In this series of posts, we’ll be running through the targeting options in Facebook to help you fully understand what is available to you and your business. This week, we’re giving an overview of Custom Audiences, Locations, Age and Gender – enjoy!

Custom Audiences

If you want to promote your product to current customers, then this might be for you. To create a Custom Audience, go to ‘Audiences’ in the top left hand corner of your Business Manager and then click ‘Create Audience’. This tool allows you to reach people who already have a relationship with your business. You can create this audience by uploading a customer file, through visitors of your website, through activity on your app or from engagement on Facebook.

Lookalike Audiences

This falls under the same category as Custom Audiences. You can build a Lookalike Audience by selecting your page, a conversion tracking pixel or a Custom Audience. Facebook will then find people similar your existing customers, people who visit your website or the people that like your page and build a lookalike audience based on this. This is an extremely useful tool, as it allows you to reach people that are likely to be interested in your business.

Locations

Location targeting allows you to target your ads to people in specific locations. You might only want to advertise in the UK, so you’d keep it broad with this as your only location, however there are more possibilities. You can include more than one country if you’re looking to go international, or you can be more granular in your targeting of the UK by including postcodes, for example. These are the general options:

  • Countries
  • Cities
  • States
  • Regions
  • Postcodes

Age & Gender

This one is fairly simple. You choose the minimum and maximum age of the person you want to target. For some businesses, they might be certain of their customer age already, however if you’re not sure, it’s best to leave this open. Then, when your campaign has accumulated some data, you can decide which age group is working the best. This also applies to Gender – it’s wise not to exclude one gender unless you’re confident that they are a waste of time, as your best results could come from them!