Mastering Meta Ad Audiences: Your Guide to Targeting Success
Mastering Meta Ad Audiences: Your Guide to Targeting Success
What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?
Discover How to Create Powerful Custom and Interest-Based Audiences for Your Facebook and Instagram Ads
Struggling to get your Meta ads in front of the right eyes? You're not alone, lovely!
In this episode, we're diving deep into the nitty-gritty of creating effective ad audiences in Meta Ads Manager. Here's what you'll discover:
The two-phase approach to building your perfect ad audience
5 types of custom audiences you need to set up for warm audience targeting
How to create interest-based audiences that actually work (including my favourite interests to use right now)
The truth about lookalike audiences (and why they might not be right for you)
My golden rules for audience size and setup to maximize your ad performance
Whether you're new to Meta ads or looking to optimize your current strategy, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you find and target your ideal clients.
Ready to transform your ad targeting from guesswork to strategy?
KEY LINKS
Audience Builder Course - CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE INFO
Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.
The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
[00:00:00] Hello. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the lion's share your short, actionable episodes that are going to help you take act. Your short, actionable. Sure. Short strategic episodes to help you take action. Today, we are going to be talking about how you create the right audience, your ads, and I'm going to get really practical and talk about literally creating the audiences in ads manager.
[00:00:29] So I'm not going to talk about your ideal client, your messaging on your copy, your lead back into here. It talks to, I will be talking about that and I do talk about that in other episodes, but today I'm going to get really down and into the nitty gritty of creating audience is in ads manager. So why am I talking about this?
[00:00:47] Well, it's actually one of the things I am asked about most, would you believe after the question? Um, how much should I spend on my ads? And that question is going to be honest at the next week's podcast. Um, but this question I get so often [00:01:00] people always say to me,
[00:01:02] Potential clients always say to me, oh, I run away.
[00:01:06] I want to run ads because I know if people can just find me then.
[00:01:15] This is actually the second, most popular question that I get asked. I get asked, I would say definitely on a weekly basis, sometimes almost on a daily basis. The number one question, which probably won't surprise you is how much should I spend on ads?
[00:01:28] And I'm actually going to answer that question in next week's, uh, Thursday episode. But this week I'm going to talk about.
[00:01:36] I'm going to talk about creating the right audience for your ads in ads manager. Now. The first thing I want to say on this is creating the right audience is very different now to what it used to be, um, than what it used to be. I would say like pre 20, 20, 20, 19. So back then we would make really wheely, narrow, specific audiences.
[00:01:58] So you'd get really specific with [00:02:00] your interests and then you'd narrow it down, narrow it down. So you'd say like all the people that are interested in a Waitrose and then you'd say. Take those people and filter it by only those people who are interested in Waitrose and the parents, and then filter it again.
[00:02:14] So people who are interested in weight trays and the parents and like interior design. So we'd get really, really specific. However, then there was some big changes. Um, there was this big. Um, apple update and it meant that Facebook has changed how it targets people. And now what we are looking for is not that very, very specific narrow audience. Now audience is also used to be really important because we've got really into that depth.
[00:02:42] So it was really important that you got those right people in front of your ads. Um, however, However, now it is important. It absolutely is a factor of your ads. And I test audiences for clients and we see, can see really different results. However, it's not as important as your messaging and your copy and your [00:03:00] offer.
[00:03:00] So I really your messaging, your copy and your lead magnet. So really the first thing I say to people, when they say, look. Oh, my aunts are doing okay. I think it's my audience. That's wrong. Like, I think I need a new audience. I would always get them to go back to their copy. They're messaging and they lead. I would always get them to go back to their copy, their lead magnet and their messaging first to make sure that we've got that totally spot on to be attracting the right people.
[00:03:26] And then at that point, we'll test out some different audiences. Uh, okay. So I'm going to take you through the process. I go through with all of my clients and actually I use when I'm building clients ads as well. And that it's a two phase process. So the first thing we're going to ask ourselves when we're looking at our audience is. Who am I targeting people who are already in my world or new people.
[00:03:49] Now, this is the, this is the question that people seem to jump straight into. As soon as I talk about audiences, people go for people that have never heard of them. However, ads are incredibly powerful. Um, when you use them to [00:04:00] target people who are already in your world, So this, we called a warm audience. A man in Facebook, what you can do is set up something called a custom audience.
[00:04:08] And that's where you're going to give Facebook data on people who are already in your world. So there are five main types of custom audiences that if I were you and I wanted to target people who already in my world. I would be setting up. Okay. And this is what I teach you to do. Step-by-step. Literally I do it on the screen and you can follow along. Um, in my course, the audience builder course. So the first one is your email list.
