Part of what makes Face­book such a pow­er­ful adver­tis­ing net­work is that you can tar­get such a spe­cif­ic group. Face­book ads deep tar­get­ing helps you reach your spe­cif­ic audience.

If you use the right com­bi­na­tion of audi­ence demo­graph­ics, inter­ests, and behav­iors you can reach a very spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple. You can think of it like tar­get­ing a nee­dle in a haystack. Face­book real­ly knows a lot about its audi­ence which is both creepy and great.

I pre­vi­ous­ly took a broad­er look at Face­book ad tar­get­ing but there is so much more you can do.

In fact, adver­tis­ing on Face­book with­out this lev­el of audi­ence tar­get­ing wouldn’t real­ly be that great.

The lev­el of tar­get­ing Face­book allows is what makes it so pow­er­ful with ads. They know a lot about their audi­ence because peo­ple tell Face­book a lot.

Face­book takes what peo­ple tell it and then com­bines that with even more infor­ma­tion. They com­bine it with finan­cial data, buy­ing his­to­ry, and more.

If Face­book is so smart and knows so much about peo­ple when why should you nar­row your audience?

Why Narrow Your Audience

Nar­row­ing your audi­ence effec­tive­ly on Face­book is one of the only ways you reach the right peo­ple. When you reach the right peo­ple with your ad then your audi­ence is more like­ly to engage with it.

If I show an ad for dog bowls to some­body who’s not a dog own­er then I’m pay­ing for impres­sions that aren’t like­ly to get a click. You’re throw­ing away mon­ey if you don’t tar­get your ads as close as pos­si­ble to your ide­al busi­ness audience.

With the right tar­get­ing, you are going to save a lot of mon­ey. Your ad won’t show to peo­ple who def­i­nite­ly won’t be inter­est­ed in click­ing on it. If you’re on a bud­get with mar­ket­ing dol­lars then this is important.

With prop­er audi­ence tar­get­ing and a nar­row audi­ence then you’re also like­ly to get bet­ter engage­ment with your ads. Bet­ter engage­ment on your ads means Face­book gives you bet­ter rates.

An ad that gets good engage­ment can cost you half the price of one that doesn’t.

Face­book only knows so much about who your ide­al tar­get audi­ence is so it’s your job to tell it.

That’s why Face­book gives you so many options for targeting.

General Ad Targeting

There are many dif­fer­ent depths of tar­get­ing on Face­book. Gen­er­al tar­get­ing gives you some pow­er and for some busi­ness­es, it might be enough.

I like loca­tion tar­get­ing as an exam­ple of gen­er­al tar­get­ing being enough for some busi­ness­es. If you’re a food place then this is a must use option. Of course, you have to know how to use it with the right ad, tar­get­ing times, etc.

If you’re a new food place that just opened up near a lot of offices then you can tar­get those peo­ple. You’d want to put your address in the loca­tion box, select every­one in this loca­tion, and put a very nar­row dis­tance radius.

Time your ad right, say before lunchtime, with a spe­cial lunchtime deal you could bring in some seri­ous busi­ness. Now you could even up the ante even more by tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic inter­ests for your type of food.

That’s just one exam­ple to get your imag­i­na­tion going too. The pos­si­bil­i­ties of loca­tion tar­get­ing for peo­ple trav­el­ing (peo­ple trav­el­ing in this loca­tion) is end­less if you’re in the tourism industry.

There are a lot of options when it comes to tar­get­ing your audi­ence based on loca­tion, age, gen­der, and languages.

For most busi­ness­es, the deep tar­get­ing isn’t going to end there though. You have to go deep­er to get who you’re after.

Facebook Ads Deep Targeting

The tar­get­ing goes deep­er than the gen­er­al tar­get­ing options above. It needs to go deep­er for most peo­ple adver­tis­ing on Facebook.

You’re sim­ply tar­get­ing a too large and too broad of an audi­ence with just loca­tion, age, gen­der, and lan­guage. The pow­er starts to come in when you go into the detailed targeting.

The first thing you need to do is nar­row your audi­ence with detail targeting.

You can nar­row using people’s demo­graph­ics, inter­ests, or behav­iors. I will start here but get increas­ing­ly more com­plex in how you can target.

Narrow Your Audience

This is the first lev­el of nar­row­ing you need to do. It’s a lit­tle more com­plex than the gen­er­al options but it’s very helpful.

You have to first know your tar­get audi­ence well before you can tar­get them suf­fi­cient­ly. Is your audi­ence small busi­ness own­ers? Do they own a house? How much mon­ey do they make?

