How to Expand Your Facebook Ad Targeting to New Audiences

Want to expand your Facebook ad targeting to more qualified audiences? Wondering how to build effective Facebook audiences that deliver results?

In this article, you'll learn the six types of warm audiences you can target with Facebook ads and how to scale them to many different lookalike audiences. You'll also discover how to find cold audiences that will work for you.

To learn how to expand your Facebook ad targeting to new audiences, read the article below for an easy-to-follow walkthrough or watch this video:

#1: Create 6 Warm Facebook Advertising Audiences

The first audience category we're going to talk about is warm audiences. These will be some of your best audiences on Facebook because they're people who are already familiar with your brand and business. It's a good thing to continue to show up in the news feed of your warm audiences because the more they see you, the more trust and rapport you build with them.

Some of your best warm audiences on Facebook are your email list, website traffic, video views, ad engagement, Facebook page engagement, and even Instagram profile engagement. If your business is brand-new, you'll cultivate these audiences over time. But if you already have enough volume in these audiences, you can start using them immediately.

#2: Create 4 Lookalike Audiences to Scale Each Warm Facebook Audience

Once you've created your warm audiences in Facebook Ads Manager, you can start creating lookalikes of those audiences.

Let's say you've created a Facebook custom audience from your purchase list. You can tell Facebook to find more people who look like people who've purchased from your business. Facebook will then find what's common among all of these people and look for others who look and behave like those who have already purchased from you.

You want to create lookalikes of your purchase list, email lists, website traffic, video views, ad engagement, Facebook page engagement, and Instagram profile engagement. And if you're doing Facebook lead forms, build lookalikes of your lead forms too.

Pro Tip: To get more out of your Facebook lookalikes, start by creating a 1% lookalike of your purchase list or email list. Then create a 1%–3% lookalike, 3%–5% lookalike, and 5%–7% lookalike.

Once you've created all of these lookalikes, you can combine them into one ad set. To set up your targeting, open Ads Manager, click Edit, and open your ad set.

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In the Edit Audience section, go to Custom Audiences and start building your combination there. (If you haven't created those lookalikes yet, simply click Create New and build them from here.)

For this example, we'll be targeting lookalikes of purchases so we'll start with the 1% lookalike.

Next, choose the 1%–3%, 3%–5%, and 5%–7% lookalikes.

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Of course, you can adjust the demographic data to match your ideal client if you want to such as their age, gender, and so on. But remember that these are lookalikes so Facebook will already be looking for their common demographic data.

#3: Use Interests to Develop Cold Prospect Facebook Audiences

The third category of audiences to target on Facebook is your cold audiences.

Think about competitors' websites that your ideal audience might be going to, personalities they might be interested in, their hobbies, brands, job titles, magazines they might be reading (including trade publications), TV shows they might be watching, podcasts they might be listening to, and professional tools or equipment they might be using.

Before we talk about how to find more cold audiences to target on Facebook, it's important to understand that most won't work out. I like to launch my audiences by the dozen and I'm typically happy if two or three show good results. So if you have the mindset that you're looking for the few that work for you—and you're not going to be bothered by the ones that don't work—you'll be much more successful with your ads.

Another way to develop new interests to target on Facebook and Instagram ads is by talking to your customers and clients and seeing what they're writing online in their reviews and testimonials. This information will help you develop other ideas for the people you should be targeting on Facebook and Instagram.

Additionally, Facebook Audience Insights can be a valuable tool for uncovering cold audiences that might surprise you. In Ads Manager, click on the nine-dot icon in the left navigation and scroll down to Audience Insights.

In Audience Insights, you can build out demographics for your ideal customer or client, including where they live, their age, their gender, and so on.

Let's say that you have a little bread crumb from one of your cold audiences and see that Whole Foods is working really well for you. Type in “Whole Foods Market” under Interests and see what comes up.

Look at all of the amazing demographic detail you get. You can see the age, gender, relationship status, and education level of people who like Whole Foods. You can even see their job titles which is great.

If you go to the Page Likes tab, you'll see top categories and page likes. This is where the magic comes in. You'll find many additional cold audiences—some of which you may not have thought of—that you can begin testing and targeting to see how they work for your Facebook ad account.

If you click See All under Top Categories and Page Likes, you'll see additional ideas so don't forget to use this tool to your advantage.

Conclusion

We all know that targeting will make or break your Facebook ads. The quality of audiences you develop will have a direct impact on your ROI so you want to be hyper-focused on three audience categories—warm audiences, lookalike audiences, and a variety of cold audiences. And be sure to use the Audience Insights tool in Facebook Ads Manager to find even more audiences that are going to work for your ads.

What do you think? Which of these tips will you try to find new audiences to target on Facebook? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More articles on Facebook ads:

• Learn how to budget your Facebook ad spend based on your revenue goal.
• Discover how to grow your email list with Facebook ads.
• Find out how to create Facebook and Instagram ads that generate sales.

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