Targeting ads to the right people is one of the key actions to be successful in your marketing strategy. Facebook has billions of users worldwide, so finding the most suitable audiences requires using the targeting function provided by Facebook.

Audience segments are a section within Ads Manager where you can create lists of people to target. The lists are divided into two broad categories: retargeting and prospecting.

Retargeting: converting hot audiences

We’re talking about users who have visited your website, added something to their cart, or followed you on Instagram. This category is more likely to consider a future purchase, but they need a few reasons to convert.

Have you ever browsed various websites and then come across an ad for the products or services you just searched for? It’s not a coincidence! You have been selected for a remarketing campaign.

You can create audience segments using the “Audiences” functionality in the Business Manager menu. The custom audience gives you the option to access all the data captured by the pixel.

When you create a personalized audience, you will have several options available. The three main sources we will focus on are customer lists, website traffic and interactions.

1. Customer lists

This functionality allows you to upload lists that contain email addresses, phone numbers or any other contact information of potential or current customers. Facebook will find these details based on your own users, so you can target them directly with the ads you create. Building an audience using lists is great for attracting the attention of past customers, either with new products or for newsletter subscriptions.

2. Website traffic

The information used from the website traffic allows the creation of a remarketing list to reach website visitors. Lists can be created according to different criteria, such as actions taken or pages visited on the website. The most effective remarketing lists are those that include users who have visited your website in the last 30 days or added products to their cart in the last seven days.

3. Interactions

If you have a public Facebook or Instagram page or have experienced ads that generated interactions (likes, comments or shares), we recommend targeting this segment as well. Using the interactions from the custom audiences you will create another list, which contains different types of interactions.

Whether you published a video that garnered many views or organized an event that had a large number of participants, targeting these users is an effective way to bring potential customers to your website.

Finding new customers

Finding new customers is an even better way to scale your business with Facebook ads.

We refer to this stage as ‘prospecting’, this involves promoting to those who have not purchased or interacted with the business online. To make the process easier, Facebook has created two useful tools that help businesses find the best potential customers:

1. Similar audience

One way Facebook finds potential customers for your business is by using a list of customers or leads. Lookalike Audiences uses data from custom audiences and thus creates a new audience segment that is similar to existing customers.

Lookalike audiences can be created using any of the Custom Audiences and range in size and similarity from 1% to 10% of the population of a desired country. A 1% lookalike audience contains people who are most similar to your custom audience source.

2. Interests, Behaviors and Demographics

If you don’t have a list of past customers or site visitors, you can use the similar audiences, interests, behaviors and demographics provided by Facebook to create new audiences.

Here are the available categories:

• Interests refer to pages and content Facebook users have engaged with (eg organic food, yoga, diet)
• Behaviors are actions taken by users (celebrating a birthday, moving, getting married, etc.)
• Demographics include user profile information (moms, engineers, college graduates)

There are several audience segments available and all of them are worth testing, especially the ones that are right for your business’s target audience. The Audience Insights tool can help you narrow down these options and identify the most appropriate categories to test.

The information gathered in Audience Insights can be used to identify new interests of potential customers, as well as new destinations or locations, that might work for your chosen demographic.

Because interest, behavior, and demographic audiences are typically complex and consist of hundreds of thousands to millions of users, it’s a good practice to test them individually so you can see which segment works best. Once you’ve narrowed down your audiences, you can start experimenting with crossovers or exclusions.