[00:04:33] Okay. You can upload your email list into Facebook as a CSV file. So you need to go into email provider downloaded. And you can upload it in there and then you can match the data. So it will ask you to match over like the first name and the email address is normally what most people have your match.
[00:04:49] Avon, Facebook will then try and find those people and pull them into an audience. Now the second one, I'm going to talk about the second custom audience is leads. So if you're already running lead ads, [00:05:00] You can. You can create an audience of people who have viewed your lead ad form, um, who have submitted it or have.
[00:05:13] And people who have submitted it as well.
[00:05:15] So I tend to go for people. Who've submitted it because if someone has opened the form. Uh, and then not submitted it. They're probably not in my warm audience. They probably don't know who I am. So I'm going to go for people. Who've submitted it. Now you might think. Now you might think, well, surely the email list and the lead ads are the same thing. And you would be right, except for the fact that you can only get data from your lead ads.
[00:05:39] I think last time I checked, it was the last 90 days. So there's only 90 days worth of data that you email us or you upload, you can upload your entire lesson no matter how long they've been on there. So it's kind of like a double safety. If you like. Also Facebook has a lot more information and knowledge about who those people are signing up when they use a lead ad, because it literally has their profile [00:06:00] and knows who they are versus just their name and email address when they might not be able to match it. So that's why I always do both. So that's the first kind of two things in your warm audience. The third would be your social media.
[00:06:11] So you've got your Instagram and your Facebook. You can, there's all sorts of parameters. I tend to go with people who have engaged with my account in the last either 90 or 180 days, you can do up to 365 days a year. However, I would say that, um, like three months or six months feels like they're still, they haven't engaged with me for a whole year or are they still in my warm audience? For me three to six months is about right.
[00:06:38] So you can do Instagram and Facebook and by engaging in your account, it means they have like to post saved a post. Um, watch one of your videos, uh, followed you. The MTU, anything, anything really to indicate that they've engaged. So, um, you can collate all of those people as well. The next one you can do is video views.
[00:06:58] So if you do a lot of [00:07:00] reels or long form videos, even better, You can, um, tell Facebook to make an audience of all the people who have watched a certain amount of specific videos. So let's say you do a lot of very short form reels. You could say, uh, Facebook, I want you to make an audience of all the people you've watched 95% of these reels, and you can go in and you can literally select the reels that you want Facebook to. Take the data from. Or if you do more long form videos, so you do like Instagram lives and they're quite nice and long. You could, um, Take the. Uh, two, you could say maybe Facebook.
[00:07:39] I want you to find all people who watch 25% of these like long form videos, so you can slightly adapt it. Um, and again, you would choose the time periods. So in the last again, either 90 or 180 days, Um, and that would be your people. Who've watched your videos. Um, and those are the five main audiences I would suggest. [00:08:00] And then the last one you would do is your website.
[00:08:02] So as long as you've got the pixel on your website, which I would highly recommend, if you don't already, um, you would. What. What you can do is go on and say to Facebook, I'd like you to greet me an audience of people who have been on my website. Now you can get really specific and say, people who've been on this specific page or have done. You know, added to cart or, um, completed checkout.
[00:08:24] If you're an econ business, I would absolutely recommend that. If you're a service provider, he doesn't really use that website in that way. It's more, just a, kind of a place where people to find out more about you and then maybe apply for a call. That sort of thing. I would just do all website visitors. Um, and again, you can specify the date that the range, whether it's 90 days or 180 days. And she was like, anyone that's been on my website over the last. Uh, 90 days, I want you to put them in, into an audience as well. So what's going to happen then is for each of those audiences you're going to create, you can have them in one ad set. So that's all your different audiences [00:09:00] in one ad set. And then the ads you create from there, whether those are engagement as, because you want people to go all the people in your world to see the content you're creating. Um, whether they're sales ads, because you want all the people in your world to seek a new offer or your low cost offer. Um, Or if they are video view ads, because you want everybody in your world to receive this video that you've created, that's talking directly to them about the next step in a process. Um, all those people who are already in your world will then see those ads. And it's dynamic. Well, most of them are.
[00:09:33] So if you're uploading your email list, that won't be dynamic obviously, but all the rest, as people fall into those buckets, they will come into those audiences. So as someone goes onto your. Website, they will fall into the website back here as someone, um, join like signs up using your lead form.
