Targeting is crucial when it comes to running FB Adverts. It helps you in selecting your audience with utmost precision. All you need to do is to understand how to carry out the targeting.
While targeting your existing customers is OK, among the best popular methods of advertising on FB is interest-based targeting. This is where you show your FB ads to individuals interested in particular subjects.
However, people usually make 5 mistakes while doing their advertising with interest-based targeting which cost them a lot. In this article, we’ll be discussing these mistakes. Keep reading.
#1. Not to Understand Who Is Into an Interest
The majority of advertisers don’t entirely understand how FB determines who’s in for a particular interest. If you want to target that interest, who will really see it?
Note: Liking a FB page is just part of becoming a part of that interest! Suppose you are doing a comparison of Facebook pages having exactly the same name; one of the pages is an interest and the other is not. You’ll realize that the interest page has a lot more likes than the other!
This is explained by the fact that Facebook utilizes plenty of various data in deciding who’s into a specific interest. It’s probable that they are in that interest even though they haven’t liked that FB page before.
An interest in FB ads and a FB page are not actually the same thing. This is where most of the advertisers make mistakes. They think of targeting the audience of a specific Facebook page, but that isn’t possible anymore. It was previously but for now; FB makes the interest considerably larger than that. It even includes people that have not liked that FB page before!
#2. Treating All Interests Equally
It is wrong that many advertisers imagine that every interest is the same. You can notice a huge variance between them. For instance, suppose you’re planning on targeting golf as an interest since you are selling something related to golf. Who are the people you think will see that?
Would they be those that are casual golfers or perhaps those that watch on television? What about those professional golfers?
As you realize, it’s not easy to tell! You must dig a bit deeper.
Suppose you’ll be targeting Tiger Woods. It’s not likely that everyone that loves Tiger Woods plays golf. Even though he’s the best golfer around, those who follow him or those that Facebook imagine follow him are not necessarily golf enthusiasts.
Let’s dig deeper. Suppose you will target Phil Mickelson. Though he is still a famous golfer, he’s not as popular. It’d be safer assuming that his followers would then be more into golf, right?
If you’d target Bubba Watson, you’d get people more into golf since Bubba Watson isn’t so famous! You will realize that the more popular your target is, the harder it is finding a common denominator.
If you’re targeting Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’ll not target bodybuilders alone. If you need to target particular interest or people that are into an interest, you need to consider how popular they are.
If you target Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’re not only going to target bodybuilders. If you want to target certain interests/people related to an interest, you have to consider how popular they are. The more popular your target is, the trickier the audience is going to be to target.
#3. Opting for the Obvious Interests
People make big mistakes by targeting something because they lack an idea of what else they should target. Opting for the obvious interest implies that you’re competing with everyone on the FB ads platform, which is a fruitless affair.
You must be smarter to ensure that you’re not pursuing everyone’s target; otherwise, you’ll be wasting a lot of effort. Here are three ways to see that this doesn’t happen:
a.) Go for Popular People and Popular Brands within Your Market
Rather than wasting your effort looking for obvious interests, search for the most well-known names within the interest. Search for brands that are focusing on the target audience that you need to reach.
b.) Think outside the box!
Beyond your primary target, you need to consider what your ideal audience is also interested in. For example, people that are interested in fishing are likely to have an interest in outdoor pursuits such as hiking and camping. Look sideways and see if there are any related markets which serve the same audience you do and if you can as well target them.
c.) Make use of Clever Tools
If you’d go into your FB ads manager then enter a particular search keyword, you’d probably just get twenty results. Making use of tools such as ConnectExplore , you’ll make your work a lot easier.
Connectio also offers a free tool for interest search to help you in finding more keywords in the normal Facebook Ads Manager. These tools are going to help you discover interests which you would not be able to discover without them.
Note that you’re not supposed to target the obvious interests; otherwise, you get yourself into the difficult competition. If you’re creative enough when it comes to choosing interests, you’ll realize better results.
#4. Not Split-Testing
People seem to make FB ads and add 5, 10 or more different interests then hope to get the best. Some of these interests may be ideal for your business. On the other hand, others could lead to loss of your resources. Your overall advert might be making a loss and you might realize that it’s not working for you. You may result to changing or deleting it which is not a good ideal.
With the use of split test, you would test different interests and see which ones do the best. This way, you would have a clear idea of the ones to keep and the ones to remove.
#5. Not Using Layering
On FB, you may target people that have interest in, for instance, Coca-Cola. You might decide to target everybody interested in Coca-Cola or Pepsi.
Making use of layering implies that you’ll target that overlapping area when 2 or more interests combine. You’re not targeting everyone with interest in Coca-Cola or Pepsi but everyone in the Coca-Cola AND the Pepsi interest.
You’re always free to add more and more layers till you get that secret overlap!
Layering helps you to target your audience even more! You can do this with the help of the FB ads platform or by the convenient dashboard of ConnectExplore
In conclusion, interest-based targeting is essential whenever you want to reach your audience. Therefore, you need to avoid these 5 pitfalls to optimize your business.