Facebook Ads audience types : how to target your audience for successful ad campaigns

What is an audience on Facebook ads?

Facebook Audience : Definition

Your online audience is the group of people you can reach with your advertising messages. This group of people can be defined by many different criteria : demographics, interests, interactions. 

 

Social media platforms use different categories to describe audiences. They offer you many ways to determine them. This will allow you to tailor your different Facebook ads to reach a specific audience.

 

What are the audience types for Facebook ads?

With Facebook advertising, there are several types of audience : classic and personalised. If necessary, a specialised agency can help you analyse your audience.

 

Traditional audiences

Demographic targeting

You can target a group of people with demographic criteria : age, location, etc. This type of targeting allows locally based companies to target customers who are likely to travel to the point of sale for example.

 

Targeting by interest

Another classic type of targeting is by center of interest. This allows you to reach Internet users interested in themes close to your products and services, or related to your content and your brand.

 

Targeting by connections / interactions

Connection or interaction targeting allows you to build an audience based on how people are connected to your business. You can reach those who have interacted with your Facebook Page, your web application or one of your events. 

 

This type of targeting allows you to achieve great precision and refine your audience, as you can include or exclude connections as you see fit. However, be careful not to restrict your target audience too much.

 

Retargeting

Retargeting or remarketing allows you to target your existing customers very precisely. This is a very powerful targeting strategy in web marketing. Indeed, with this targeting you will only show ads to people who have already shown an interest in your brand or one of your advertising offers. 

This type of digital advertising campaign generally achieves excellent results. It is therefore one of the classic audience types preferred in digital marketing.

 

Customised audiences

Traditional audiences can be customised to achieve much greater results with your search engine advertising or sponsored links.

 

Inclusion targeting

As mentioned earlier, you have the option when composing an advertising audience to include certain groups of individuals, certain types of interactions or connections. 

 

Targeting by exclusion

Conversely, when creating advertising campaigns, you can choose to exclude specific audiences, interactions and connections. This allows you to focus on and segment specific groups and audiences. 

Because your ads cannot be targeted to all your audiences, excluding certain groups will allow you to deliver a new or different advertising message than your usual offers.

 

Similar audiences

Similar audience is a feature of Facebook Ads. It allows you to find users with similar behavioural and demographic characteristics to a target you have already identified. 

Do you have a well-established and well-performing advertising audience? You can use this as a basis for building a similar audience to try to target a new group of people with this Facebook feature. This can be a good opportunity to test new advertising messages and links on a new target.

 

How to target your audience on Facebook ads?

You can create audiences on Facebook Ads in two different ways : from your own sources or from Facebook data. 

 

Customer database

Your customer database is obviously a great source of data for building an audience for the Facebook social network.

 

Traffic to your website

With the Facebook pixel, you can, for example, choose to retarget and target users who have already visited your website. They have already found your site via search engine queries or by clicking on your sponsored links or not. They are therefore potentially interested in your brand, your products and your services. 

 

As we have seen before, these former visitors are perfect for retargeting marketing campaigns. Already interested in your brand and company, they will be more likely to click on your paid ads and take action by buying your products or signing up for your services. You will also have demographic data on these visitors.

 

Traffic on your mobile application

Do you have a mobile application? When creating your various advertising campaigns, you can use the data of your mobile users to build your next Facebook audiences. This advertising information will be invaluable for targeting certain groups of individuals correctly, for retargeting for example.

 

Information about your customers’ in-store activity

The activity of your in-store customers can also be a great opportunity to determine your audiences on Facebook Ads and then create relevant paid ads.

 

Using Facebook data

You can also use the data provided by Facebook to target your core audience. There are several ways to do this :

 

Views on your videos

You can use the data from the views on your videos to create a target audience. These views are a good indicator of interest in your video content and therefore in your brand.

 

Interaction with your pages

You can also choose to target your potential customers through interactions with your Facebook pages. This way you can target people who are interested in your brand content. They will be more likely to take action because they are already attracted by your brand content. Likes on your editorial content, shares, comments can demonstrate an interest in your company, its world, products and services.

 

Instagram Business Profile

Data from your Instagram Business profile can also help you build your potential Facebook audience. Again, you can directly target users who have shown an interest in your brand world by liking your content on Instagram or watching your videos.

 

Your Facebook events

Facebook events can also provide you with valuable data to build your advertising audience. After all, your event attendees are already convinced by your brand and its content. Already converted, they are more likely to take action by purchasing your products or services via well-targeted ads.

 

Which audience to choose according to the type of your ad campaigns?

The choice of audience obviously depends on your Facebook Ads campaigns. Some audiences are generally better for certain conversion, sales or traffic objectives. It is therefore necessary to adapt your audience to your Ads campaign. A web marketing agency can help you with this. They often have a lot of experience and know-how that allows them to adjust your audience groups to your marketing objectives. However, here are some tips on how to choose your audience according to the type of your Facebook Ads campaign.

 

For a retargeting campaign, we obviously recommend that you opt for a classic audience with retargeting. This way you will reach your existing customers. Your Facebook Ads will only be shown to users who have already shown a strong interest in your products, services or brand. For example, this includes those who have already purchased from your site and placed products in their shopping cart.

 

To attract quality traffic or new users, you can target a demographic, geographic or interest-based audience. This will potentially reach new prospects who are interested in your company and its brand.

 

To make conversions or sales, you can use an already established audience, especially users who have already interacted with your page or your company (visit the website, like, share, comment).

 

For a specific promotional campaign, you can use exclusionary or inclusionary audiences to target specific groups of your prospects or existing customers. To reach a new target group for a new Facebook ad campaign, we also recommend using similar audiences, especially if you already have a few well-established and successful audience groups. 

 

You can use them to reach new customers: to drive qualified traffic to your website or page, to feed your sales tunnel or make sales. It can also be used for a brand awareness campaign, to promote web content or to increase your subscriber count.