With a low cost per click (CPC) and the best return on investment (ROI) among all paid advertising channels, Facebook and Instagram ads have a lot to offer advertisers.

If you’re thinking “Sign me up!”, you’ve come to the right place.

Both Facebook and Instagram ads are managed from the same platform, the Meta Ads Manager. One of the most important things you can do to ensure success with Facebook and Instagram advertising is targeting the right audiences.

Let’s dig in with proven strategies that boost engagement, clicks, and sales.

1. Put your marketing insights to work

What demographic information do you have about your customers? 

For example, if you’re a local business, you might serve people in a specific area. Do your customers fall into a specific age range, or are they primarily one gender? What other interests do they have?

These are all answers you can plug in as targeting options when building an audience on Facebook or Instagram. 

Remember that you can build multiple audiences, so you can really zoom in on specific types of people and provide ad copy and imagery that speaks directly to them. If you have an email marketing program where you’ve built different audience segments, this is a similar process.

2. Use Lookalike audiences

Lookalike audiences are an excellent way to reach more people who browse and buy the way your current customers do, but may not have heard of your business just yet.

Lookalike audiences are users who look like your current customers. To target Lookalike audiences, you upload a list of your current customers. Then, Facebook will target customers who have similar interests, purchasing behaviors, or other targeting criteria that you select. 

3. Leverage remarketing campaigns

With Google ads, remarketing campaigns allow you to serve ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your ad. Facebook and Instagram remarketing ads work the same way.

In order to launch remarketing campaigns, you’ll first need to install the Facebook Pixel on your website. Then, you can show ads that help nudge people along your marketing funnel. You can run ads that feature the specific products they were looking at on your website. 

Or, if you’re a B2B business, you can generate leads by advertising a whitepaper that’s relevant to the service pages they visited on your website. 

4. Lean on your competitors

If you want to steal customers from your competition, Facebook and Instagram ad targeting can help you do it.

Start by building an audience. Select your standard targeting criteria based on your typical customer, such as location, gender, age, or interests. Then, explore the Top Pages section and see if any of your competitors’ Pages show up. If they do, dig deeper to see what other interests and targeting criteria these customers have. Test campaigns with these additional targeting options to see if you gain more traction!

5. Target people who like to shop social

Whether or not someone converts directly from a Facebook or Instagram ad, you can’t deny that these ad platforms are powerful generators of brand awareness, engagement, and sales. 

But if you’re looking for sales now, you might want to target people who like shopping socially — and have done so recently.

Enter: the “Engaged Shopper” targeting criteria. By selecting this purchase behavior when building your audience, Meta will show your Facebook and Instagram ads to people who clicked the “Shop Now” button within the last week. Cool, right?

Are you ready to target the right audiences on Facebook and Instagram?

Contact the advertising experts at Your Marketing People

From Instagram Stories to Facebook Messenger ads, we know what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to finding people on Facebook and Instagram, and turning them into loyal customers for your business.

Contact us today if you’re ready to get started.

Alisha Rechberg

Author Alisha Rechberg

More posts by Alisha Rechberg

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