Social media has brought a drastic change in how digital marketers and online users communicate. With nearly 2.74 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides you with the option to get in touch with a wide audience. Facebook Ads provide you with a massive array of targeting options that can help you increase impression share, lower cost per click and much more. As these are PPC ads, you need to be very sure about the target audience you wish your ads to be displayed. With Facebook changing its name to Meta, advertising in the metaverse requires your ad campaign to be more targeted. To learn more about Facebook Advertising and the mistakes to avoid while running Facebook Ads, you can read our blogs.
The world of PPC advertising is expanding its global reach. From Google Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads to advertising on social media platforms like Youtube Ads and LinkedIn Ads, you need to work on a targeting strategy to get in touch with the relevant audience. The social media platforms are place for like-minded people like Facebook is used by friends and family, LinkedIn by professionals, c-level executives, etc. You need to focus on PPC trends in your marketing strategy so that none of the target audience is left untouched at each of these platforms. Due to the advancement of online shopping and the amount of time users spend on social channels, considering these platforms to run PPC ads is becoming indispensable.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic took the world in its grip by storm, an average user used to spend nearly 58.5 minutes a day on Facebook. With changes in marketing scenario during the coronavirus pandemic, this average time mounted high. Digital marketers can leverage this online platform(Facebook) and strategize Facebook Ads targeting that increases impressions, builds brand awareness, reduces the cost per click, helps in lead generation, increases page engagement, etc. Implementing the targeting options in your Facebook Ad strategy discussed in the blog would help you avoid irrelevant clicks, save your ad budget from getting wasted and assist you in achieving desired advertising ROI.
How Facebook Ads targeting works?
Facebook Ad targeting allows you as a digital marketer to get in touch with a wide audience and convert the visitors to customers. Running Facebook Ads in your social media marketing is crucial to increase traffic to your landing page.. In your Facebook Ads strategy, you need to have clear insights about the users' activity to make changes accordingly in the Facebook Ad account.
Facebook Ad targeting allows you to inform the social media platform(Facebook) about who you want your ads to be shown. Facebook Ads are a type of PPC ad and the ad budget is deducted quickly every time a user clicks on the ad. To save your ad budget from getting wasted on irrelevant clicks, you can work on implementing changes in the Facebook Ad account. You can choose the type of Facebook Ad campaign that best suits your business and run ad campaigns accordingly with the Facebook Ad Manager tool.
Facebook Ad targeting has multiple targeting options and allows you to execute changes accordingly to reach the active Facebook audiences. You have targeting options in Google Ads to choose the relevant audience you wish your ads to show and searching for products or services you offer. In the same way, the Facebook Ads Manager helps you precisely choose the Facebook audience. The Facebook audience is generally friends and family, so even slight ad fatigue could drastically affect your brand name when working on peer-peer-to-marketing.
To know the PPC metrics that need to be worked on to improve the performance of your paid ad campaign, you need to prepare a PPC report. The data-driven report would highlight the important points to focus on when working on Facebook Ads targeting. You can then work on ad placement, demographic targeting, etc., to make the relevant Facebook audience click on your ad and increase online sales. Some of the benefits of Facebook Ad targeting are mentioned below.
a. Improves ad relevancy - The Facebook Ad targeting options help in improving the ad relevancy. The targeting option allows having a clear idea of the users' interest, users' buying activity, etc. You should consider preparing a PPC report to drive traffic to your landing page in your Facebook Ad strategy. The report helps have a clear idea of various PPC metrics that need to be optimized to increase quality traffic. In the Facebook Ad account, you can then make changes accordingly to make your ads relevant.
The ad relevancy helps improve the quality score, ad position, lowers the cost per acquisition, etc. It enables the users to believe that the business thinks from the users' perspective and provides them with quality offerings, thus enhancing brand recognition and allowing them to choose your brand name ahead of your competitors. To improve ad relevancy, you should use eye-catching ad extensions with different ad campaigns and ad groups. The content on the landing page should match with the ad description. You should keep updating the products or services as per the PPC trends to increase the users' trust.
b. Targeting by demographics - Facebook Ads Manager has robust targeting options to get in touch with the most relevant audience. Facebook Ads targeting provides the option of demographic targeting. The more targeted your ads are, the better are the chances of the visitors getting converted into customers, which ultimately improves the conversion rate.
