2024 Meta Ads Targeting Strategy for Small Businesses and Brands: Broadening Your Audience

In the world of digital advertising, narrow audience targeting is becoming less effective. Instead, broadening your audience can significantly improve your campaign performance. This article explores the new Meta Ads targeting strategies for 2024, helping you find your perfect audience with proven techniques and advanced tools.

Master the Basics of Broad Targeting

Why Broad Targeting?

The more people included in your campaign audience, the more opportunities Meta’s AI has to show your ad to people most likely to engage with your business. Even if your audience ends up being too broad, Meta will automatically optimize your ads to reach the most relevant people possible.

Meta’s Top Tips for Using Broad Targeting

1. Set Your Audience to Reach at Least 2 Million People:

Meta’s ad delivery system works best when your audience size is at least 2 million people. So, set up your ad to target the widest audience that makes sense for your business.

2. Only Use Age, Gender, and Location Targeting:

These parameters help your ads get the widest reach possible for your audience.

3. Consolidate Similar Ad Sets to Avoid Audience Overlap:

If multiple ad sets are targeting similar audiences, try consolidating them into a single ad set with a larger budget. This keeps audiences in different ad sets from overlapping and prevents ads from competing against each other in the auction.

Maximize Connections with Expert Targeting Strategies

Broad targeting is the best way to get your ads shown to more people. Next, improve your targeting strategy by including more sophisticated audiences like custom and lookalike audiences.

When Should You Use More Advanced Targeting?

You’re ready to start using custom and lookalike audiences if those audiences are at least 1,000 people. If you’re still not sure, try an A/B test with one campaign using only broad targeting, and the other using custom audiences and lookalike audiences in combination with broad targeting.

Step-by-Step Guidance for Building Advanced Audiences

1. Engagement Custom Audiences (Re-targeting):

Target people who have engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram.

How to Set Up an Engagement Custom Audience:

Navigate to your Audiences.
Select the Create Audience dropdown and choose Custom Audience.
Select Facebook Page.
Set a page section. Start with Include More People.
Include or exclude people below Page sections as desired. You can have up to 5 total page sections per audience.
Give your audience a name.
Select Create Audience.
When finished, select this custom audience during ad set creation.

2. App Activity Custom Audiences (Re-targeting):

Target people who have taken a specific action in your app, such as installs or sign-ups.

How to Set Up an App Activity Custom Audience:

First, make sure your app is registered, set up the SDK (Software Development Kit) and log app events on the Meta for developers site.
Navigate to your Audiences.
Select the Create Audience dropdown and choose Custom Audience.
Select App.
From the drop-down menu, select which app events you'd like to base your audience on.
Add details to the app events you base your custom audience on by selecting Refine By and choosing the type of details you want to specify.
Give your audience a name.
Select Create Audience.
When finished, select this custom audience during ad set creation.

3. Customer List Custom Audiences (Re-targeting):

Target people whose information you’ve already collected such as an email, phone number, or address.

How to Set Up a Customer List Custom Audience:

Navigate to your Audiences.
Select the Create Audience dropdown and choose Custom Audience.
Select Customer List.
Review your customer list and confirm that you mapped your identifiers correctly or check to see that all errors are resolved.
The green checkmark symbol means your identifiers were mapped correctly and are ready.
The yellow exclamation symbol means that you chose not to include certain identifiers, or that some identifiers need to be manually updated.
Upload your customer list. Once it’s ready for use, select Upload and Create.
Give your audience a name.
Select Create Audience.
When finished, select this custom audience during ad set creation.

4. Lookalike Audience (Similar Audience):

Use a custom audience as the source to build a lookalike audience to find new people who share similar characteristics with your original customer lists.

How to Set Up a Lookalike Audience:

First, make sure you’re an admin for the Page you’re creating your lookalike audience from.
Navigate to your Audiences.
Select the Create Audience dropdown and choose Lookalike Audience.
Select your custom audience as the source.
Tip: Consider using a group of 1,000 to 50,000 of your best customers based on lifetime value, transaction value, total order size, or engagement.
Choose the country or countries where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
Choose your desired audience size.
Select Create Audience.
When finished, select this custom audience during ad set creation.

Refine Your Audience with Advanced Best Practices

Now that you've optimized your targeting by adding more audiences, use these proven tips on your next campaign.

1. Combine Broad Targeting with Custom and Lookalike Audiences:

Use the broad targeting best practices listed above as a starting point. Then, add lookalike and custom audiences to your campaign targeting.

Why? Campaigns that use custom and lookalike audiences while targeting at least 2 million people tend to perform better. For instance, the online children’s boutique The Red Wagon saw 77% more purchases when it used a mix of broad and high-intent targeting strategies, compared to using broad targeting alone.

2. Get Granular with Audience Behavior:

Consider building a retargeting audience based on time windows. For example, create separate audiences for people who visited your website in the last 14 days versus 30 days.

Why? This can help you create ads tailored to audiences at different stages of the customer journey.

3. Use Exclusions to Increase Efficiency:

Make sure you’re not targeting the same set of people by adding exclusions, such as audiences who have already made a purchase, unless you’re running a loyalty-specific campaign.

Why? Keeping your audiences distinct will help prevent overlap, which can result in your ads competing against each other in the auction.

4. When in Doubt, Run an A/B Test:

Develop an A/B test focused on targeting to find your perfect audience. For example, set up a test that compares engagement custom audiences versus custom website audiences. Or, try using Advantage campaign budget across audiences in the same campaign to improve performance.

Why? Testing different strategies and approaches can help you determine what audience targeting parameters work best for your business.

Conclusion

Broadening your audience targeting in Meta Ads is crucial for seeing better campaign performance in 2024. By understanding and implementing the basics of broad targeting, using advanced targeting strategies like custom and lookalike audiences, and refining your audience with best practices, you can significantly improve your ad performance and reach the most relevant customers.

For more advanced digital marketing strategies and professional assistance, consider reaching out to our agency: C Viral Digital Marketing Agency.

FAQs

Why should I use broad targeting instead of narrow targeting?
- Broad targeting allows Meta’s AI to optimize your ads more effectively, reaching a larger and more relevant audience.
What is a custom audience?
- A custom audience is a group of people who have interacted with your business in some way, such as visiting your website, using your app, or being on your customer list.
How does a lookalike audience work?
- A lookalike audience uses a custom audience as a source to find new people who share similar characteristics with your original customers.
Why should I consolidate similar ad sets?
- Consolidating similar ad sets prevents audience overlap and competition between your own ads, optimizing your budget and ad performance.
How can I measure the effectiveness of my targeting strategy?
- Use A/B testing to compare different targeting strategies and analyze key metrics like CTR, conversion rate, and ROI.