Some in the marketing community are pushing broad audiences in Facebook advertising. But is it that black and white?
In this episode, I'll explain when and why it may be useful depending on your circumstances.
TRANSCRIPT
Today I want to talk about the subject of broad targeting. In Facebook, it's kind of become a conversation, a focal point where some marketers and some advertisers are saying, just completely forget about interest targeting, forget about lookalike, targeting, uploading customer lists, and just go broad. So what does going broad actually mean? That means that you don't add any detail targeting demographics whatsoever. Maybe Maybe you do the age. But I think in a lot of terms, when you think broad, you don't even think about that. So you're leaving the default age, you're leaving the default country, if you're targeting one specific country, like the United States, you would leave that country there, if you're more global, you would add the other countries there. But the point being is that there's no exclusions, you don't do any exclusions, you don't target any specific interests, you don't target any specific lists or look like it's completely broad. Now, this goes against everything that we've ever been taught, right, as Facebook advertisers, we've always been taught, get super detailed, get super narrow, get dialed in. So that way, you can find your perfect possible purchaser or, or client, whatever it is you're looking for. Now, since frickin' Apple decided to throw a curveball into everybody's strategies, a lot of people are saying just go broad now, because what's happening is because now that so many people have opted out of tracking on their iPhones, what's happening is that these lists of interest, these lists for look alikes, whatever it is, they've gone down significantly, they've gone down significantly.
So if you to prove this point, if you're near Facebook ads manager, or you're going to be later today, make a new campaign, target and interest, or even make targeted look alike. And you'll see make sure that the expanded targeting is not on first, and then you'll see those audience numbers have gone down. In some cases, almost half, it's kind of ridiculous. So that detailed targeting has gone away. Now, when you think about this stuff, it's important to remember that just because that interest Target has gone away, it doesn't mean that person has gone away. Anybody that still uses Facebook, or Instagram, and has made themselves not able to be tracked on that particular app, or across their activity on the web. Does it mean that they're not going to be served ads anymore, they're still getting ads on Facebook and Instagram. The only thing is, they're likely and I use the word likely because because I don't believe it, it's 100%. My personal opinion with that means is that they're not getting possibly added to the specific interest list. So if they're interested in I don't know, lawn care, and they're, they're cruising lawn care sites, for blogs, and how to make their grass better or something along those lines. Logic would say based on what we know that they're not getting added to any lawncare interest or any of that stuff, landscaping, interest, any of those type of things. So we know these people are still on Facebook, and we know that they're still on Instagram. So how do we reach them? Well, you can continue to do that interest targeting and you likely may not may or may not show up in front of that person. But what a lot of people now are saying is just to go broad. But that comes with a lot of particular problems. It's almost in a sense, like a billboard, it's like putting up a billboard, on the side of the highway. You don't know who is particularly interested in what you have to offer. You're just showing the ad to everybody and letting letting those that are interested come to you from that app. So when you think about that, in terms of those specific thinkings,
You're saying that the creative is doing the targeting and there is some logic behind that. There is some some backing behind that where where the creative itself will decide who these ads should be. shown to. And that Facebook will in turn, say, Okay, we noticed these people are responding to this creative in this really broad ad set that's hitting, you know millions of people, we're going to show more ads to those type of people based on the information we do know about them, minus any type of tracking that, that we're not able to get on that person because they opted out of the tracking. So in some cases, people are saying, well, this is the new way to go.
