Facebook Ads is an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to advertising your brand. How so?

Well to start, everyone uses Facebook. During the second quarter of 2021, Facebook reported almost 1.9 billion daily active users. 

Facebook also has many tools for community management and advertising. With Facebook Ads, you are able to target your audience using your own strategic goals and different types of media, all while utilizing Facebook’s dedicated targeting techniques. 

If you haven’t used Facebook Ads before, it can be a little overwhelming. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

Here’s a beginner’s guide on how to get started with targeting on Facebook Ads!

DETERMINE YOUR BRAND’S STRATEGIC GOALS

When setting up your Facebook Ads, it’s important to decide the goals for your campaign. Right when you get started, you will be asked to choose a campaign objective. You’ll have three different categories to choose from: 

Awareness – Increasing your reach and introducing your business to potential customers.

Consideration – Encouraging interactions between prospects and your marketing messages.

Conversion – Taking those “would-be” buyers and convincing them to become full-fledged customers.

Awareness, consideration, and conversion ​​are all part of the marketing funnel and are very important when choosing your campaign objective! Under each category, you are also asked to choose your strategic goal. 

Choosing your campaign objective depends on what you want for your company. 

If you’re a new company looking to get your name out there, then you’d choose brand awareness. The goal of brand awareness would be to advertise your company to everyone possible so that people start to recognize your brand.

Let’s say you’re a retail company looking to get some online sales going, then you would want to create a conversions campaign or catalog sales objective. 

Here is how Facebook defines the two objectives:

Conversions – Encourage people to take a specific action on your business’s site, such as having them add items to a cart, download your app, register for your site, call your business, or make a purchase.

Catalog Sales – Show products from your eCommerce store’s catalog to generate sales.

CREATE AN AUDIENCE

When creating an audience, the first thing you should do is decide whether you’d like to target a cold or warm audience. 

Cold Audience – These targeted users have heard of the business, know what it offers, but haven’t made a purchase.

Warm Audience – These targeted users have purchased something from your business in the past, even if the purchase was years ago.

The primary difference between warm and cold audiences is whether or not the targeted users are familiar with your brand, products, or services. 

The next step to targeting your audience in Facebook Ads is to create an audience in the software. There are a couple of different ways that Facebook lets you target these individuals:

Custom Audience – A Custom Audience is an option that lets you show ads to people who may already interact with your business. You can create a Custom Audience from an existing customer list, or based on people who’ve engaged with your Facebook Page or website, people who’ve downloaded your app, and so on. This would also be where you would build a Facebook or Instagram retargeting campaign.

Lookalike Audience – When you create a Lookalike Audience, you choose a source audience, such as your website traffic. Facebook will identify the common qualities of the people in it and find similar prospects. 

There is so much to talk about when creating an audience! If you feel like this is something you can benefit from learning more about, check out this YouTube Video by HubSpot: Facebook Advertising: Audience Targeting on Facebook.

Creating an audience for your campaign is one of the most important steps that can help you with targeting on Facebook. It’ll help you get your message out to the right people, at the right times, using the best methods. 

SO WHAT NOW?

Once you’ve followed the steps above, you’re set to get started with audience targeting! However, there’s always room for improvement, and expertise comes with experience. 

Don’t want to do it yourself? Here at Anvil/Deksia, our digital marketing team can help your company successfully advertise on multiple platforms! We also offer services like branding, photo & video, website design, and marketing strategy. If you’re interested, feel free to contact us today and we can help you get started.

This blog was previously posted on deksia.com.