How to target expats on facebook
How to reach expats on Facebook. Let me start off by saying that I’m… | by Nina Verfaillie
Let me start off by saying that I’m not, by any means, a Facebook advertising expert. The tips and tricks that I’m about to give you, I’ve gathered over the past couple of months while trying to promote my startup, Expack.
Expack is the first subscription box for expatriates living in the Unites States. Every month, users get a box full of the items they miss the most from their home country. (Are shameless plugs allowed on Medium?)
Most subscription boxes rely heavily on Instagram and influencers for their marketing. Unfortunately, this was not an option for us since our user base is older and quite fragmented. By trial and error, we quickly learned that Facebook advertising was the best medium to reach our audience.
Facebook has allowed us to sustain a monthly growth of 20% for the past 9 months. Below is a list of options to find and target expatriates using Facebook ads.
This should always be your go-to target. You can actually type in a country and select “Expats” from the Detailed Targeting drop-down. You can further narrow your target audience by entering their location. Since Expack is currently available in the United States, our targeting looks something like this: Location (United States) + Expats (x Country). We also play around with the age group depending on the country we are targeting.
You might move out of your home country but you never really stop caring about it and its issues. As an ex-expat myself, I know reading my local newspaper online was one of the few things that kept me connected to my roots. Now, as an advertiser, I’ve found that newspapers are a great way to target expatriates.
Again, start with your target’s location and simply type the country’s top newspapers in the Detailed Targeting field.
I’m not a huge sports fan, but most people are. Like the need to stay up-to-date with your home country’s news, the love for your favorite local sports teams does not fade away when you live abroad.
You can easily reach expats by targeting local sports teams. This works even better when your product is mainly targeted towards men, although we’ve seen good numbers with women as well.
If there’s one thing all expats have in common is that they like to go back home. You can use local airlines (e.g. Air France, Air Canada, Air Japan) to target expatriates all over the world. The pool of people that you manage to reach using this type of advertising will be more diluted than in the previous two examples. Expatriates like to travel back home using local airlines, but so does the general public.
This one only applies if the language spoken in the location where your product is sold is different from the language of the expat group you are trying to reach. When setting up your campaign and, after selecting your location, you can drill down your audience by language. If your product is for Italians living in Argentina, your targeting will look something like this: Location (Argentina) + Language (Italian).
From there you can narrow it even more by inserting some interests or playing around with the age group.
Not only can you target expats on Facebook, you can also target their close friends. The option appears as “Close friends of expats” inside the Detailed Targeting field. There’s no way of narrowing it down by specific countries but it’s still a great option to reach people living abroad. Make sure that when using “Close friends of expats” your messaging makes sense (e.g. “Your Colombian friends will love this product.”) You can also include an invitation to tag friends of a certain nationality.
There are countless groups dedicated to national pride on Facebook. Once you type in “Proud to be Brazilian” inside the Detailed Targeting field, you will automatically get an extensive list of groups that can be used to target people that are proud to be from that specific country. This method is the one that yields the least amount of potential targets, but it is also the most accurate.
I’m pretty sure there’s not a lot of Puerto Ricans that are proud to be Filipino and vice versa.
There’s not a lot of information online about how to target expats on Facebook. Trust me, I’ve searched. I hope this information is helpful and if there’s any other tip you have, please be kind and share ;)
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People living abroad use Facebook to connect with friends and family back home, sharing key life milestones and everyday moments alike.
And expats aren’t just using Facebook to keep in touch with people. Brands, organizations, celebrities and news outlets also offer a vital connection to home.
To help businesses reach people living abroad, today we’re announcing a new targeting feature that enables advertisers to reach the 92 million expats on Facebook.
Marketers can now connect with expats living within a given country (like expats living in Brazil) and expats originating from a specific country (like people born in Brazil living abroad). Nationality-specific targeting is currently available for people from Brazil, Indonesia, China, South Africa and India.
Since many expats travel home for the holidays, Etihad Airways, a leading Middle East airline, saw an opportunity before Diwali to connect with the 27 million Indians on Facebook living outside India. Like many holidays, Diwali is a festival to be celebrated with family and friends. Using expat targeting, Eithad connected with expats with messages about traveling home for the holiday, reaching 536,00 Indian expats living in the Middle East, leading to 700 bookings and a 50X return on investment.
“People expect communication to be personal, relevant and mobile. With Facebook’s expat targeting, we were able to speak to a highly relevant audience and deliver them something that was truly valuable in real time. That’s the secret to a great campaign.” — Andrew Ward, VP of Marketing, Etihad Airways
Like all Facebook products, this new targeting capability is built in a privacy-protective way. We don’t share information with advertisers that tells them who a person is.
Expat targeting is now available worldwide in all Facebook ads interfaces, including the API.
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How to find your audience for advertising.
Tricks you didn't know about On March 4, 2022, Roskomnadzor decided to block Facebook, and on March 11, 2022, it decided to block Instagram. If you are in Russia, most likely, both social networks are currently unavailable to you.
But we have some useful material for you.
(For those who have social networks working - the text of the article is below, under the list of links)
Telegram:
How to start a channel in Telegram
5 ways to monetize Telegram
How to make stickers for Telegram: a step-by-step guide
VKontakte:
": a large selection of tips and services
VKontakte targeting: a complete setup guide
Odnoklassniki:
Is Odnoklassniki social network useful for business
Yandex.Zen:
Yandex.Zen channel for small businesses: how it is useful
How to write a sales article for advertising in Zen
8 myths about Yandex.
