Facebook Audiences for Your Campaigns
According to Statista, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide, with almost 2.5 billion monthly active users as of Q4 of 2019. Having data and consumer behavior from 33.2% of the world population makes Facebook a powerful platform for advertisement. As powerful as it is, it can also be expensive and time-consuming to find the right audiences where people engage and convert.
We’ve all been there! Some of us may even want to give up on Facebook but hang in there. We can help you understand everything you need to know about choosing the right Facebook audiences for your campaigns.
First, let’s dive into what type of Facebook audiences are available.
Core Audiences – These are audiences that use specific characteristics like location, age, gender, languages, interests, and behaviors. You can play with the specific characteristics as you create the ad set. Make sure you choose interests that are niched to your products/services, so the audience isn’t too broad. Narrowing it down by adjusting the age, location, and conditioning the interests to match a second or third interest will help pinpoint your target demographic.
Lookalike Audiences – These are large audiences that are created from smaller source audiences, like website visitors, individuals who have engaged with your Facebook page, or existing customers. To go about creating these, you will need to first create a custom audience, and then you can create a lookalike. Something to keep in mind is you can create different sizes of lookalike audiences, but we recommend going for 1% or max 2-5%. If you test them all together, you will see that most of the time, the 1% audience is going to outperform the others.
Custom Audiences – These are audiences created after customer files, website or mobile app activity, and Facebook engagement. With this type of audience, the possibilities are endless. These are the type of audiences that have previously engaged with your brand, and they have a higher intent to buy.
Dynamically Pulled Audiences are used for Dynamic Remarketing Campaigns. This is more of a custom audience, but it should be treated differently because every business with a website should have this type of customization in use already. Creating a unique Dynamic Pulled Audience can be as simple as including people that have seen or added one of your products to their cart – but have not purchased the product in the last 30 days. (Or however long you want to target it for.)
Campaign Structures, Budgets & Creatives
Now that we’ve broken down the audience types, let’s see how we can structure a campaign using them. It’s best to create campaigns that follow a marketing funnel type of structure. The marketing funnel is one of the core concepts of digital marketing because it gives you a roadmap to visually and virtually lead your potential customers from one stage to the other until they take a specific action. Some people refer to those 4 stages as awareness, interest, decision, and action. But to keep things simple, let’s use the 3 stages of the funnel: top (TOF), middle (MOF), and bottom of the funnel (BOF).
Top of the Funnel Audiences
TOF refers to the first stage of the buyer’s journey. The goal at this stage is to generate interest and to reach new audiences. Choosing the right audiences is not rocket science, but it does require a lot of testing until you get an audience that is close to your ideal customer.
Audiences to Use:
- Core audiences (Use a mix of demographics and interests that are more specific to your product.)
- Build different lookalike audience sizes after existing audiences. These types of audiences can be built after a source audience – imported or created with information pulled from your pixel.
Creative: Targeting the right audiences with engaging, fun content is the key to driving brand awareness. We have seen that static images, especially lifestyle images, perform better in TOF. Lastly, make sure to add your logo and quality content to your ad so that people will remember your brand.
Budget: Due to the size of the audience, it is recommended to spend 60%-70% of your total budget.
Middle of the Funnel Audiences
The MOF stage refers to leads who have interacted with your brand either through an ad, post, or through your website. These individuals are familiar with your brand and have engaged a bit, but have not yet taken your desired action.
Audiences to Use:
Create custom audiences with:
- Those that interacted with an ad or post
- Those that visited specific URL’s
- Visitors by time spent
- Event attendees
- Facebook sources such as video, lead forms, instant experience, Facebook pages, events, and Instagram
Creative: Product carousels, 15-second videos, and gifs tend to perform better in this stage. Remember, these people already know your brand, so focus on the products, and whenever possible, use customer reviews in the copy.
Budget: 20% – 30% of the budget.
Bottom of the Funnel Audiences
The BOF stage refers to the leads that are most likely to convert. Using a Dynamic Remarketing Ad for this stage is recommended; this way, the ad automatically shows the right products to people who have expressed interest in your products.
Audiences to Use:
- Viewed or added to cart, but not purchased
- Added to cart, but not purchased
- Upsell products
- Cross-sell products
Creative: Dynamic Remarketing campaign will automatically pull the products your customers have seen. If you choose to go with a different type of campaign, we recommend using product carousels.
Budget: 10%-15% of the budget.
Feeling Lost? Here’s a Simple Facebook Audience Key:
- TOF – Core & Lookalike Audiences
- MOF – Custom Audiences
- BOF – Dynamic Remarketing Ads
Setting Up Facebook Audiences for Your Campaigns
To wrap it up, remember that nothing is a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to Facebook ads. It is all about A/B testing. A/B test your audiences, then when you have decided on which audiences you want to keep, test your creative and copy.
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