Having in-depth knowledge of your Facebook ads audience targeting is an essential part of a successful Ads campaign marketing strategy.

Facebook presents a huge opportunity for businesses to reach out and connect with potential customers.

Facebook changed their algorithm in January in a major way.

They made it so that people would see more personal content in their news feeds and less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and the media.

This is where Facebook Ads come in.

Paying for ads is becoming increasingly important if you want to reach your target audience.

But spending money doesn’t guarantee success. You could spend good money on Facebook Ads and still struggle to get results.

But if you’re going to invest in Facebook Ads, you want to make sure that you know what you’re doing. And a great place to start is your targeting.

So it’s important that you learn how to find your target audience on Facebook/Instagram and discover the best Instagram targeting tactics to reach them. This post is going to help you do exactly that.

Targeting can make or break a campaign

Building a funnel is the key to a successful campaign. Not only for your Instagram and Facebook campaigns but for all your marketing campaigns. It’s about targeting the right audience with relevant content so you can convert people who are unaware of your brand into paying customers or any other desired goal.

A funnel looks like a upside-down pyramid with different layers.

Customers at each stage of the funnel are looking for something different.

If you target someone in the “know” stage with a sales call to action, you will fail.

If you target someone in the “trust” stage with an informational message, you’ll still probably fail.

Targeting is not simply figuring out the general demographics of your audience.

If you get any of a wide variety of traits wrong, you won’t yield the results you want, no matter how amazing your ad looks.

If you send the perfect message to the wrong audience, they won’t click it.

Proper targeting will not only make your ads more successful, but it will also lower your overall cost of running them. This improves your ROI and boosts your bottom line.

You need to fix your targeting before you fix any of the other issues your Facebook Ads may have.

Now, I’ll show you HOW TO TARGET THE RIGHT AUDIENCE ON FACEBOOK AD so you immediately see better results from your Ad Campaign.

1. Start with a combination of basic demographics

When you’re setting up an ad, the first thing Facebook will ask you to do is select the location, age, and gender of your target market.

Selecting only these three targeting options is a huge mistake. It will make your audience far too large.

That doesn’t mean that you should ignore them, though. Don’t be so focused on the advanced options that you skip past the basics.

Facebook offers free courses on how businesses can use their targeting options.

Make sure you narrow down all three basic fields for every ad you create. This should be your first step for audience targeting.

Even if everyone from the ages of 18 to 65 could use your product, you shouldn’t try to speak to everyone with the same ad.

Every time you make your ad too broad, you set yourself up for failure.

2. Target your audience’s interests

Trying to target your ideal customer just based on demographics like age and gender isn’t going to cut it.

That’s why you need to be very specific with your targeting.

If your target audience is too large, your click-through-rate will be low, and your ads will fail.

The best way to narrow down your audience is by defining the interests of your ideal customer.

Make sure you narrow your focus as much as possible.

There are thousands of different interests you can choose to target with Facebook Ads.

Simply go into your ad settings and find the “Interests” section.

Type any possible interest into the search box and it will populate suggestions for you.

This gives you a description of the interest and how many people on Facebook currently share it.

But selecting a single interest will still result in far too broad of a target group. You need to select or combine multiple intersecting interests.

Read More: How to Use Facebook Business Manager: A Complete Infographic Guide

3. Find people already looking to buy your product

Facebook can generally tell if you’ve been online searching to buy something. If you sell a high-end product, this is an excellent way to target customers.

73% of consumers research a product online before purchasing.

Facebook can identify your ideal customers who are already in the looking-to-buy stage and instantly target your ad to them.

This means even if they haven’t heard of you yet and have only been researching on competitor sites, you have a chance to steal them away before they make up their mind.

Since most consumers make up their mind based on price, a targeted Facebook Ad offering a discount could be enough to persuade them to purchase from you over the competition.

How do you do this? Within Facebook Ads, there is a section called Behaviors.

You can try typing in ideas and see what is suggested or you can browse.

There are a ton of different purchase options to choose from.

Even within folders, there are subfolders so you can narrow it down as much as possible.

4. Target people by their income level

Do you have a high-end product that is typically only bought by people making over ₦1,000,000 and above a year?

Is your ideal customer a young college student?

If your service or product is targeted to people of a specific income level, then your ads should be targeted the same way.

Facebook allows you to target consumers through 30 different financial behaviors. This helps make sure that the people seeing your ad are the ones who will be able and willing to buy it.

Under the Demographics section, you can target by Income, Net Worth or even Liquid Assets.

It won’t be perfect for every person, but it doesn’t have to be.

Targeting by income will still be massively more effective than trying to target everyone.

Imagine you’re selling engagement rings.

What’s more successful?

Creating one ad showing a mid-range ring and trying to connect with everyone looking to buy a ring?

Or targeting low-income men with your most affordable rings and targeting the most affluent guys with your largest, priciest diamonds?

With the first technique, you’re likely going to lose both audiences, even though they’re both in the market to buy an engagement ring.

5. Get inspiration from analytics data

Further, you can collect performance insights from your published content to see what your audience likes.

Find out what types of content get the most engagement so you can understand what resonates with the audience. Use this information to strengthen your Instagram marketing strategy and develop more engaging content.

Start engaging on Instagram

Having a better understanding of who your Facebook Ads target audience is and what they like will empower you to strengthen your engagement strategy.

Facebook Ads can work extremely well for your business when the right demographic and audience interest are used.

With half a billion users on Instagram from around the world, targeting your adverts helps you reach the ones who matter to you most. You can even build a six-figure business in 90 days using them.

If you don’t see the results from your ads, start narrowing down your target audience. There are a ton of combinations you can choose from to perfectly define your target market.

Don’t worry about going too narrow. Your market and ad need to be specific and perfectly-matched if you want to see results.

Remember, there are billions of people on Facebook. You can narrow down your focus to only a tiny portion of them and still be raking in the profits.

Facebook Ads are very effective when done right. As long as you understand your ideal target market, and use these methods to reach them, you will see the ROI for your ads improve in no time.