Zen for business
We analyze the "Audiences" section in the Facebook advertising account, look for clients and prevent mistakes that eat up the budget. There are a lot of targeting ideas in this article that you might not have known or were hesitant to use, as well as some tips for administering audiences.
The material is intended for those who are already familiar with the advertising account: opened a business account, added a means of payment, installed a Facebook pixel and launched a couple of simple ads. Otherwise, you will only be able to apply some of the tips.
How to set up a retargeting pixel for VKontakte, Facebook, Mail.ru
Table of contents:
Getting started in the "Audiences" section
Creating an audience
Customized
Lookalike Audience
Saved Audience
How to Search for an Audience Using the Detailed Targeting Form
Relationships
Audience Overlay
Conclusion 9052 Table of contents:
Getting Started in the Audiences Section
Creating an Audience
Customized
Lookalike Audience
Saved Audience
How to search for an audience using the detailed targeting form
Relationships
Overlay audiences
Conclusion
Getting started in the "Audiences" section
You can set an audience immediately when creating an ad, or you can set it in a special section.
We will take the second option. To do this, go to Ads Manager and in the "Resources" column, select "Audiences".
Here you can:
- see which audiences are used in advertisements right now;
- quickly select the desired audiences in the "Filters" section;
- create new ones, edit and delete old ones;
- check if audiences compete with each other;
- transfer audiences from one advertising account to another (if you run several projects).
We will analyze all points.
In the "Filters" section, you can check active, available and problematic audiences, sort by type and source. This feature will come in handy when you have several dozen audiences
Free social media audit
Drawing of 3 places until 24.08. The rest of the participants of the drawing - 50% discount
MoreCreate an audience
Click on the blue button and see:
Customized
Here we select people who interacted with our company.
These are existing and potential customers, website visitors, subscribers, app users, and even those who came to your physical store.
Custom audiences can be used directly:
- launch retargeting,
- give a personal discount,
- remind about a forgotten cart, etc.
You can also create lookalike audiences based on them.
In the long run, this is the best option, as we focus on those who already know about us and have shown interest in the product.
There are 5 ways to create a custom audience:
Client data file
This type of advertising allows you to work with your client base, for example, from CRM. Start with this point if you keep track of orders, write down contacts and commercial information. So you will have a reliable source of leads in your advertising account.
The easiest way is to download a table with customer information. Data can be copied manually, uploaded as a formatted file, or imported from MailChimp.
Facebook will analyze the information, find people from the table in their network and add them to the audience for advertising.
Table template
In 2017, Facebook also added a third option - "Specify LTV (life cycle value) to create the most effective lookalike audiences." Here you can download not only primary data, but also the value of leads. To do this, in the file opposite each client, write the amount of money that you plan to receive from him. From these numbers, the algorithm will understand which users are your priority and will show them ads more often.
Learn more about how to prepare a customer data file with LTV
Traffic from the site
We select people who visited our site or its specific pages. It makes sense to create such an audience if at least 100 people visit the site every week, and at least 200 per month. Otherwise, the audience will be too small and expensive.
It may seem that there are few functions in the menu, but it is not so
The main parameter is the choice of the audience source.
Here you can choose:
- all who visited the site;
- those who reached the page "Cart", "Payment", etc.;
- those who visited certain product pages;
- those who spent the most time on the site.
The function sorted by time allows you to select the percentage of those people who stayed on the site longer than others. If 100 people visited your site during the specified period, and you choose 25%, the algorithm will select for advertising 25 people who have been on the site the longest
You can also narrow the audience and exclude people with certain parameters:
If you plan to run ads only on non-purchasers, exclude people who visited the "Thank you for shopping" page. To do this, enter the word that is contained in the URL of the page. If the full link is “www.vashsayt.ru/ spasibo” , then in the Facebook form it will be enough to add only spasibo .
When creating an audience, we also specify the period for which we want to receive visitors.
The maximum term is 180 days.
The Website Traffic audience will be updated all the time. For example, if you set a period of 30 days, then everyone who visited the site 30 days ago will be included in the audience, but will be removed from the list in a day. But every new visitor to the site will automatically be included in the list. This also applies to active campaigns that you've created with this audience type.
Actions in applications, engagement
The principle is similar to "Traffic from the site". But here, instead of a website, we drag the audience from the application (if any) and social networks.
You can select an audience and run the same ad type that it interacted with. If people have watched your videos, run video ads on them, if they didn’t subscribe to an event, invite them to attend the next one. Invite people who have interacted with your Instagram account to follow you on Facebook as well.
How to unblock Facebook: life hacks from a targetologist
Offline actions
This feature allows you to work with an audience that has made purchases in your physical stores.
With the help of the function, you can track how online advertising affects store traffic and re-engage people with relevant advertising. You can also create Lookalike Audiences.
To use the feature, you first need to set up offline conversions.
Lookalike Audience
This is my favorite type of audience. This is where Facebook itself looks for the audience that is most likely to like your ad. The algorithm is based on your work with subscribers in social networks, site visitors and customers from electronic databases. The algorithm is powerful and works great. Therefore, if you are honest in your social networks, do not wind up subscribers, and take care of your customer base, this type of audience will work well.
We start creating similar audiences when there are already individualized ones: site users, page subscribers, customer base and people who interacted with your publications and advertising.
Facebook looks for similarities between people of an individualized audience, compares them with users of the social network and selects the most similar ones.