Answer every ques­tion you can about your audi­ence and you’ll get a hint of how you should tar­get them.

Right below the gen­er­al tar­get­ing options on Face­book is detailed tar­get­ing. This is where you can search the demo­graph­ics, inter­ests, and behav­ior to find the right tar­get audience.

Each per­son that Face­book shows your ad to must match at least ONE of the items you tar­get. That’s pret­ty easy to meet for most people.

If you tar­get peo­ple in this box who are busi­ness own­ers and make over $250,000 per year then real­ly that’s two audi­ences. You could get some­body who makes $250,000 a year but isn’t a busi­ness owner.

Hmmm, that isn’t so good for your tar­get­ing if Face­book will pick ANY of the details you put in about your audiences.

That’s why you have to go deep­er down the rab­bit hole of tar­get­ing. It can go as deep as you need in order to get the right group for your tar­get audience.

Narrow Your Audience More

Before you start nar­row­ing your audi­ence even with the first options, you must group your tar­get options togeth­er. These groups have to make sense in a way that they’re all related.

If I’m look­ing for busi­ness own­ers or peo­ple inter­est­ed in run­ning a busi­ness but make over a cer­tain amount per year, I’ll group those sep­a­rate­ly. One group will have things like small busi­ness own­er, entre­pre­neur, small busi­ness, etc and the oth­er group will have the income level(s) they need to have.

With that in mind, it’s time to nar­row your audi­ence to max­i­mize your Face­book adver­tis­ing effectiveness.

After you add some of your pri­ma­ry tar­get­ing options you’ll need to click the Nar­row Audi­ence option below the first tar­get­ing box.

Anoth­er tar­get­ing box will be added below the first one that looks identical.

This is where things get real­ly inter­est­ing. See how I have a whole bunch of inter­ests in the first box? Those are all peo­ple inter­est­ed in Dachshunds.
Just because they’re inter­est­ed in Dachs­hunds doesn’t mean they own a dog though. Well, I also want­ed to tar­get those who are like­ly dog own­ers based on their pur­chas­ing behavior.

Now here’s where things are a bit wrong in the screen­shot above. The first and third options (of the sec­ond box) should be in their own inter­est box. That’s where I’m able to nar­row even further.

Keep Narrowing

You can keep click­ing that Nar­row Fur­ther link to add more tar­get­ing box­es. This way, the Face­book audi­ence must meet at least ONE item from each box.

Ide­al­ly, I would have placed Engaged Shop­pers and Online shop­ping in their own box. I could have per­haps added a few more items in that third box with pur­chas­ing habits in it.

That’s a pret­ty good tar­get audi­ence if you want to go for dog own­ers who love Dachs­hunds and buy prod­ucts online. See how I nar­rowed down my audi­ence to a very detailed seg­ment of Face­book in one sim­ple sentence?

You can explain who exact­ly you’re try­ing to tar­get in one sen­tence and then break it down one by one. Even­tu­al­ly, you’ll get the per­fect audi­ence that Face­book can’t just pick one tar­get item out of.

I don’t know if there’s a lim­it to how much you can nar­row but I got 10 deep and Face­book would let me keep going.
There’s more than enough options for you to tar­get very deep on Face­book. More than enough.

It doesn’t end there though.

Don’t Forget To Exclude Also

You can nar­row your audi­ence with items they should match but you can also exclude people.

Any­where in the mix of tar­get­ing groups, you can click the Exclude Peo­ple option to add anoth­er box. This time the box will be to exclude peo­ple who meet cer­tain demo­graph­ics, inter­ests, or behaviors.

If you know your tar­get audi­ence does not have a spe­cif­ic inter­est or trait then you can use this option to absolute­ly exclude them.

There are a lot of options to think about in order to best reach your tar­get audience.

Narrow & Exclude Creatively

You can get cre­ative with all the options Face­book gives you with ad tar­get­ing. You used to be able to get more cre­ative but Face­book is always exper­i­ment­ing with tar­get­ing abilities.

At one time you used to be able to tar­get one spe­cif­ic email address, they pulled back on that because you can imag­ine how creepy that could get. You also used to be able to tar­get people’s last names, that’s no longer an option.

Even with all the tar­get­ing options Face­book has removed over the years there still remains a lot. By nar­row­ing your audi­ence down and exclud­ing some peo­ple you can get a very spe­cif­ic tar­get audi­ence on Facebook.

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