Let the creative do the targeting. Just go broad interest targeting audiences have have dwindled down, we might as well just let Facebook do all the work and call it a day. I agree with these things. To an extent, it depends on what you're offering, in my opinion. If you're offering a product or service that has mass appeal, broad may be a good option to try. If your product is more niche, I don't think that is going to work for you unless you have an astronomical and I'm talking very astronomical budget. So what are some examples? What are some examples of this? So you need to think about people think think about people and and what they use every day. And that can help you determine whether or not a broad audience is the way to go. What is something everybody keeps on them at all times. It's this, iPhone, everybody has one or a cell phone, Android, whatever it is, everybody keeps one on them. You could say that that is a perfect example of a broad audience. So maybe you don't need, if you're selling cell phone accessories, or cell phone service, whatever it is, maybe you don't need detailed interest targeting for for that because everybody has a cell phone, everybody uses a cell phone. In that sense. In my opinion, it would make sense to go broad target everybody in the United States, all ages, if you're selling cell phone products or services, that make sense. Now, if you're a little more niche, and maybe it's something that people don't use, and I'm going to use a golf here as an example, because I am a golfer, I target the entire United States with golf stuff, there's going to be a pretty big heavy amount of people that don't give a care whatsoever about golf. And that's a wasted impression. So, in that sense, if I don't have an astronomical budget, I'm not willing to waste money on impressions for Facebook to try to figure it out. And then give me some kind of lackluster average or above average cost per acquisition. That doesn't make sense to me. In that sense, I'd rather make interest based audiences. And I've talked about this in many, many episodes, if you've been listening and talked about this on the YouTube channel as well, I'd rather make bulk interest targets where you put a ton of different interests that are relevant to what you're you're trying to sell. And use that as kind of a mini broad, not an astronomical broad audience, but a smarter broad audience, because you're still going to have hundreds of 1000s of people, millions, in some cases, in that particular audience. It's just not as wide a net as just saying, hey, let's just target everybody in the entire United States.
That's the smarter way to go, in my opinion. So you have to look at it in, in in those two forms. And you know, it's not black and white. It's things that you need to test. You really need to test it out and see if it works for you.
So other examples, let's go with another example. So we have this art behind me. If you're watching on YouTube, we have this art behind me on a on my bill shelf back here of the space dude in the desert. doesn't really make sense, but I like the colors and I like space and I like the desert. But nonetheless, people when it comes to art, most people, if they're lucky in this in this country, have a home and want to decorate that home. So it might make sense, in that case, to just go broad. Let the creative do the targeting and what that creative targeting is going to be like, for me, if I solve this particular art that I have behind me, if the Spaceman in the desert, if I saw that come across my feed, that might say to me, Oh, I'm interested. But if something else came along, like, I don't know, a painting of wildflowers, I'm not that interested in that. That's not something I'm going to stop on. That's not something that I'm going to pursue. So in that aspect of things in a broad audience, the creative has done the targeting the creative that I'm interested in, made me want to click through the creative that I wasn't interested in made me swipe past. So another way to think of that. So if you have products with mass appeal, but different variations of that product that would appeal to different people that in a sense, can be a good case, or a good test for a broad audience with creative doing the targeting. All that being said, you have noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about lookalikes? Well, if you listen to the last episode, or watch the last episode on YouTube, I think look alikes are completely dead. Unless you have a ton of data, I'm talking you have hundreds and hundreds in some cases, 1000s of purchases, or add to carts or leads a month to do look alikes off of and you can continually feed that base audience or feed that pixel to be able to do a look alike off of. Look alikes, in my opinion, are gone. So all we're left with is is interest based targeting demographic targeting, or the broad targeting.
Now, there are also some rumors in certain marketing groups that say, maybe later on down the year, Facebook might completely get rid of detailed targeting altogether, somebody noted that the the area where you set up your ad sets, that that specific area for the targeting has already moved down to encourage you or discourage you of using it. So it's completely possible that later on down the year that Facebook might just say, You know what, we don't trust anybody with targeting anymore, we're just gonna do it for you. And there's no way around that you're going to have to deal with it. So if that's the case, I'm not a big fan of that, I hope that doesn't happen. And we'll just have to go from there.
So, at the end of the day, try it, try everything out, that that's the best you can do, I suggest you give broad targeting a chance. If if you fall into one of those categories, another reason to possibly try broad targeting is if your audience that you're targeting is in a local area. So if you have a small area, a city, that that is your main target, and and that's that that's what you're going for.
In any case, no matter what you're offering, it might be a good test for you to go broad in that specific city with what you have, because it comes down to audience size Yes, in a sense, but when you get down to those local those local markets, your audience size is going to go really really down. And chances are is that if your target audience is a local based audience or only pertains to one city and not the entire country or globe, then it might make a good case. Just try broad there.
No matter what. Just give it a try. Give it a test. That's all you can really do and and see what works for you.