This happens automatically, you only need to press a few buttons.
The larger and more accurate the source audience, the better the lookalike one. It is desirable that in the initial there were at least 100 people.
How to set up
In the "Source" column at the top of the list, Facebook will offer to make an audience similar to your page subscribers, and below there will be created custom audiences. All your “donors” will be here to create similar audiences.
After choosing a "donor", you need to select the territory where the algorithm will search for people.
How many people will enter the audience directly depends on the location. The numbers on the ruler are the percentage of the population of the area that will be included in the list for advertising. If we select Russia and Kazakhstan, Facebook will calculate the total number of representatives of these countries in the social network and offer to choose a percentage. For example, in these two countries, Facebook sees 18,400,000 users in total, and 1% of this number - 184,000 people.
If we select more than one country, the audience will be pooled and the best match will come out, but the distribution of people across countries can be uneven. That is, residents of Kazakhstan can take 80% of the places in the list, and Russia - only 20%. If you need even distribution, create a lookalike audience for each country separately.
You can create multiple classrooms at one time. To do this, click "advanced options":
Select the number of audiences and percentages:
Facebook will immediately show the size of potential audiences.
Tip: Choose as narrow as possible - up to 2-3%, otherwise there will be a large error in the calculations of the algorithm. Exception: small areas where the population is less than 100,000 people. Then you can safely take all 10%.
Facebook can gather an audience in a few seconds, or it can slow down for several days. Standard: up to 2 hours. You can check the status on the main page of the "Audiences" section.
Saved Audience
The variant with the largest selection of qualities. Here we customize everything from age and gender to interests and behaviors.
Until the item "Detailed targeting" everything seems elementary. But there are many nuances.
Seats
Select the audience status for the seat.
Local residents - those who have this area indicated in their information about themselves.
Recently visited – those who were geolocated to the location by Facebook.
Travelers - those who have recently been in this place, but live 200 or more kilometers away.
Immediately select the geography. Facebook searches for continents, countries, regions, cities, streets and makes it possible to independently put a “pin” anywhere on the map.
When you select a location, Facebook sets a radius of several kilometers and collects all people who fall within this radius. It can be customized. You can also target only within the city along its borders by selecting the “only current city” option.
Within a country, Facebook makes it possible to target only cities with a population of more than 100,000, and also exclude points. Use these features to avoid wasting your advertising budget on unfavorable territories. Or vice versa, so as not to offer a budget product in elite areas.
The number of inhabitants in the city can be adjusted:
Advice : If something is not in Russian, try switching to Latin. So, for example, Facebook does not search for Russian regions if entered in Cyrillic. Latin - easily.
Another tip: Adjust the radius and exclude points where your customers are most likely not to be, or there is bad communication between you. If you deliver pizza in St. Petersburg, it makes sense to reduce the radius from 40 to 30 km. If you are delivering high-priced food in Moscow, you should exclude disadvantaged areas of the city.
Select "Exclude" from the menu, and then put down the areas that we want to remove from the promotion with a pin
Age
By default, Facebook sets from 18 to 65+, but you can choose from 13 if you do not fall into the "adult" ad group.
These are dating sites, gambling, bioactive supplements, etc. The full list is in the Facebook rules.
Tip: Split your audience by age. Choose between 5-15 years: 18 to 25, 25 to 35, 35 to 50, etc.
Languages
We select people who understand the language of our advertising. This is what coverage in Moscow looks like when we do not select a language:
And so, if you choose "Russian":
This does not necessarily mean that 800 thousand people in Moscow do not know Russian for sure. There will only be a few of them. Others are using Facebook in some other language and haven't set their preferences to understand Russian. For example, many in Russia use the English interface.
To reach such people, specify several languages at once in the settings: Russian, English and the languages of those peoples who usually understand Russian: Kazakh, Ukrainian, Belarusian.
If you are advertising for foreigners in Russia, select only their specific language and run ads separately in that language.
Specifying English here will only spoil the audience, make it too blurry. But if you're running ads in another country, then always include English along with the languages spoken in that country.
Fine-grained targeting
Have you ever looked at how Facebook selects ads specifically for you? Look, you will learn a lot of interesting things about yourself:
Your advertising preferences
This is what my preferences look like:
Interests can be anything you respond to on Facebook. If I like a page related to marketing, Facebook immediately adds it to the list to show me relevant ads.
The most interesting section is “Your data (categories)”
Here Facebook analyzes the behavior in the social network and the real world, for example, keeps track of my geolocation. The social network knows that I have friends abroad, my wedding anniversary is approaching, I use Apple and much more. Take a look at this section, it can even be funny. And if you are looking for people similar to you to advertise, there will be a ready-made list of ideas for finding an audience.
How to search for an audience through the detailed targeting form
There are three standard ways:
- Manually: enter interests and characteristics in the line;
- Browsing: open the Facebook menu and search for what you need in the list;
- Recommendations: Look for similar interests when multiple criteria have already been selected.
If you don't yet have or lack understanding of what your target audience might like, it's worth starting with the View option. There is a list of options here.
There are an infinite number of them. The audience can be searched by demographic interests :
- education: level, educational institution, field of study;
- life events: in a relationship, away from family, away from hometown;
- birthday and wedding anniversary;
- behavior of friends;
- work.
Facebook even allows you to search for audiences by political preferences (but only for the US).
Ideas for how to use this:
- If you have a product aimed at smart and erudite people, choose people with higher education (example: “Education → Level of education → PhD”).
