How to Create a Facebook Audience – TDMM Academy #3

Organic Facebook Marketing
TDMM Academy Video Series | Video #3
By Rob Ewing, Director of Marketing Fitness

So Organic Marketing is great, but what if I wanted to pay for a targeted ad? The two questions I would want you to ask are, “Who am I looking to reach?” and “How will I reach them?”

Facebook has multiple methods of creating an audience doing this and most are pretty quick and intuitive. This step is probably the most important step of your entire ad process however, so don’t take it lightly.

If you show the same ad to two different people, they will respond differently to it. That doesn’t mean your ad is unsuccessful, it just may be directed to the wrong avatar or client group. The group you select to target will make or break your campaign. This makes choosing them correctly imperative.

The first step is to use the Facebook Ads Manager tool located in the top right of your page (depending on when you read this, facebook may have already moved it — Facebook changes all the time and it benefits you to be on top of those changes faster than your competitors.)

Step two is to go to the audiences panel and then create audience button on the left. You can then select “Custom Audience, Lookalike Audiences, or Saved Audiences”. Let’s break down what each of those are.

Custom Audience – is a type of audience you can create made up of your existing customers. These are drawn from either a pixel on your website (essentially a dot that you put in the code and facebook tracks who that person is.) or from other lists that already exist. You can upload an email list to target people who are on your list.

Lookalike Audience – An audience type that facebook creates to be similar to your fans or a group of people on a certain page. This will be a fairly large audience that populates every week, but should show a 1% sample of the United States that represent your audience.

Saved Audience – This is an audience that you create based on Demographic characteristics. This is often times the easiest method and can allow you to segment and target even if you aren’t currently drawing that type of client. If it is your target audience and you just haven’t had great success yet, this may be the way to go to reach them.

These methods will all get you an audience that will work, it just depends on what you are trying to use the audience for. If the audience is one that you are trying to sell to, sometimes you will want to use customer data based on who has already seen your product from your website. They are more likely to buy because they are already interested.

If you are trying to find a representative sample similar to your customers, but in a different area (say for franchising, etc.) then a lookalike audience is sometimes great.

If you are trying to target people you don’t normally reach, then maybe the saved audience is the method of choice. The key is to plan around whatever end goal you are trying to attain because it will change which is best to use.