Which Audiences Should you be Testing for which Campaigns?
One of the head scratchers that business owners come across when they’re navigating Ads Manager is which audiences they should choose for which campaign.
In Facebook/Instagram you’re looking at three main audience types - Saved Audiences, Custom Audiences and Lookalike audiences, and they all have their place to support one another. With enough budget, we’d recommend testing more than one audience in a campaign to see where you are getting the best results. You may also run more than one audience type in order to feed another audience.
Saved Audiences
If you don’t hold a lot of your own data, this is where you can really build out big audiences. A great starting point for the top of a funnel, and although they have the ability to go large, you can also narrow down and target points which are important for your business, including the following:
Location
Age
Gender
Language
Saved audiences also give you a ‘detailed targeting’ option where you can feed in interests, demographics and behaviours.
Top Tips with Saved Audiences:
Keep an eye on the estimated audience size in the right hand bar (keep to a minimum of 20k here, ideally 50k)
Use the ‘Exclude’ button to ‘layer’ out sections of that audience which you don’t want, eg, you’ve added in ‘Crafting’ as an interest, but you don’t want to pick up people who read The Independent, so you ‘Exclude’ ‘The Independent’ as an interest from your crafting audience. This helps you keep your audience substantial, but targeted.
You can also use the Connections options for targeting, but if your followers etc aren’t huge and you need some volume we would recommend leaving them.
When to use a Saved Audience
Saved Audiences are useful in a range of different campaigns, but particularly at the top of a funnel when you want to throw your ads open to a new audience. They’re great for testing what demographics are responding to your ads and for sending new blood through your pixel for retargeting.
Custom Audience
A Custom Audience is data you have already collected from somewhere. These can include:
Traffic picked up from your website with the Facebook pixel
Followers, likes engagers etc from your Facebook and Instagram accounts
Video views
Customer lists and offline data
Top Tips for Custom Audiences
Get the Facebook pixel on your website as early as possible. You can’t collect data retrospectively, so even if you’re not sure what campaigns you’ll be running in the future make sure it covers all of your website (and any relevant third party sites) and leave it to do its work.
Keep your offline data up to date. Customer lists, email lists etc will work much harder for you if they are well segmented and up to date.
When to use a Custom Audience
These are typically used further down the funnel for retargeting. We would class them as already ‘warm’ (if your audiences are big enough you can test which are ‘warmest’, ie, do your email list audiences convert better than your Instagram engagers?).
In a funnel you should make sure you have excluded the Custom Audiences from your top of funnel Saved Audiences, otherwise you run the risk of your ads competing with one another and delivering a mixed message.
Custom Audiences traditionally have a higher conversion rate, at a lower cost, but they do need feeding. Continually working on growing your lists, followers, website visitors etc will pay dividends here.
Lookalike Audiences
Everyone loves a Lookalike, and they are nearly always worth testing at the top of a funnel if you have the seed audiences and the budget.
A Lookalike is where Facebook does its magic. It takes a seed audience (data you already have, eg the Custom Audiences, website visitors, page likes etc) and it creates a new audience of people who ‘look like’ them. As well as the more obvious data points to match, it also considers buyer intent and purchasing patterns.
Top Tips for Lookalike Audiences
Be rigorous with your seed audiences - quality over quantity. If you know that your Facebook followers don’t genuinely match your buyers, don’t use it as a Lookalike seed audience.
If you have the budget, test different size %s (how close your new audience matches your seed audience). You could run ads to a 1-2% audience and a 3-4% audience and measure which gives the best returns.
When to use a Lookalike Audience
Provided you are happy with the size and quality of your Lookalike, and you have sufficient budget, we’d suggest testing them alongside a Saved Audience at the top of funnel.
As with all elements of Facebook and Instagram advertising, the best results come from robust testing. We’d recommend applying a range of audiences to your campaign to find where you’re going to get the best value.