- If you have a giftable product, target friends whose birthdays or wedding anniversaries are coming up (example: “Life events → Friends → Best friends of people celebrating birthdays in a month”).
- If you have goods for children, focus on parents with children of the desired age group (example: "Parents → Parents of children aged 1 to 2 years."
Ideas how to use it:
- If you're advertising a gym, you should add most of the options from the "Sports and Outdoors" section to your interests. Or just click "select all".
- If you sell products for pets, go to the section "Hobbies and hobbies → Pets" and choose the ones you need.
- If you have a store of goods that can be useful to everyone, and you launch a promotion, one of the audiences can be selected by the interest "Coupons" ("Shopping and Fashion → Shopping → Coupons").
Behavior - is the most accurate group. To create audiences based on behavior, Facebook uses the movement of users in the area, the use of mobile devices and operating systems, purchases and other actions. It works better than interests because everything that you want falls into interests, and what happens in fact falls into “Behavior”.
For example, your friend has asked you to subscribe to his Egypt tour agency. Facebook will put "tourism" in your interests, although you were not going anywhere, but simply supported a friend. And the “Behavior → Frequent Travelers” section will only include those who have been identified by Facebook using geolocation. Therefore, if your audience is travelers, it makes more sense to target through this section.
A very useful subsection is Mobile Device User.
Here you can target
- owners of different smartphone brands;
- those who bought a phone recently;
- those who access Facebook from a tablet;
- users who sit with WiFi, 4G, 3G;
- users whose devices support a particular ad format, and more.
This section is especially relevant for those who promote mobile applications or sell phone accessories. You can immediately offer a person what is right for his mobile device.
Another use for this subsection is to look for a rich audience. To do this, go to brands (all mobile devices of this brand) and select flagship phones - the latest models from different manufacturers.
Ideas on how to use it:
- If you're promoting an iPhone app, target iOS users.
- If you need to download a heavy file from a link, choose those connected via WiFi.
- If you're an online retailer, try Engaged Shoppers as one of your audiences.
- Promote promotional services and B2B products to those who have "Facebook Page Administrators" in their behavior.
Entering preferences manually
It's simple. You know the interests of the target audience - enter them in the line. Facebook suggests possible interests in a drop-down list.
It can change with each new character entered:
Sometimes the most banal interests are not on the list or they contain other criteria:
Most likely, the algorithm did not have a literal translation. Try entering this word in English:
This does not mean that now English speakers will be added to your audience. This means that the social network will choose among people who are interested in your topic in any language. But ads will only be shown to those who fit the territory and language of your ad.
Recommendations
Here Facebook helps us again. It is enough to enter 3-4 interests, click on “recommendations”, and the algorithm will select similar ones to capture more of the target audience and increase coverage.
Tip: Feel free to add categories that are in English. They may belong to your target audience, even if they speak a different language. Your location and language settings will filter out an audience that doesn't understand the language of your ad.
Relationships
A small section where you can narrow down your audience based on page, app, and event interactions.
You can choose one thing, or you can set several parameters at once by selecting "Expanded combinations" in the menu:
Ideas how to use it:
- If your ad is designed to attract new people, exclude those who follow your page / downloaded the application / responded to the event.
- Run ads on the friends of your subscribers. Social confirmation will work here: people see that their friends are subscribed to your page, and this will be a good signal to pay attention to it.
- Run ads on those who like your page. Promotion advertising works very well here: people know you, they know the prices. Such an audience will appreciate discounts more than those who hear about you for the first time.
Audience overlay
Facebook ads are displayed on an auction basis.
The more users react to it, the lower the cost per impression, and the more often it will flash in front of users. Accordingly, ads with worse performance will be shown less often, and the price for them will increase.
Even within the same advertising account, advertisements with similar audiences compete with each other. That is, you can run two great ads, but one of them will still be more successful than the second. It's a shame when you compete not with others, but with yourself, right? To prevent this from happening, you need to look to see if the audiences overlap each other.
Go to the audience section, select two for comparison and click "Actions → Show Audience Overlay":
You will see charts and overlap percentage:
Try to keep the overlap to no more than 15%. Ideally, up to 5%.
If the overlap is greater than 15%:
- Don't run two ads with these audiences at the same time;
- Unite audiences;
- Exclude one from the other.
To exclude or merge audiences, open one with fewer people, copy interests:
Go to the second audience, click "Edit" and copy the interests to the detailed targeting line:
Or paste them into the "Exclude" item:
Only saved audiences can be excluded and combined. With the rest, you will have to carefully choose the periods for launching ads so that they do not compete.
Conclusion
Some more useful tips:
Name the audience so that it is clear from the name what is inside. Name example: Russia - Women - 22-27 - Children . Here, in order, are listed: country, gender, age and interests. It's not scary if the names get long, the Facebook interface displays them. When you have several dozen audiences, it will be easier to navigate.
Create a minimum of 5 Primary Audiences. Start with audiences, not ad creation.
It is more correct to first understand who the advertisement will be addressed to, and only then work on the content.
Save audiences correctly. If you edit the old audience and click "update", the audience will also change in all current campaigns. If you just want to create a new audience based on the old one, be sure to click "save as new" at the end.
Keep your audience reach between 10,000 and a million. Excludes custom audiences and audiences for small local campaigns. Then the audience does not burn out in a couple of days and Facebook has the opportunity to choose users for whom the ad will be most relevant.
Allocate a budget each month to test new audiences. Spend 10-30% of your total budget looking for your customers where your ad hasn't been seen yet. This way you will continuously expand your audience.
