milestones. 

If your business supplies products or services for these types of events, you should really be targeting them. For example, are you a restaurant that does catering? If so, you can look for recent graduations or religious ceremonies. If they are having a party, you want to be the caterer they see on Facebook! 

Look at Recent Purchasing Behavior

You can set your own custom behaviors as well in Audience Insights. You can narrow it down to People Who Bought [Insert Product Here] or People Who Liked [Insert Page Here]. If you find an audience who likes similar products or services to yours, you’ll have a better chance of reaching them with your ads. 

Remarket with Custom Audiences

There are probably a few customers who have expressed interest in your business before. Maybe they looked at your website or specific pages on your website. You can set your custom audience to show ads to those people!

You need to install Facebook Pixel to create custom audiences. Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that you can add to your website to track visitor activity. It’s simple to install and incredibly valuable for gauging the performance of your ads.  

Check Ad Relevance Diagnostics

In 2019, Facebook rolled out three new “ad relevance diagnostics. They are: 

• Quality ranking
• Engagement rate ranking
• Conversion rate ranking

You can look at these diagnostics to see how well each of your ads are performing. Is the quality good or do you need to re-write that ad? Is the ad giving the right amount of engagement? And how well are they converting? 

Insights like these are valuable because they show you if you’re on the right path or not. They also give you insights into how you might improve your ads.

How Can We Give You a Better Facebook Ads Experience?

We hope you’ve found this guide through Facebook Target Audiences helpful! There’s a lot that can be gained in learning more about your social media audiences. 

If you want to see how Facebook Ads and audience targeting can help you out, give us a call at (847) 254-0837 or send us a message on Facebook!