Targeting by demographics makes your ad campaign to be very specific. With demographic targeting, you can target the audience based on age, gender, location, education, job title, etc. This helps your ads to be targeted and appear to the relevant audience. For instance, if you wish your Facebook Ads to appear to users of a specific location, your ads appear only to them. It may have a reduced impression share, but the target audience that clicks on your ad has a very high chance of taking the intended action. It helps in improving user retention already engaged with your brand, improve brand loyalty, better audience targeting, etc.
c. Better engagement rate - Facebook is used mostly by friends and family. The products or services that satisfies a user have high chances of being discussed with their peers. The satisfied user likes the social media page of the business, comments on their posts, participates in the quizzes and webinars and much more. So, the more your users are satisfied with your offerings the better are the chances of them giving a positive feedback to their near and dear ones.
When you work on social media marketing, your prime focus is to work on quality lead generation to take the intended action. To have a better engagement rate, you should focus on having a social media page to post your product or services continuously. You should focus on improving page engagement by using engaging posts, your brand's logos, adding short & engaging videos, etc. You must consider optimizing your website for mobile devices and have a better page loading speed to engage with the target audience 24/7.
d. Choosing the right ad format - In the Facebook Ads account, you have multiple types of ad formats. With Facebook Ad targeting, you get to choose the relevant ad format for your business. The different ad formats include video ads, carousel ads, image ads, collection ads, etc. Selecting the appropriate ad format helps your ad appear to the relevant audience.
With the Facebook Ads Manager tool, you can also display your ads in multiple ways. It helps the relevant audience to have a 360-degree view of your offerings. The right ad format provides the user with a clear understanding of what they would get after clicking on your ad. Just as we link Google Ads with Google Analytics to see how the ad campaign is performing similarly, you can outsource Facebook conversion tracking to measure the performance of your ad campaign.
Key points to focus on in Facebook Ads targeting options
You need to focus on choosing the right ad format to make the relevant audience click on your Facebook Ad.
1. Focus on user- generated content - Content is the crucial point of contact that helps digital marketers to display their product or service description to the target audience. When you work on Facebook Ad targeting, you need to focus on user-generated content to maximize clicks on your ad. The user-generated content is any content that has text, videos, images, reviews, etc. User-generated content helps in audience segmenting as not all users think alike. Some users like to read texts, while others find video-based content more engaging. You need to perform keyword research and choose the high-traffic relevant keywords to drive traffic to your landing page. The point to focus on is that the relevant keywords should be present in your ads, whether text ads, video ads, carousel ads, etc.
As Facebook is a social media platform, the content can be put in the form of images and videos and in the form of social media posts, podcasts, stories, etc. This is the era of most impatient users. So, you must focus on using Facebook stories, social media posts, use videos, etc. These methods of conveying the message help to engage the users with your ad to make them click. Some points to focus on why the user-based content is necessary are discussed below:
• Establishes trust between user and brand - In your Facebook Ads account, you should focus on having content that resonates with the users' interests. Your ad's content should include ad headlines, ad copies, etc. When you write content focusing on buyer persona, you get to know which points to focus on while writing the content.
• Improves omnichannel marketing - In your Facebook Ads strategy, you should focus on having great content to drive traffic from various social media channels owned by Facebook like WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. The traffic from this affiliate marketing helps in lead generation. You need to focus on increasing the page engagement and making the visitors spend more time on the landing page. Thus, you need to have engaging content on the landing page so that the visitors take the intended action.
• Establishes brand loyalty - The more engaging content influences brand loyalty and affinity. User-generated content builds brand loyalty and helps users choose your brand over competitors. With better brand loyalty, you get existing users engaged with your Facebook Ads and attract new prospects.
2. Perform audience targeting - Another point you need to focus on in your Facebook Ad strategy is audience targeting. Facebook is the most popular social media platform and has a wide number of users. As there are a varied number of users, it's clear that your users' buying journey is not the same. Some of them click on the ad and navigate through different sections on the landing page. Some perform window shopping while others end up taking the intended action.
Every business has different marketing goals like filling forms, lead generation, building brand awareness, increasing online sales, etc. So, in your Facebook Ad strategy, you must focus on performing audience targeting. This would help you segregate the audience based on their interests, buying activity, the time when they are most active, etc. The type of audience targeting that you can target are mentioned below:
a. Custom audience - In your Facebook Ad account, you have the option of custom audience. In this category, you can target users based on data from various online platforms, quality backlinks you get from other websites, etc. This Facebook audience targeting option helps target users from varied sectors, thus helping lead generation.
b. Lookalike audience - In your Facebook Ad account, another point that you can focus on is the use of a lookalike audience. These are the Facebook audiences who have never interacted with your business but have similar activities like many custom audiences. So, you need to target these audiences as these are the prospect buyers. If your business deals with e-commerce products or services, you should use SEO trends to have the latest products or services. You can perform remarketing to get in touch with them. The methods include the use of email marketing, content marketing, etc.
c. Saved audience - Another type of Facebook audience includes saved audience. These are the audiences that are built on including or excluding people on Facebook based on demographics, interests and user behavior. You need to provide them with the products or services that are as per the latest marketing trends so that every time they click on your Facebook Ads, they move down the marketing funnel.
d. Special ad audience - Another type of Facebook audience that you have are the special ad audience. This option is available in the special ad category. A special ad audience is similar to the lookalike audience as it uses online behavior similar to those who have already interacted with your ad. In your Facebook Ad account, the special ad audience complies with the audience selection restriction with the type of Facebook ad campaign chosen in the special ad category.