Monitor, control and correct. Audiences are burning out. Keep an eye on your Facebook metrics and watch out for when campaign results are on the wane.
This is an occasion to change the audience or come up with a new advertising format.
Facebook Targeting*: The Definitive Guide
Creating and preparing a page Setting up an advertising account Create a new campaign Create an ad group Audience settings Create ads Running ads Analysis of results A/B testing Facebook Ad Pixel* Checklist for self-examination
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I will never forget the time when I first started working with targeted advertising on Facebook*. Colleagues said that the indignation could be heard even in neighboring offices. Basically, these were statements about blocking, less often about an inconvenient and stupid interface.
The Ads Manager is really complicated. But it allows you to be very flexible in setting up ads and get great results. Face the task for the first time (or something did not work out last time) - let's figure it out together.
It is important that the Facebook* account is created with your real first and last name. The social network prohibits the use of company names or positions.
Step 1
Creating and preparing a page
To run targeted advertising on Facebook*, you need a Page (similar to a business account on Instagram*).
If you have it and have already been issued, you can immediately proceed to setting up your account. If not, you will first have to create a Page:
- Write the name of the Page, for example, "Online store of soft toys in Moscow."
- Please enter a category. You can type a couple of letters and then choose one of the options.
- Add brief information about the company - who you are, what you do, what products or services you offer.
And click the "Create Page" button.
Then go to your Pages section and select the one you want.
The created Page needs to be prepared so that the visitor understands who you are and what you do, what and how he can buy. Blank Pages without design do not inspire confidence.
Avatar and cover
A company logo works well as a profile photo. The recommended size is 180×180px. And for the cover you need a different resolution - 820 × 312px.
It's better to upload both images in png format so that Facebook* doesn't reduce their quality. You can take images of higher resolution, the main thing is to keep the proportions.
Display of blocks
To make it convenient for visitors, you need to configure the display of various blocks: reviews, photos, general information.
Go to "Page Settings" on the left panel and open the "Templates and Tabs" section. Then choose one of the ready-made templates, for example, for services or purchases. Or set up the display of blocks manually - in the "Tabs" section.
Company Information
Be sure to include your address, hours of operation, phone number, email, website link. This can be done in the "Information" section of the top menu.
CTA button
A CTA button is a call to action button. Everything is simple here. You need to click "Add button" and select the desired target action: subscribe, call, register, write to WhatsApp or other.
More
- upload photos or videos;
- add reviews;
- publish at least 5-10 posts;
- fill in the "Services" section if you provide them;
- create a store in the appropriate section and add product cards if you sell them.
Be sure to read the Advertising Policies before setting up Facebook* ads. There are many important points.
Step 2
Setting up an advertising account
Open the Ads Manager advertising account. If Facebook* asks you to accept any agreement, such as the non-discrimination policy, please read and accept.
Click Add Payment Method.
Enter your country, currency and time zone. Choose a payment method and enter your card details.
Click on "Confirm".
Then on "Continue" in the upper right corner.
Important points in this step:
1. Card data must match the first and last name of the account.
2. The card must belong to the country where you are located. If you try to attach a Russian card from Europe, the advertising account will be blocked.
3. Indicate the country where you are located. If you specify Russia, but you are somewhere in Australia, the advertising account can be disabled.
Step 3
Creating a new campaign
The advertising account has a hierarchical structure that includes three levels:
- Campaign. This is the first stage, which indicates the goal and budget for advertising. It partially determines the settings in the following steps.
- Ad group. At this level, you can set up a schedule, places for displaying ads, and an audience. There can be multiple ad groups in one campaign.
- Announcements. Here they upload pictures or videos, write advertising texts. Each group can have multiple ads.
Follow this link and click the Create button.
Goal
At this point, Facebook* prompts you to enter a goal, the actions you want your users to take. Algorithms will show ads to those who are most likely to reach the selected goal, that is, take the actions you need.
Decide on one of the options:
- Brand awareness to help people remember and recognize the company.
- Reach, if you want your ad to be seen by as many people as possible.
- Traffic to drive people to the right place: website, WhatsApp, Facebook app* or Messenger.
- Engagement, if likes, reposts or comments on posts are more important. Separately, you can select “Page Likes” or “Invitation Responses” if you are promoting an event.
- Application installs if you want to increase the number of users.
- Video views to serve and optimize video ads.
- Lead generation will help you get people's data through special forms.
You will be able to request a phone number, email and other information.
- Messages to guide users directly to Facebook* Messenger.
- Conversions, if the main thing is actions on the site: calls, purchases, applications.
- Catalog sales if you want to advertise products. If you select this goal, you must first create a store and catalog in your Page settings.
- Attendance of points will help to attract offline visitors to a restaurant, store, beauty salon or other local business. Before launching the ad, follow this link and add the addresses of the outlets.
As of this writing, Facebook* has begun updating the Goals section. Perhaps instead of eleven goals, you have only six displayed - they were combined to make it easier to navigate. But the essence does not change.
Name
Be sure to name your campaigns, ad groups, and ads clearly. Then you will not get confused when the structure becomes many times more complicated.
It is important to quickly understand where the campaign is, what settings the ad group has.
For example, I do this:
▪️ In the name of the campaign, I write what I am advertising and indicate the goal. For example: "Promotion arrival by the New Year, coverage."
▪️ In the name of the ad group, I briefly indicate the data of the audience and placements. For example: "Fb, Inst, mzh, 24-35, Moscow time, Drawing."
