Last Updated on September 3, 2022
If you have a business or service that you want to advertise, then Facebook could be one of the best platforms to be active on. You can use it to advertise one of the many FB ads available.
But first, learn how to create different types of Facebook Ads that work well for you. And even if you don’t know how to post Ads on Facebook, then this blog is for you. Today, we’re going to talk about how to advertise on Facebook to reach your target customers.
What is Facebook Advertising?
You might have seen some of those Facebook posts from those pages that you don’t even know existed on your timeline. But, if you see it carefully, then you’ll notice that there’s something written below their page name.
They have something written as, “Sponsored” This sponsored means that this company has paid some amount to Facebook to show that post on your Timeline.
Companies are increasing more and more spend on Facebook Advertising. Ever since the company (Facebook) reduced the organic reach of the pages in 2014, companies were left with no other option than to start spending more and more money on advertising. Because this is where most of their audience was actively spending their time on.
So the process of reaching out to people with a post they might be interested in, is what is known as Facebook Advertising. Now, there are various ways of spending money on Facebook. You get various types of Facebook Ads that you can use.
Types of Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are classified into three main categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Under these three categories, you can run 11 different types of Facebook Ads.
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App Installs
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
- Conversions
- Catalog Sales
- Store Visits
- Out of these
11 types of Facebook Ads, you can use any type of Ad format. But, here we will focus on how to make your message reach your target audience on FB.
How to Reach Your Target Customers
We’ve already written a blog on how to run Facebook Ads. But we skipped one part – Audience targeting.
Let’s see how to reach your target audience on Facebook Ads.
In the FB Ads Dashboard, Click on the Hamburger menu and then on Audiences.
Tap on the Create Audience button and you’ll see three types of Audiences on Facebook.
- Custom Audience
- Lookalike Audience
- Saved Audience
Out of these three types of Audiences, you can use Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience.
1. Custom Audience
The custom Audience feature can be used if you want to define what kind of audience you wish to target, then you can use the custom audience feature of Facebook.
Basically, the Custom audiences feature will help marketers connect with or show their Ads to those people who have engaged with their competitors, and have an interest in some service or product.
You are free to define your audience type on your Ads.
Now, the Custom Audience can be made with five features:
- Customer List
- Website Traffic
- App Activity
- Offline Activity
So, these are the four types of Custom Audiences that you can make.
Other than these four, you can use Facebook’s resources to create an audience.
2. Video
If you have posted videos on your pages, then you can select those videos and make an audience of all those people who have viewed your video for at least 3 seconds or 10 seconds. Or you may select those people who have viewed 25%, 50%, 75%, or 95% of your video.
You are free to select 1 or more than that.
3. Instagram Business Profile
If you have connected your Instagram Business Account with your Facebook account, then you can use this feature to connect with those people who have engaged with your page.
You may also choose to make an audience of people who have already interacted with your page in the last N number of days. The maximum can go for the last 365 days. After that, it won’t work.
4. Lead Form
The Lead Form option helps you make audiences of all those people who have visited your Lead form page.
This option is very helpful when you are organizing an event and want to target those people who have visited your lead page.
Suppose, a few months ago, you made a lead form which some people visited. So, you can easily make a list of those selected pages & target the same people.
5. Events
In case you didn’t know or if you haven’t used it, then you can create events on Facebook with your Facebook Page.
Now, this feature may be of use to you if you are learning how to advertise on Facebook and only show ads to those people who have engaged with your Event listing on Facebook.
6. Instant Experience
Recently, Facebook has rolled out a new feature where it loads a web page in its in-built app. This means that if you click on an outside link, you might get to open that link inside your Facebook App only. You won’t have to open your browser to open the web page.
This is one of the best Facebook marketing strategies as people won’t face problems while surfing your content and they might return again and again to see your content.
Now, if you have ever created an Instant Experience, then you might target all those people who have engaged with the same.
7. Page
If you have any other Facebook pages or if you want to target the audience of your own Facebook page, then you can do that from this option.
Suppose you have a Fashion page and you wish to target people who are interested in Luxurious cars. And if you have a page where most of that audience is available, then you can get the audience data from that page and make a Custom Audience of them.
So, this is how to create Facebook Ads where you can target your desired audience with the Custom Audience feature.
Now, after this comes the Lookalike Audience feature.
8. Lookalike Audience
Now, the Lookalike Audience helps in making a similar audience for you in case you have a very small audience.
Suppose you chose any of the Custom Audience methods above. Now, you end up making an audience that’s too small. Let’s say that the audience is somewhere around 10,000 people. Now, this is a very small audience and practically, this won’t be possible to target all these people.
So, in case you wish to target people like them, then you can use the Lookalike Audience feature.
So, have a Source Audience first for the Lookalike Audience.
The Source Audience is the Custom Audience that helps you make a Lookalike Audience. Once you feed the Lookalike Audience with a Custom Audience, then you have to select the location for which you wish to make this Lookalike Audience.
Now, please make a note not to change the original location.
Not clear? Now suppose you have a Custom Audience living in India. But, if you wish to make a Lookalike Audience, then you must refrain from choosing a different location, for example, Australia or Poland.
The reason is that the user behavior changes from country to country. If you’re trying to sell a product in one country, then it doesn’t mean that you would be able to sell the same stuff in a different country while keeping the same (sort of) audience.
Now, after you’re done selecting the desired location, you need to select the audience size.
Here, you will be able to see a percentage graph.
Here 1% means that you will be able to make an audience that matches very close to your source audience. Just like that, 2% would be less similar as compared to 1% and so on.
Now, the last one comes, Saved Audience.
9. Saved Audience
The Saved Audience option is very similar just to the one you see at the time of creating an Ad.
When you are creating an Ad, you can choose to make an Audience in the Ad Group section. This is exactly that format. But, the difference is that you can make an audience first here, and then select this audience later on.
And now you know enough about different types of Facebook Ads and how to reach the target audience.
