Pros and Cons of Audience Targeting on Facebook

As all experienced marketers will know, targeting is often the part of an ad campaign that separates the best from the mere average. Ad copy is important and bidding decides how much we spend, but everything is normally underpinned by the effectiveness of our targeting. With a good strategy, we reach out to the right people and enjoy a healthy conversion rate. By neglecting this area, we can miss out on a potentially high-converting audience. In fact, we waste all resources by displaying ads to people with little interest in the product.

Thankfully, Facebook has an advanced targeting system. Even for businesses with small budgets, the targeting options are extensive and should allow for concentrated targeting within all ad campaigns. For beginners to this platform, we’re going to break down the pros and cons today. We’ll highlight: what’s good about targeting on Facebook, what could be improved, and what things do you need to remember when creating a campaign?

Pros of Audience Targeting on Facebook

1. Lookalike Audiences

First and foremost, how could we ignore the brilliant opportunity to build an audience similar to the one we already have? That’s right, Lookalike Audiences is a feature that creates a list of prospective customers based on the traits and qualities of your existing customer base. Group together your most loyal customers, and Facebook will start by finding some key identifiers and common qualities. From here, the platform will generate an audience with similar attributes.

Of course, this is valuable because we find people similar to our loyal customers. Wouldn’t it be great if we could clone our most loyal customer hundreds of times? While this isn’t yet possible (who knows with technology!), we can find others who are similar to our customer base. They may not have an interest, but the similarities in character and behavior suggest they might.

2. Retargeting

Did you know that you can install the Facebook Pixel onto your website to improve advertising efforts on the platform? As a piece of code, it’s critical for retargeting campaigns and could help you to find people who are otherwise lost to the black hole of the internet. Suddenly, using this code, you target people on Facebook who have already visited your website. Essentially, it’s your second chance at impressing and drawing them in.

Another reason why Facebook Pixel is especially useful is because it combats the eCommerce problem we all hate — cart abandonment. If everybody who added something to their online basket actually bought items, you would have a much happier business. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and many people walk away with items still in the cart. Why not retarget them using Facebook?

3. Microtargeting

With billions of people on Facebook, advertising on the platform is only effective if we can target small niches and really zero in on particular demographics. In this area, Facebook has truly delivered. In terms of location, we choose settings pertinent to our service. While national brands will target the whole country, small physical stores can appeal to a tiny village. Remember, you don’t need a global presence to use Facebook advertising.

Thanks to microtargeting, even small companies can advertise without wasting resources. After location, we narrow down our audience based on age, gender, interests, hobbies, online behaviors, income, net worth, purchase history, and lots more. In terms of placing your ad into a specific segment of the market, there’s no better than the targeting options on Facebook.

4. Advanced Targeting Features

Building on the previous point, Facebook offers lots of great features to advertisers, and this includes detailed targeting. When choosing your audience for an ad, we can refine the search better than ever with detailed targeting. With additional behaviors, demographics, and interests, you’ll find a group of people who really need your service. Examples of detailed targeting options include:

• Travel preferences
• Chosen device
• Ads and pages with which they interact
• Speed of network connection

5. Opportunities to Go Viral

When you advertise on Google, the most that people can do if they like an ad is click through. On Facebook, your audience can actually interact with the post and make it go viral. Now, you’re getting free exposure without paying anything extra. If somebody in your target market shares your ad, it could reach 100 other people with an interest in the same topic. As you may have noticed, this is like modern-day word-of-mouth advertising.

6. Long-Term Relationships

Once again, we compare with Google because AdWords doesn’t quite offer the same ability to build long-term relationships. If somebody likes your ad on Facebook, they can click through to your page and continue their interaction with the brand. Soon enough, they’re following the page and keeping up to date with product launches, events, and everything else the brand does on social media.

Since you’re microtargeting the very people who should love what we have to offer, it makes sense that they would want to stick around and become long-term partners in your journey. Every time they share a post, friends will see it, and this can lead to more customers.

7. Wide Audience

Finally, we’ve spoken extensively about the amazingly detailed targeting options. However, this would be powerless on a smaller platform. For these settings to have value, the platform actually needs to have these markets available. With Facebook, we have no doubts, and this is because it has around 2.7 billion active monthly users. You’re likely to reach people of all ages, locations, interests, hobbies, income levels, etc.

Rather than trying to reach everybody in one campaign, it’s a great idea to segment your audience and really take advantage of the refining tools on Facebook.

Cons of Audience Targeting on Facebook

1. Competition

Let’s be clear, advertising on Facebook isn’t exactly a secret. With more and more businesses choosing this platform every year, it becomes hard to stand out and make an impression. Not only are we contending with other businesses, but there’s also a theory called ‘banner blindness’ whereby users of a platform ignore sections of a website (or social media feed) if they think it contains an ad.

How do you counter these problems? As for the competition, make sure you get the target audience perfected before sending out any ads. Then, work on the quality of your ads as well as the whole brand experience. Try to offer something different from all competitors. For banner blindness, use bright colors and create an ad that makes people stop and take notice. If you create something that the audience has seen a million times before, it will be easy to just ignore. Think outside the box.

2. Too Much Refinement

Over the years, we’ve seen more than a handful of businesses and even marketers that have over-refined and are now targeting a tiny, insignificant audience. After seeing the targeting options on Facebook, it’s natural to get excited and play around with the settings. Yet, there’s an old proverb that says you can’t see the forest for the trees. The more you refine an audience, the more people you’re potentially cutting out who would have converted. Start with a broad audience and then narrow down rather than refining so closely that you have to retract quickly or start again when it doesn’t work.

3. Lower Conversion

Earlier, we spoke about how Facebook was better than Google in many regards for targeting. It’s time for Google to score a point back because there’s one major problem with advertising on Facebook; not many people head onto the platform wanting to spend money. Normally, they’re logging on after a long day and just want to scroll through their feeds. On the other hand, there are more people actively looking for products and services on Google.

To overcome this, it’s important not to sell too much in an ad. Instead, appeal to the interests and behaviors through which you find prospective customers.

4. Misreported Metrics

Having multiple targeting options is great, but it becomes wasted when metrics are misreported. Suddenly, you may find yourself making targeting decisions based on incorrect numbers. Over the years, Facebook has seen plenty of pressure over-inflating and under-reporting metrics, and this makes campaign management somewhat difficult. Commonly misreported metrics include:

• Instant articles
• Video plays
• Organic reach
• App referrals

Try not to rely on these metrics as the reporting seems less reliable than you’d expect.

5. Manual Improvements

Lastly, another concern for businesses is what happens after setting up an ad campaign. These days, every minute of the working day is critical. We don’t always have time to review metrics and improve our campaigns. Luckily, the good news is that there are now advanced AI automation optimization tools designed for this very purpose.

Once linked to your account, artificial intelligence and machine learning models learn from the performance of your ads to continually improve targeting, bidding, and other areas of the campaign. If there’s an opportunity to move into a more profitable market, the tool makes the decision on your behalf.

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• 10 Ways To Optimize Facebook Ad Targeting
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• Ad Fatigue On Facebook And Instagram: What Is It And How Can You Avoid It?

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