▪️ Sometimes I also give important information in the ad title: format, image description, call to action, and so on. For convenience, I add abbreviated names of UTM tags.
And you can come up with your own algorithm for creating names.
Budget
In this section, Facebook* offers to use Campaign Budget Optimization. If you're creating more than one ad set, enable this feature.
The algorithm will distribute the budget in favor of more effective groups: well-performing ads will receive more money, poorly performing ones - less.
Choose one of the ways to allocate the budget - specify the amount you are willing to spend for one day or the entire period of the advertising campaign. You can try both options and see what is more convenient and more suitable for you.
Do not bet too much if you have just created an advertising account and are running ads for the first time. This is a guaranteed lock. In new offices, I start with a meager amount of $2-8. Only when the ad passes moderation and shows the first results, I gradually increase the budget to the desired one.
If you have little experience, leave the minimum price in the rates section. Facebook* will set its own bids, trying to get more results for less money. When you feel ready to go further, start reading Facebook*'s guide to bidding strategies.
If your targeting is actions that you need to respond to quickly (for example, calls), turn on the "Show ads on schedule" feature. Then people will apply only during working hours, you will not miss a single application.
To enable this feature, set a budget for the lifetime of the ad. You can set up a display schedule later - at the ad group level.
If everything is ready at this stage, click the "Next" button in the lower right part of the cabinet.
Step 4
Create an ad group
In this step, when you select some goals, Facebook* asks you to select a Page to promote.
Target sites
If you selected the Traffic, App Installs, Lead Generation, Messages, or Conversion goals, select where you want to drive people.
For example, this is how the site selection for the "Conversion" goal looks like. You need to specify the location where the target action will occur (for example, a purchase or a visit to a website).
If you want to direct people to WhatsApp, link it to your Page. Next, select a country and enter the number.
Dynamic creatives
In dynamic creative ads, the algorithm combines different variants of text, buttons, images or videos.
Accordingly, you will have to download several variants of each of these elements. Facebook* will analyze which combinations provide the best results and show them instead of ineffective ones.
This function is optional, but worth a try - it can bring good results.
Optimize for ad serving
This feature improves ads at the ad group level. If you are just starting to work and do not know what will fit, pay attention to the recommended option. Facebook* respects the selected campaign objective.
Some options are not marked with this label, but are selected by default. You can read a brief description and, if everything suits you, leave it as it is.
Show scheduling
Set the start time for ads. An expiration date is optional, but it's best to do so. In the future, you can extend the show if necessary.
If you are advertising a temporary promotion, the expiration date is required.
One day I hoped that I would turn off advertising when there were enough sales.
I go to the advertising office for this - and my account is blocked. But the ads keep popping up. People call, but the goods are no longer available - everything was quickly sold out. As a result, ads were shown for nothing for more than a day - I just bled the money. Given the time frame, this would not have happened.
Step 5
Audience settings
For Facebook* targeted ads to work, you need to know who your audience is and what they want from your product, where they live and what they are interested in. Without it, you will only be wasting your money.
How and why to divide the audience into groups
Not all entrepreneurs can clearly name who exactly their audience is. A common answer is “Everyone needs my product.” But this is true only if the product is salt or toilet paper. Most often, the audience is a group of some people. And you need to target them, not everyone in a row.
One way to define these groups is the Khramatrix model.
Sample questions and answers:
What product or service do you provide? English lessons for children from 6 to 11 years old.
Who uses the product or makes the purchasing decision? In our case, these are the parents of children aged 6-11.
Why does the consumer need your product? Parents of children aged 6 need preparation for school, parents of children aged 7-11 need help in learning the language or doing homework, filling in gaps in knowledge.
When exactly is your service needed ? In our case, the main flow falls on the period approximately from August to March.
Usually the fifth question is "Where can I find your audience?". But for targeted advertising, it is more useful to answer the question “ What is your audience interested in ?”. Our audience of parents is interested in what is connected with children. For example, education, health, family.
Specify general demographic characteristics: gender and age, where they live, what level of income .
Women 26-37 years old, live in Moscow. Above average income.
To what extent is a person ready to buy? Perhaps he is thinking that the child would need to improve his English, but has not yet looked for a teacher. Or already looking for a teacher, reading reviews, studying prices and other conditions.
What influences the choice? What is important to him in the product? When choosing a teacher, it is important that he be delicate, tactful, supportive, able to find an individual approach to the child and explain everything in simple terms. They want to see immediate results.
What action do you expect from a person: a call, a subscription, registration, filling out a form, or something else? It is necessary that the parent fill out the form, leave his name and phone number - the teacher will call him back. You can also write to WhatsApp or Direct.
Now it's clear who exactly to launch targeted Facebook ads*, what settings to choose in the advertising account and what to convey to the audience.
All information is easier to pack in a special table:
Please note that after answering the questions and completing the table, there may be several different groups. In this case, it is better to create individual ads or ad groups to hit the right target.
Life hack: to answer the eighth question “What influences choice? What is important in the product?”, read reviews about competitors - people write what is important for them.
How to create and set up a new audience
Now you can do the settings. Write the name of the city in the field "Search for locations" and select the desired option.
You can also enter individual streets and metro stations. Or set up a narrower geography for displaying ads through the "Tag" button. It is located at the bottom right of the map.
Select gender and age.
Now specify more precise audience settings - interests, behavioral characteristics and demographics. In the "Detailed targeting" section, find the search bar and click "View".
