Facebook ads are becoming increasingly more competitive. A lot of marketers really struggle with how to target ads on Facebook, improve their performance, and get the best possible result out of their ad campaign.

The most important thing you can do is understand exactly who your audience is. The more specific the better.

You’ll learn:

• Why ad targeting is important
• How to find people interested in buying what you’re selling
• 12 Ideas for Facebook ad targeting

Why is Ad Targeting Important?

In advertising, targeting is all about making sure your brand message is seen by the right audience.

You don’t want to show your dog food ad to cat owners, right?

This is where targeting comes into play, and it’s so important.

I’ve seen some big ad fails on Facebook and it boils down to targeting. Consumers can actually get mad if they are shown the wrong kind of ad and they won’t be shy in calling out of the advertiser.

Targeting can make or break your ad campaign at the end of the day.

And, it’s the difference between investing smartly in advertising or wasting all your money.

How to Find People Interested in What You’re Selling

With targeting, your goal is to send your message to people interested in buying what you’re selling.

One of the good things about Facebook advertising is, if you’ve got it all wrong, Facebook will tell you.

What is Ad Relevance Diagnostics

If you review your ad relevance diagnostics, you can get a snapshot view of your performance to see how well your ads are resonating with the audience.

The diagnostics will assess your performance based on:

• Quality ranking: This is about how well your ads are perceived compared to other ads competing for the same audience.
• Engagement rate: This measurement is on your ad’s expected engagement rate compared to other ads competing for the same audience.
• Conversion rate: This is about your ad’s expected conversion rate compared to ads with the same optimization goal and competing for the same audience.

To learn more about this, check out Facebook for Business where you can take their course on how to improve and edit your Facebook ads.

With over 90 courses under Facebook for Business, it can be hard to pick the right ones to take. Here are some tips for choosing the right courses for your ad campaigns.

How to Target Facebook Ads in 12 Easy Ways

This is what you’re looking for. Keep reading to discover these 12 different ways you can target Facebook ads.

1. Start with the Basics

Demographics. Begin here. It’s a good starting base for you to build additional layers of targeting onto, if needed.

Demographics are:

• Age
• Gender
• Location

This is like the first layer of your ad targeting.

What age or age group does your target customer fall into?

What is their gender?

Where are they located?

Answer these questions and you’ve got a good chunk of the Facebook ad targeting down pat.

2. Audience Interests

This can really be the sweet spot when it comes to targeting Facebook ads.

When you target interests, you get the chance to be super specific about the audience you wish to target. If you’re trying to narrow down your audience, a great way to accomplish that is by adding audience interests.

Examples of interests can include:

• Sports
• TV shows/films
• Books
• Magazines

There are literally thousands of interests you can target!

As you pick interests, you’ll be able to see the definition and audience size before you make your decision on selecting that interest.

3. Income Level

Did you know you can target Facebook ads by income level?

This can really make sense and help you hone in on your ideal customer, whether you’re trying to target broke college students or people with a net worth of $250,000+.

4. Home Ownership

Targeting customers that may be interested in home warranties? Make sure they own a home first.

Imagine being a renter and seeing an ad about a home warranty. It’s just like getting a piece of mail that’s not a fit for you.

For all the homeowner-related industries, from realtors to warranty companies and more, targeting homeownership works.

It can also work well for industries not directly related to homeownership, like lawn care services, various service industries like plumbing, HVAC, carpet installation/repair companies, etc.

Think about your field to see if targeting homeowners would be a good fit.

5. Educational Background

You can group your audience by their education. This can play a major role in how you craft your message to your audience.

Think about if you were offering products catered to recent graduates. Narrowing your ad target audience by education is something you’d definitely want to be doing.

You can find Education under Demographics and narrow by field of study, education level, and more.

6. Parents

Targeting people with children is a natural fit if you’re offering products that consider parental status. You can target Parents in Facebook Ads Manager and from there, you can drill down even further.

Think about all the products this could be helpful for:

• Toys
• Kids foods
• Kids apparel
• Other kids’ products or products to help parents

7. Travelers

This is about targeting people that travel, whether for work or leisure.

Think about the experience of a traveler, what’s important to them, why they might be traveling, how often they travel, and more.

This ad target could be useful for companies that offer products in:

• Mobile entertainment: Some examples include mobile games, mobile apps, etc.
• Telecommunications: This may include cell phone carriers, VPN services, etc.
• Travel-related: Products in the travel category which may be relevant to travelers who want to benefit from saving time, being entertained, getting organized, etc.
• And, more!

8. Birthdays and Anniversaries

You can target people who have friends’ birthdays approaching or couples who will be celebrating an upcoming anniversary. These important milestones stand out. And, it’s a great way to catch the attention of your audience.

You can also target birthday months.

This is ideal for companies offering products around:

• Zodiac signs or horoscopes
• Seasonal
• And, more!

Then, anniversaries are a good target for gift-based or product-based companies.

9. Supporters or affiliations with charities

Focusing on a good cause is a target you can reach for, which can be especially good for nonprofits.

Pick similar nonprofits or charities similar to yours and target those audiences.

Try choosing a related organization then click Suggestions to produce a list of related organizations.

10. Mobile phones

Target consumers based on the type of phone they are using like team Android or team iPhone. From there, you can offer your app, cell phone case, or other related product to that audience.

11. Gamers

Gamers are a loyal group. From Playstation to XBOX users, and more. Take a look.

You can target console gamers, PC gamers, and much more. There are a ton of options under this ad target so take your time and comb through it all to find your target customers.

12. Purchase Behavior

A lot of marketers don’t know that you can target people by purchase behavior.

The Engaged shoppers’ behavior groups consumers into this category that have clicked the “Shop Now” button recently. If you drill down deeper, by clicking Suggestions under this behavior, you’ll be able to get more specific, uncovering more specific interests and behaviors, like:

• Online shopping
• Sales promotion
• Deal of the day
• Luxury goods
• Facebook Payments Users (90 days)
• Facebook Payments Users (30 days)
• Discount stores
• And, more!

Go crazy!

How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Learn About Your Target Market

Audience insights lets you get to know your audience really well.

You can discover:

• An overview of demographics
• Learning what people like
• Insights about lifestyle
• And, more!

This is what it looks like:

You can start by adding a competitor to interests to gain insight about their audience, which may be similar to yours.

This is just one of the many ways you can utilize the Facebook Audience Insights tool.

For example, Krazy Coupon Lady is a couponing site. Take a look at the audience insights for this company:

In addition to viewing a breakdown of the demographics, you can also see Facebook pages that the Krazy Coupon Lady’s audience liked, their location, activity, and much more!

Take advantage of this free tool to learn about people on Facebook that could fall into your target audience.

Learn from Facebook Audiences Insights and take that information to use in your Facebook ad campaigns or click Save at the top of the page and you’ve instantly got an audience based on your competition’s fans.

Where to get more help with Facebook Ad Targeting?

Facebook Blueprint is Facebook’s online course system that gives you free access to over 90 self-paced e-courses. It launched in 2015 and has had over 2 million students enroll.

Whether you’re trying to bring your business online, establish your presence on the internet or attract an audience, Facebook ads can help you do it. For beginners or marketers at any level, Facebook ads can propel your business to the next level.

Final Word on How to Target Facebook Ads

Targeting is super important when it comes to creating your Facebook ad campaign. Make sure to be specific when targeting your audience on Facebook and explore these targeting ideas to get the most out of your ad budget.