Choosing the right Facebook Ads audiences is essential for your campaigns to succeed. The success of your ads depends on reaching the right people — those who are most likely to be interested in what you offer. If you target the wrong audience, you’ll end up wasting money on ads and getting low conversion rates.
In this article, we’ll go over 7 Facebook Ads audiences that you should prioritize testing to improve your ad performance and achieve better results for your eCommerce business. These audiences are ranked in order of importance. By focusing on these specific groups, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are reaching the most relevant potential customers.
1. Detailed Targeting: Starting Point for New Accounts
Detailed targeting is essential when launching new accounts on Facebook Ads. This method uses interests and behaviors to identify potential customers who are a good fit for your product or service.
With detailed targeting, you can focus on users based on:
Interests: Hobbies, favorite activities, pages they follow.
Behaviors: Purchase behaviors, device usage, travel habits.
Best Practices for Selecting Specific Interests
To maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns:
Identify Interests Related to Your Niche: Think about what your target audience enjoys or follows. If you sell fitness equipment, target interests like “gym,” “health and wellness,” or “exercise.”
Group Related Interests: Create themes of related interests to ensure a broader yet focused reach. For example, group together “yoga,” “Pilates,” and “meditation” if marketing wellness products.
Avoid Overly Broad Interests: Targeting very broad interests can dilute your advertising efforts. Instead of targeting “technology,” narrow it down to specific tech-related interests like “smart home devices” or “wearable technology.”
Newcomers should prioritize detailed targeting because:
It provides immediate data and insights about which segments engage most with your ads.
It helps in accumulating enough pixel data for future advanced targeting strategies like retargeting and lookalike audiences.
It allows you to test various hypotheses about your audience’s preferences without needing large datasets.
Using detailed targeting from the start helps you gain valuable insights and reach potential customers effectively.
2. Lookalike Audiences from Your Highest Value Previous Customers
Creating lookalike audiences from your best customers is a powerful way to reach similar, high-potential buyers. Facebook’s lookalike audience feature uses data from your existing customer base to find new people who have similar traits and behaviors.
Identify Your High-Value Customers: Start by identifying your highest value previous customers. These could be customers who have made multiple purchases, have high average order values, or exhibit loyal behavior.
Create a Custom Audience: Upload the data of these high-value customers into Facebook Ads Manager to create a custom audience. Ensure the data includes relevant details like email addresses, phone numbers, or any other identifiers.
Generate Lookalike Audiences: Use this custom audience to generate a lookalike audience. Facebook will analyze the characteristics of your high-value customers and find similar profiles within the selected region.
Impact on Ad Performance
High-value customer data significantly enhances ad performance when using lookalike audiences:
Higher Conversion Rates: Since you are targeting individuals similar to your best customers, the likelihood of conversions increases.
Cost Efficiency: Better targeting means less ad spend wasted on uninterested audiences.
Scalability: As you gather more data, you can continually refine and expand your lookalike audiences for broader reach.
Testing lookalike audiences from your highest value previous customers should be a priority in your Facebook Ads strategy for achieving maximum impact and driving better results.
3. Retargeting Strategies for Maximum Impact in the Purchase Funnel
Retargeting strategies are essential for converting potential customers who have already expressed interest in your products. By targeting users at various stages of the buying process, you can increase conversions and make the most of your advertising budget.
Key Customer Actions to Retarget
To create effective custom audiences, focus on key actions users take on your site:
Added Payment Method: users who have added their payment information but haven’t completed the purchase.
Initiated Checkout: those who started the checkout process but didn’t finish.
Visited Checkout Page: visitors who landed on the checkout page without taking further action.
Viewed Cart: retarget individuals who viewed their cart but didn’t proceed to checkout.
Added to Cart: users who added items to their cart but didn’t buy.
Creating these custom audiences based on user behavior allows you to craft tailored messages that address specific hesitations and encourage them to complete their purchase. For instance, you might offer a discount code or free shipping to users who abandoned their cart.
When setting up retargeting campaigns, prioritize audiences as follows:
Added Payment Method
Initiated Checkout
Visited Checkout Page
Viewed Cart
Added to Cart
By strategically retargeting these segments, you can ensure that your ads reach users most likely to convert, ultimately driving better results for your business.
4. Combining MoFu and BoFu Audiences for Cost Efficiency
Middle-of-Funnel (MoFu) audiences refer to users who have shown interest but haven’t yet made a purchase. These include:
Visitors to landing or product pages
Product catalog viewers
10-second video viewers
Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) audiences are closer to making a purchase. They have taken more significant actions such as:
Adding items to their cart
Initiating checkout
Visiting the checkout page
Combining MoFu and BoFu audiences into one ad set can be highly cost-efficient. This strategy allows you to pool resources, resulting in a larger, more engaged audience that maximizes your budget. By targeting users who are already familiar with your brand but at different stages of the funnel, you enhance the likelihood of conversions while keeping costs in check.
This approach is especially effective for smaller budgets, making sure that your ads reach a significant number of people without being spread too thin across multiple campaigns. It makes management easier and improves performance by concentrating on the most interested parts of your audience.
5. Testing Audience Combinations with Ad Set Layering Techniques
Ad set combinations and audience layering are crucial for optimizing your Facebook Ads campaigns. By testing multiple audience combinations within ad sets, you can maximize both reach and engagement. Here are some best practices to consider:
Define Clear Themes: Group interests and behaviors into related themes. This allows for more precise targeting and helps identify which combinations yield the best results.
Use Narrower Segments: Start with larger audiences and gradually narrow them down based on performance metrics. This ensures you’re reaching the most relevant users.
Layer Interests and Behaviors: Combine interests with specific behaviors or demographics to create highly targeted segments. For example, target users who like “Shopify” and have “Made a purchase in the last 30 days.
Test Different Combinations: Create multiple ad sets with different audience layers. Keep an eye on how each one performs to find the combinations that convert the most.
Exclude Overlapping Audiences: Make sure that your ad sets don’t overlap significantly, as this can cause audience fatigue and result in wasted budget.
These strategies ensure a robust testing framework, enabling you to refine your targeting for optimal results.
6. Monitoring Performance and Making Adjustments to Your Audience Strategy
Actively monitoring the performance of your Facebook Ads audience is crucial for achieving the best results. You should regularly review your audience metrics, paying special attention to the cost per conversion. Here are some guidelines to follow:
Track Key Metrics: Keep an eye on important metrics like click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), and conversion rate.
Identify Underperforming Audiences: Use these metrics to identify audiences that are not performing well. For example, if an audience has spent three times your average cost per conversion without resulting in a conversion, it’s time to reconsider this group.
Turn Off Ineffective Audiences: Quickly turn off any underperforming audiences to prevent wasting ad spend.
Having a flexible approach and making adjustments based on real-time data is crucial. This ensures that you’re always targeting the most effective audiences for maximum impact.
Finding effective Facebook Ads audiences to target is an ongoing process that requires constant attention and adaptation. By starting with detailed targeting, using high-value customer data for lookalikes, and implementing strong retargeting strategies, you create a solid foundation for your campaigns.
Keep testing and refining your target audiences. Regularly analyze performance metrics and make necessary changes to improve your ad performance. Schedule a free consultation to help achieve better results.