Time to Vanquish Facebook: Fixing Your Targeting

Ad targeting Facebook, your search bar may read. Or, quite possibly, it may contain queries like how to targeting facebook ads, detailed targeting facebook, or broad targeting facebook ads. However, no matter how hard you try, the only idea you gathered is probably the fact that Facebook targeting is extremely difficult and differs from other tools, so it will take time and effort to perfect the techniques. After all, we're all chasing a financially stable audience. It can't be easy by default.

In effect, it doesn’t take that long to learn the basics of targeting, and the return on advertising is worth it. In this article, we will look at how to launch an advertising campaign inside Facebook Ads, analyze popular mistakes made by affiliate marketers, and give practical advice on working with this source.

Targeted Ads on Facebook

Targeting is promotional advertising on social networks or an advertising mechanism that identifies a target audience by certain criteria and displays advertising specifically designed for this audience.

Advantages:

• you can target the audience with built-in tools;

• you can work with a wide audience (there are more than 2 billion active users on the network);

• works in almost all GEOs;

• you can promote offers from almost any vertical (although in some cases, you will have to use cloaking);

• due to the popularity of the source, there is a lot of third-party software that saves time and costs on launches;

• you don’t always need a website to promote products;

• there are no stringent restrictions on text sizes, as in Google Ads;

• there are tools for controlling advertising costs.

Who Needs Targeting

To understand the principle of targeted advertising, you should comprehend how to launch advertising campaigns. People on Facebook often make spontaneous purchases, and affiliates promote the products they cannot sell through search engines. Online courses, tourist trips, casinos, betting, earning schemes, health products, and even therapy sessions can be promoted via targeted advertising.

Financial literacy, cryptocurrencies, stocks, dating, and online learning are actively gaining momentum. In general, the market for Internet services has grown, and any product can be promoted. Even prohibited gray and black offers: just find the ways to bypass the system.

Targeted advertising will not work with:

• CV or case promotion;

• urgent services (tow truck, equipment repair, etc.);

• expensive product sales (real estate, cars, etc.), except for the first contact (call or test drive.)

Costs

Two factors constitute the total amount: the bidding strategy and budget (daily or for the entire validity period). Both are up to the user. You can also adjust bids manually.

For some purposes, there are minimum daily budget requirements:

• Engagement for posts, video views, likes, and clicks: minimum $2.50;

• For impressions: minimum $0.50;

• Application installations and other events: no less than $20.

When you create ads for these purposes, you will see a notification about the current minimum bid. When choosing a budget option for the entire period, it is worth remembering that by default, the system sets a minimum of $350. But you can adjust the value.

Setting Up the Campaign

First off, you need a business page. Once you've created it, go to Facebook Ads Manager, create your campaign, and set it up. Settings are carried out at three levels: campaign, ad sets, and individual ads.

• At the campaign level, you select only the campaign goal and, if necessary, enable campaign budget optimization and A/B testing.

• At the ad set level, it is possible to set up an audience and a group budget and determine the start and end of the campaign. You can also choose the platform for the placement: IG, FB, Messenger, or Audience Network. Then, you can optimize your affiliate campaign.

• At the ad level, you work with creatives (a profound guide on creatives can be found here), add links, indicate a call to action, and set the page from which the advertisement will be displayed.

Click the CREATE button, select one of the proposed objectives, and enter the campaign.

There are six objective options.

1. Awareness. The ad is repeatedly displayed to a certain number of people who are likely to remember it.
2. Traffic. Choose this objective if you want to increase the number of visits to your website or app downloads. You can choose where to attract traffic: link clicks, landing page views, Messenger, IG, WhatsApp.
   

   

3. Engagement. Pick this option if you want to increase activity and interaction with the publication: get likes, comments, and reposts. You can also increase event attendance.
4. App promotion. This objective suits only app promotion, just as stated in the name. This advertising type can be automated or manual. You have to get your app registered to increase the number of installations. With an unregistered app, the campaign will only be optimized for link clicks.
   

   

   
   

   

5. Leads. This will help you collect contact details and other information about potential buyers, encouraging them to communicate with your company via instant messenger or phone and ultimately buy the product. You can add forms where users can answer questions, leaving personal information. This way, you gather a base of people who can be turned into clients.
6. Sales. The ad will be shown only to the audience that is most likely to perform the target action, buy a product, leave a message, call, etc. You can attract people not only to websites but also to instant messengers and applications.

Assessing Your Targeting

Your main tool will be the built-in analytics in Ads Manager. With its help, you can track every key indicator of an advertising campaign and understand its effectiveness. For example, you can view coverage indicators, impressions, CTR, CPM, cost per result, and more.

