Effective Facebook targeting leads to an increase in ad conversions while lowering the cost per conversion—the ultimate measure of an ad’s value.

The success of a Facebook Ad campaign lies in the knowledge of the targeting options to choose from to ensure your ads reach the right people. Some social media strategist may not know this and wonder why they hardly get any return on investments for all their ad campaigns.

Using Facebook targeting tools when running an ad is very effective and helps businesses reach their target audience and even boost sales. Due to the billions of people using Facebook and other related platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, it is easy to collect necessary data from them. And advertisers can use the information to reach their target audience.

It becomes easier to connect with your audience on when you know the available Facebook target options to use in running your campaign. Here, we are going to discuss the different targeting options to use, but first, let’s look at how Facebook defines its audience.

Facebook audience

There are three ways in which Facebook defines its audience, and they are core, custom, and lookalike audience.

The core audiences are people Facebook targets through data it has gathered from its users. The custom audiences are data collected from people who visit your website, mobile apps, or you’ve communicated with through your CMS software. The lookalike audience is a combination of the core and custom audience.

Essential Facebook Targeting Options to Know

Here are the available targeting options Facebook uses to find your target market:

The core audience

Here Facebook uses data it gathers from the users on its platform to give you targeting options. The options are:

Location targeting

You can target countries, cities, region, and even postal codes of people on Facebook. In location targeting, you have the options to target:

• Everyone within a location at a specific time
• People who added a home address
• People who have recently updated their address
• Visitors to an area, e.g., travelers, fun seekers, etc
• People within the radius of a location with a maximum of a 50-mile radius

Regional targeting

If you want to be specific on the people your ad reaches, probably you want those from a particular geographical region, this targeting is the best. It gives you options to target:

• People within free trade areas such as NAFTA, EEA, APEC, etc
• People within app store counties such as Android and iPhones
• People living in what is identified as an emerging market such as Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, etc
• Those residing in Euro areas like France, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Netherlands, etc

Demographic targeting

If you decide that it is best to use the information people make public on Facebook, you can go with demographic targeting. It gives you the option to target:

• People within the same age range which also depends on your content type
• People who speak the same language with no consideration to the country
• People with specific gender which may be male, female or others
• People with some level of education be it high school or university
• People with a particular status of relationship which could be single, married or complicated
• Families with children or a specific size of the family
• People who have experienced a recent change which could be a new job, apartment, marriage, etc
• People who work with particular companies, industries or have individual job titles
• People with specific political views

Interest targeting

Also referred to as detailed targeting, this type of targeting allows you to reach people based on shared interests or their hobbies. Here you have the option to target interests based on:

• Lifestyle such as fitness, sports, fashion and so on
• Activities or groups they participate in on Facebook
• Pages people engage and like
• Posts people liked in the past
• Posts and comments people share on the Facebook platform

Behavior targeting

You can reach people based on the mobile and desktop devices they are using. It gives you the option to target:

• People based on the type of mobile devices they use and their mobile networks too
• People based on their operating system or desktop browsers
• People based on the ads they’ve clicked in the past
• People with specific network speed
• People who use or have used a Wi-Fi connection

Connections targeting

Connections targeting is more of a retargeting option because Facebook allows brands to reconnect with people they’ve connected with in the past. It gives them opportunities to target:

• People from your Facebook page together with their friends
• People who have seen and interacted with any of your Facebook events
• People who use your apps

Multicultural affinity

This targeting basis on the culture people has identified with based on their interactions. It is only available in the United States, but eligibility does not include employment, housing, or credit ads.

If you wish to run a political or election campaign ad, you can use the political view targeting option to reach people with the specific political views you desire. However, you will need to complete an authorization process first.

Custom Audiences

Using data gathered from other sites and software you operate, Facebook can help you find customers on its platform. It provides you with target options such as:

• Using the email address or phone numbers on your customer lists
• People who use your apps
• People who have visited your website in the past

To get Facebook to create an audience of people who have used your app, register your app, and install the Facebook SDK in it. To target people who have visited your website, you can show them the specific content they engaged with while on your site. However, you need to install the Facebook pixel for it to work.

Lookalike Audiences

You can always use existing customer data to find new audiences if you don’t want to go through the stress of using the core targeting options like demographics, location, regional, and the rest.

Facebook will use your customer data to find new audiences that will share the same characteristics with the existing one down to their purchasing behavior.