Thought I'd share this list of the audiences I test and prioritise for Facebook prospecting, retargeting, and lookalikes. Plus a few words of advice below on audience targeting if you're new to Facebook ads.
As a consultant, specialising in paid ads, when I audit client accounts, it seems that a lot of people are testing audiences that don't align with their target audience and conversion objectives.
So here's a list of audiences I would usually prioritize in order, depending on what's available and getting enough traffic. The further along in the funnel an audience (or lookalike thereof) is, the better it will usually perform.
AUDIENCE PRIORITISATION
ToFu:
1. Detailed targeting (interests, behaviours, demographics)
2. Broad targeting (only once your account has gathered enough pixel data)
3. Lookalike audiences of the below:
- highest value previous customers
- previous customers
- purchased 180 days
- added payment method
- checkout initiated
- visited checkout page
- viewed cart
- added to cart
- visited landing or product page
- product catalog visitors
- all website visitors
- 50% video view
- 10 sec video view
MoFu:
- visited landing or product page (excl. purchased + checkout pages)
- product catalog visitors (excl. purchased + checkout pages)
- all website visitors (excl. purchased + checkout pages)
- 10 sec video view
- 50% video view
BoFu:
- added payment method
- initiated checkout
- visited checkout page
- viewed cart
- added to cart
BoFu - previous customers:
- highest value previous customers
- previous customers
- purchased 180 days
This is for eCommerce accounts but you can use a very similar structure for pretty much any niche. If you have a small budget, then combine MOFU and BOFU into one ad set. And you might even want to combine multiple retargeting audiences into one ad set.
Now, sharing a few words of advice on how to pick the right audiences:
#1 For new accounts, start by testing detailed targeting, interests and behaviours. Then dive into retargeting and lookalikes as soon as you have enough data. You need at least 100 people in a custom audience for this. But you really want more than that and you can combine multiple retargeting audiences in the beginning if you're running on a small ad spend. So start with detailed targeting first to get enough data.
#2 For detailed targeting, you gotta make sure to pick the right interests that are specific to your target audience. I usually group them into themes of related interests. But really, you want to think about what stuff people in your target audience like, what pages they follow, what interests they might list on their profile. The key here is to ensure that the interests you're targeting contain a significant number of people that fit your buyer persona. If your interest is too broad, you'll end up reaching more people outside your target audience than those within it.
For instance, if you're targeting owners of eCommerce stores, targeting "Amazon" as an interest might not be the best strategy. Why? Because this interest will include a lot of consumers and business people, but the majority of them won't be owners of eCommerce stores. You could try audience layering, say, people who like "Amazon" and are also "small business owners". But again, you might not get a lot of eCommerce store owners, but just regular business owners that happen to like Amazon. Instead, aim for targeting options that contain your target audience: retail page owners, pages of Amazon agencies, eCommerce software like Shopify and WooCommerce, retail-related interests, etc. These are more likely to be liked by people in your target audience than by those who are not.
#3 Once you have enough data from interest targeting, it's time to try retargeting and lookalike audiences. I often see clients not testing all available retargeting audiences, and testing lookalikes that are too broad and not specific to the conversions they want to drive. Refer to the list above, test them in order of priority. Start with the events that are most meaningful to you (as close as possible to your conversion event). So if your objective is to drive sales, then make a lookalikes of purchasers, checkouts, adds to cart, etc. in that order, as soon as you have enough conversions for that event (at least 100 but you usually need a lot more for it to work well).
#4 Test, test, test, and test again. And you really want to use a similar account structure as I've outlined above. Have different long-term campaigns for each stage of the funnel, then split test audiences inside it. Turn off audiences that don't perform well after a few days. How long you should wait depends on how much a conversion is worth to you and how much the average cost per conversion is. So e.g. if an audience has spent 3x as much as your average cost per conversion, then it's probably not going to beat your other audiences.
In this case study, Lukas shares how audience testing has helped achieve higher volume purchases for a company selling niche products:
Aight, hope that helps! And feel free to reach out if you need help with your targeting. I offer a free consultation at holschuh.co.uk.