Select a category and find a suitable interest. You can start writing and choose from the options offered.
For example, in the section “Demographic interests → Parents → All parents”, you can find parents of children of different ages.
How do I target on Facebook* an audience with an above-average income? Think about what characteristics these people have. For example, they often travel, visit prestigious restaurants and other establishments, hold status positions, use Apple technology and expensive smartphones. All these settings can be found in the advertising account.
Pay attention to the right side of the advertising cabinet. Here Facebook* suggests how wide or narrow the audience is.
Where else can you get an audience for targeted ads
Facebook* can create audiences from people who have already interacted with your company or ad. In the Custom Audience section, click New → Custom Audience.
Hover over each source and read the description.
You might want to create an audience with one of these.
If you have a customer base with phone numbers or email addresses, create an audience of these people. Select "Client List" and click "Next".
Facebook* will tell you what to do: you will download a file with a sample filling, create your own file and upload it back to your account. It is convenient that this file can only contain phone numbers or email - you do not need to enter any other data.
Look for the created audiences in the Custom Audience → Custom Audience section.
How to Create a Lookalike Audience
One of the cool features of Facebook* targeting is finding and collecting audiences that are similar to yours. The tool is called Look-alike and usually gives good results.
For example, you have a ready-made audience of people who interacted with an Instagram account or ad*. In the Custom Audience section, click New → Lookalike Audience.
Select the source for which you want to build a Lookalike Audience.
Select a percentage from the drop-down list or scale. The lower the percentage, the more the audience is similar to yours, the higher the percentage, the wider the audience. Start with 1-2%, then you can try a higher range.
Click "Create Audience" to finish. If you choose above 1%, Facebook* will create a separate audience for each percentage. Look for these audiences under Custom Audience → Lookalike Audience.
Detailed targeting extension
Meaning: you allow the algorithm to show ads to those who do not fit the selected interests, but are highly likely to respond. It is worth enabling the function - it can improve the result.
The Facebook* Detailed Targeting extension is available for all campaign objectives except Brand Awareness and Reach.
Select placements
Select Manual Placement Selection.
Advertising account offers four main options:
- Facebook* - placement within the social network: feed, Stories, Right column, search and so on.
- Instagram* - impressions only there: feed, Stories, Reels.
- Audience Network - partner sites and apps.
- Messenger - respectively, advertising in the Facebook messenger *.
Instagram* is excluded as we work with Facebook* targeted ads. If you still want to run ads on Instagram*, it's best to set them up separately.
Below you can manually remove or add specific placements.
In Devices, you can turn off impressions for PCs or smartphones. For example, if you know for sure that for some reason they don’t buy from mobile devices.
Another interesting feature is showing ads only to users of specific devices or operating systems.
Step 6
Creating announcements
Now you can work with announcements.
How to create a new ad
In the "Ad settings" section, select "Create ad" from the drop-down list. Available formats:
- Single image or video.
- Ring gallery.
If you chose "Single image or video", upload your media file, write your ad text and title.
If you plan to lead people to the site, provide a link. Add a call to action that will be on the button.
If you have chosen a gallery, do the same. Add a photo or video, title, description, link for each card. Below, write the main text and select a call to action.
Activate the item "Automatically show the highest scoring cards first". This will help keep attention on advertising and improve results.
The screenshot shows what a targeted Facebook* ad with a carousel looks like. A person will scroll through all the cards and, if he likes something, will follow the link.
How to promote an existing post
If there is a good post on the Page, you can start promoting it from the ad account. In the "Advertising settings" section, select "Use an existing post" from the drop-down list.
In the Promotional Creatives section, click the Select Post button.
Find the publication you want to promote in the list and click on it.
Upload images in jpg or png format that are up to 30MB in size. Consider the minimum dimensions, be sure to read the aspect ratio requirements. Stick to them so that the ad looks organic.
Basic requirements for videos and gifs - no more than 4 GB in size, duration from 1 sec. up to 241 min.
Step 7
Launch ads
To launch targeted Facebook* ads, click the "Publish" button in the lower right part of your account. If something went wrong - for example, you forgot some settings or incorrectly specified the budget - turn off impressions with a special switch. In the same way, you can disable ads at the ad or group level.
It remains to wait until the ad passes moderation - a check for compliance with Facebook* rules. The official note states that most campaigns are moderated within 24 hours.
But this does not mean that you will definitely have to wait a day - usually much faster.
After the launch, the learning phase begins - the algorithm analyzes which audience responds best to the ad in order to show ads to similar people. Don't make any major changes to the ad while the tutorial is running or it will start over again. You can read more about this step in the official Facebook* guide.
Step 8
Analysis of results
To understand whether advertising is effective or not, study the indicators at different levels, taking into account promotion goals.
Let's say you need leads: applications or orders on the site. Then you need to watch not only reports in the advertising account, but also web analytics data. For example, it is worth tracking how users who have switched from Facebook* targeted ads behave.
Important:
- Advertising may not work. Target is not a magic “Loot” button.
There are many factors that affect performance: product quality and price, seasonality and demand, the right choice of audience, the readiness of the Page or site for advertising, the quality of the ad.
- Target may not give quick results. The client may not buy right now, but remember: take a screenshot of the ad, subscribe to the Page, write down the number. And make a decision later.
Advertising account
Facebook ad results* - to the right of the campaign, ad group or ad name.
Main indicators:
- Reach - how many people saw the advertisement.