First, determine the budget for testing advertising campaigns. Analyze the best ads and links that appeal to the audience. You can track their effectiveness by conversion (if you need a detailed report on how conversion works, check out this article), click-through rate, and other indicators in the table, as well as by charts.

At the end of the tests, the most effective ads for each audience segment should remain, as well as placements that showed the best results. Then, launch the main campaign and scale it up.

If you use a website, then connect Google Analytics and FB Pixel. We also recommend installing an additional tracker for a more in-depth traffic analysis.

Recommendations

These tips will help you avoid mistakes when launching advertising on Facebook.

TOP 20 common mistakes when setting up targeting:

1. You overdo your interest targeting facebook query: the thing is that you select too many interests;
2. Think of geo targeting facebook: if you work with several GEOs simultaneously in one campaign, this campaign may accidentally flop;
3. Check out your texts: if there is too much text in the creative and in the description, there's a high probability that people won't read it;
4. Some people don't segment their audience, which leads to failure;
5. If the objective has not been clearly stated, you won't be able to understand which step to take next and what readouts should be paid attention to;
6. Affiliates who don't do the preps tend to rely on luck. The problem is that luck doesn't conduct tests and competitor analysis, which is a crucial factor for upcoming success;
7. There are specialists who are completely oblivious to CTAs: they do not insert it in their creatives/descriptions/other elements of campaigns;
8. Construct your funnel beforehand! You should perfectly understand the way customers make before they are inclined to buy your product, otherwise you won't be able to find a mistake and define where your impeccable pattern breaks.
9. Never forget retargeting!
10. No matter how flawless Facebook Ads seem, you should connect third-party services (Google Analytics, FB Pixel, trackers, etc.) for a better understanding of the inner processes;
11. It's tempting to copy other people's materials, especially if they are successful. However, the lack of a unique approach rarely, if ever, results in success;
12. Excessively audacious affiliates venture to use prohibited materials in their creatives. Does it work? Nope. That's why this is on the list;
13. Determine which placement works best for your product and your target audience: if you resort to the irrelevant options, the only profit you'll get is probably a splitting headache;
14. Another common mistake is a lack of a daily budget limit for the campaign;
15. Or, on the contrary, affiliates sometimes set up an excessively big budget for a narrow audience (the opposite also occurs);
16. If you are working on a budget, do not promote various ads at a time;
17. Cheaters are out of the question: low-quality content won't do, users are quite fastidious these days;
18. Do not change the campaign setting after launch;
19. Optimization brings profit, so if you forgot to connect automation tools, do it now;
20. Everybody wants their ad to be visible, but if the frequency is too high, it doesn't work as planned.

Increase Your Advertising Returns

• First and foremost, don't be lazy when it comes to landing pages: work out the kinks and refine every block before the launch;

• Everybody makes mistakes, and even the most experienced affiliates aren't an exception. What makes them experts is their ability to analyze the result and rectify prior mistakes to perfect new campaigns;

• Keep an eye on the negative comments: they can ruin the entire strategy;

• If you are dead sure that the offer you're staring at is outright bad and/or hackneyed, do not promote it;

• Tests are essential, so there is no such thing as 'few tests'. Carry out as many tests as possible;

• Define which advertising format suits you best and adhere to it;

• Determine your target audience, portray it in detail, and monitor the slightest changes;

• Keep track of the display time of the ad: choose the moment when the audience in your GEO is most active;

• Do you have an existing subscriber base? USE IT;

• Do not give up on the visitors who did not complete the target actions: there are ways to gain them back and convince them to accomplish it;

• Be generous when it comes to creatives: high-quality ones always attract attention. If you release a commonplace banner, you may be ignored: banner blindness is a thing;

• Establish the optimal budget for each advertising campaign you're running or about to run;

• People are versatile creatures, but targeting options are not: do not select too many audience interests not to stray away (one, two, three tops);

• Work with a wide audience but divide it into segments for your convenience;

• Tests are essential, remember? That means that before the final launch, you should test the combination and only if the results are satisfactory, launch your campaign;

• High quality is key, so your landing pages and creatives should always follow that rule;

• Clarify what you want to get as a result and set the correct campaign objective;

• Another rule you should follow is 1 GEO — 1 Campaign;

• Always check your placements and monitor their relevance. If you notice something unnecessary, disable it;

• Analytical tools are a must, so go set them up and use them before and after the launch;

• As for the maximum bet limit for the target action, do not establish it;

• Let the campaign run at ease for at least one day. Do not touch anything, not a single setting;

• Traffic should be analyzed by internal analytics and trackers.

Precision targeting is a distinctive feature of Facebook. It allows you to fine-tune your advertising campaign to the desired audience. The ability to set up advertising immediately on both Instagram and instant messengers increases your reach. Specify an advertising strategy and choose the correct objective, and a positive result will not be long in coming.