3. Ad placement targeting - When working on Facebook Ad targeting, you need to focus on ad placement in the Facebook Ad account. You need to focus on the point where you wish your Facebook Ads to appear. Just as we can run display ads on various GDN, in the same way, your Facebook Ads appear on Instagram, Facebook messenger and another audience network that Facebook is associated with.
You need to be crystal-clear about where you wish your Facebook ads to appear in your Facebook Ad strategy. These can appear in the stories, newsfeed section, etc. When defining your ad placement, you need to ensure that the relevant ads are displayed in the right position. You need to ensure that the ads are being shown to the relevant audience. Suppose your Facebook Ads appear on Instagram. Then, in this case, Instagram is used mainly by young people. So, your ads on Instagram needs to cater to the users' interest and be appealing so that the users click on them. When running ads on other audience networks, you also need to ensure that your ads match the users' intent. After they click on the ad, you need to work on page engagement so that the users finally take the intended action.
4. Improving page engagement - The vital point to work on in Facebook Ad targeting is improving on-page engagement. The more engaging your landing page is, the better the visitor's chances to take the intended action. Some points that you can consider to improve page engagement are discussed below.
a. Eye-catching headlines - The headlines are viewed first by the users. So, you need to write headlines that attract users to click on them. You should focus on the point that your headlines grab the users’ attention and make them take the intended action.
b. Great product descriptions - Another point in Facebook Ad targeting is writing great product descriptions. Irrelevant to the type of products or services you offer, there is always room for improvement. As the technological world keeps changing rapidly, you need to focus on PPC trends, SEO trends, e-commerce trends, etc., and write the product description accordingly.
The product description is the first display of your product or services that the user sees. So, as you write ad copies in the same way, you need to write the product descriptions accordingly to engage the users with your ad. You can even perform a/b testing to determine different versions of your product description that drive more traffic.
c. Add ratings and reviews - The next point to improve page engagement is using ratings and reviews. Ratings and reviews inform the users about what they would get after getting in touch with your business. When you display ratings and reviews about your business, you should focus on displaying positive reviews and negative ones in your Facebook Ad strategy. The negative reviews(if any) helps in increasing the users’ trust. They believe that the company shows even the negative aspects.
You can work on strategic marketing and create a sense of urgency among the users to convert. This can be done with the help of engaging ad extensions and providing discounts and offers. After they have taken the intended action, you can get in touch with them via email, SMS, calls, etc., and ask them to provide ratings and reviews. If you find them relevant, you can even consider displaying them on your business page on Facebook.
5. Use captivating videos - The next important point that you need to focus on when performing Facebook Ad targeting is the use of videos. Videos are easy to retain. With videos, the users do not have to go through long sections as the video is played in a story form. So, in your Facebook Ad strategy, you need to focus on the point that you highlight the important points of your business. Facebook users quickly skip any video that they do not find engaging. So, you need to ensure that the videos you are posting are engaging to the target audience. Some points that you need to focus on when creating captivating videos are mentioned below.
1. Use of brand images and logo.
2. Use of the brand mark.
3. Use of high-quality images.
4. Highlight product descriptions.
5. Use of animation and bold graphics.
Bottom line
Having discussed multiple ways of Facebook Ad targeting, you must have got an idea of which PPC metrics are essential to focus on in your ad strategy. While various targeting options are available, you need to execute these precisely. You need to match these targeting along with demographics, age, gender and much more to make the target audience move down the marketing funnel. You can manage these with the help of your social media posts by scheduling ads, using images and videos, etc. As Facebook Ads are paid ad campaigns, you can outsource these to a digital marketing company. The PPC experts have mastery in search ads, video ads, display ads, mobile ads, social media marketing, campaign analysis, etc. and can help you improve brand recognition & skyrocket online sales. Start implementing the changes and see excellent results in the performance of your Facebook Ads. When you outsource Facebook Ads to a white label company, rest assured that the PPC experts focus on maximizing the return on investment and help you achieve the desired goals.
References
• 13 Facebook targeting options you need to know about
• Help your ads find the people who will love your business