- Impressions — how many times the ad was viewed. There are more impressions than reach, as a person can see the same ad two or three times.
- CPM - cost per 1,000 ad impressions. The lower the score, the better – it’s beneficial to make impressions as cheap as possible.
- Cost per result - the average cost of achieving campaign goals.
- Link clicks — number of times the link in the ad was clicked.
- Click through rate (CTR) is the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions. The higher the score, the better — it pays to have as many people as possible click when they see the ads. For starters, you can focus on a minimum of 0.6–0.8%. In general, CTR depends on many factors, including the business area.
- Cost Per Click (CPC). The lower, the less advertising costs. Click-through rate (CTR) affects the cost of a click.
- Video views at point 25, 50, 75, 95, 100%. The indicator helps track the viewing depth - how long people watch videos. If the score is low, you can try another video.
- Conversions - the number of targeted actions that the user performed. To track conversions on your site, you need to install the Facebook pixel* (more).
Which metrics to pay attention to depends on the goal.
Let's say we need to increase conversions. Then it is worth tracking their number and coefficient (the ratio between the number of conversions and, for example, the number of clicks / transitions). And also the cost of one conversion and the payback of advertising. If it turns out that the costs are higher than acceptable, analyze the site, advertising, product to find the problem.
Additionally, it is worth looking at coverage, impressions and cost per 1,000 impressions, the number of clicks, click-through rate and cost per click. Explore different metrics as you work on ad performance.
To understand the approximate average values for your industry, it will be useful to ask around in the communities of entrepreneurs, SMM-specialists and targetologists. Perhaps one of the colleagues worked with the same niche and will tell you something.
Sometimes, by default, extra indicators are displayed, but there are no necessary ones. Therefore, it is easiest to customize the columns for yourself.
Click the table icon and select Customize Columns.
Check the required metrics and remove unnecessary ones.
Behavior on site
If you bring people to the site, track how they behave here. This will help web analytics, or rather, Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica. You can explore:
- Conversions, such as placing an order or adding an item to the cart.
- Bounce rate - how many people left the site within 15 seconds. A high score may indicate an irrelevant page that is being landed on from an ad, an incorrect audience choice, or poor website design.
- View depth - the average number of pages visited by one person. The higher the score, the more the site is interesting to visitors.
- Time on site - how long does one session last on average. The longer a person is on the site, the better for the same SEO.
One of the Yandex.Metrica tools, Webvisor, allows you to see the site through the user's eyes.
Screencasts will visually show how the visitors who were brought by targeted advertising Facebook* behave.
Behavior on the Page
You can evaluate the growth of new subscribers, the reach of posts, messages in Messenger, as well as engagement - likes, comments, shares.
In general, you can even find out how FB advertising affects offline sales. The options are different: surveys, the use of a special number (call tracking), promotional coding. There is also end-to-end analytics that allows you to more accurately calculate the effectiveness of advertising and ROI (return on investment).
A/B testing
You must have seen this feature when creating a new campaign. Useful if you want to test different versions of text and images, audiences and other settings.
The algorithm is as follows:
- Enable A/B testing when creating a campaign.
- Setting up your first campaign and ads.
- After posting, Facebook* creates a copy and offers to edit it.
- Next, the algorithm evenly distributes impressions between an equal number of users.
- Based on the results, you can see which advertisement worked better and use it.
Test one thing: an image, text, or another parameter. If you change several parameters at once - for example, the text, the image, and the interests of the audience - you will not understand why the ad worked better or worse. And if only the picture was replaced, it is immediately clear how it affected the result.
Facebook Advertising Pixel*
A pixel is a special code that is embedded on a website. With it you can:
- Track and remember the people who visited the site, so that you can then show them targeted ads. Or, on the contrary, to exclude from impressions.
- Understand how many conversions you get from ads.
And calculate how effective it is.
For example, an online clothing store might store the data of those who have visited the section with dresses, and then show them ads with new products. Or find potential customers who put items in their shopping cart but didn't buy and offer a personalized discount.
The Unisender blog has detailed instructions on how to install an FB pixel on a website. This is not necessary to run ads, but is very useful for ad analysis.
Self-test checklist
- Created an account with a real first and last name.
Page design
- Information about the company, its address, phone, email and other means of communication.
- Avatar and cover.
- At least 5 publications.
- Photos or videos - the visitor immediately sees what he is being sold.
- Customer Reviews.
- Call to action button.
Advertising account and payments
- Attached your card: the name on it matches the name of your Facebook account*.
- Specify the country in which you are located, and the bank card corresponds to it.
- Set a not too big budget.
Auditorium
- Know exactly who your audience is.
- Divided the audience into groups using the Khramatrix model.
- Selected city, gender and age.
- Specified interests or behavioral characteristics.
- Enabled "Detailed targeting extension".
Placements and devices
- Manually selected placements, excluded Instagram*.
- Selected specific placements, excluded unnecessary ones.
- Selected the desired devices, operating systems or device models to display ads.
Ads
- Select a format and upload images or videos that meet Facebook* requirements.
- Wrote the title and text of the ad.
- Added a link if you want to lead people to third-party sites.
- Added a button with a call to action.
- Activated the item "Automatically show the highest scoring cards first".
Launching and analyzing ads
- Clicked "Publish" - the switch to the left of the ad name turned blue.
- No major changes were made so as not to interfere with the learning process.
- We studied indicators at different levels: coverage, CTR and other advertising metrics, conversions and behavior on the site.
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