[00:09:49] They will. They will fall into that bucket. So it will constantly update with the people that are coming into your world. So that's the first question is who are you targeting [00:10:00] new people or people in your world already. If it's people in your world already, those are the custom audiences. I would be setting up to make sure that you are targeting those people. But what if it's new people you want. So actually, no, Safie I want to get more people viewing way, Instagram profile, you new people.
[00:10:17] You've never heard of me. I want people to join my email list. Who've never heard of me. I want people to buy from me. They've never heard of me. Okay. So that's what we're going to be thinking about now. So you've identified, you want new people, your two choices here. Are what I call an interest based audience. Uh, Facebook actually calls a saved audience.
[00:10:35] Um, And, or a lookalike audience. So the difference between these two is, uh, an interest based or saved audience is, um, based on demographics interest. It's a wonder, you probably know, it's like, you know, People who like Waitrose I-phones and, uh, You know, it's people who like healthy food, Amy Porterfield, and, uh, going to the [00:11:00] gym. You know, it's the P you know, it. It's the kind of audiences that you're creating things like people who like self care, healthy food and going to the gym.
[00:11:10] Okay. So it's those interest based ones. Um, it's demographics, it's job titles. It's um, yeah, it's those kinds of things. The second type of audience is your lookalike. Now a look alike is where we take. So you have to set up all of those custom audiences I've just talked about. So all of those warm audiences, you have to set all of those up. But then what you can do is say to Facebook, I want you to take all those people in this bucket.
[00:11:34] So let's say, um, everyone, all those people who've watched my videos and my video views. I want you to take all those people. I want you to find me people who look like them. So not tech, obviously not literally looked like them, but are similar to them. So that's what a look alike is. His people who look like these people that you've already given to Facebook, um, And you can do different percentages.
[00:11:59] So if you try and [00:12:00] set one up, you'll do it and you'll think, oh yeah, that's really easy. And then it'll be like a difference between 1% and 10% lookalike. And I will talk you through. Uh, a little bit about lookalikes in a minute, but first of all, I want to talk about interest based. I want to give you a few rules of thumb.
[00:12:13] Okay. So when you're setting up your interest based audience, The first thing is you need to look at size. So if you add in your interests, which I'll talk more about in a minute, as well as my favorite interests to use at the moment. Um, if you look at your audience size, I want you to be looking at a minimum of 4 million.
[00:12:30] Okay. If you are an online UK based business. If you are looking abroad. Make sure that you have different audiences for different countries, especially if you're new to doing kind of different audiences. Um, And those kind of minimums would always be a bit higher, especially if you're doing like the U S but generally for the UK, I want a minimum of 4 million, ideally somewhere between the four to 10 million. Um, amounts also when you're setting up your audience and you're in there. My advice at the moment is [00:13:00] not to use advantage.
[00:13:01] Plus audience. For me, you can give it suggestions and you can tell it your interest and you can tell it women. And you can say from a certain age and all that my experience at the moment is that it ignores those suggestions and just tries to find you the cheapest possible leads or cheapest possible. Um, cost per result.
[00:13:18] Now you might think, well, that's what I want to say. Fee. I want cheap leads and low cost of results. I'm like, yeah, of course you do. But if you are, if you help women in menopause, um, with their nutrition, you don't want 65 plus 65 year old. You don't want men who are over 65, do you be signing up to your lead magnet?
[00:13:39] Okay. And that's what Facebook will do. It seems to just be trying to find the cheapest possible leads. W irrespective of the fact that we've told it, we only want women. So when you're setting up the audience, there will be a link that says like original or use original audience options. You need to click that and then build your audience in there. Um, and [00:14:00] again, I walk you through this step by step in my audience builder course, where we, um, literally I show you exactly what to click, but that's what you would, but that's what you would want to do. So let's talk about interests. So the other thing is you can, so the other things are, you need, you can select an age range and you can select men, women, or both.
[00:14:20] So those are kind of your.
[00:14:22] Men women or both, and then you can select location as well. So you can do the whole of the UK. You can do certain cities and countries. Um, you can do the U S you could do the whole of Europe. So, um, you can do all sorts of different ones. I would suggest that if you're relatively new to Anthony, you haven't done anything.
[00:14:40] And most of your clients are in the UK. Start with the UK. It's really tempting to go like, oh yeah, I'm going to do the us as well. There's loads of people over there. Um, but the more people there are, the further you have to spread your budget. So if you do want to do the us as well, do a UK audience, but also do a us audience and a different ad set.
[00:14:57] So you can compare the difference. Um, [00:15:00] but yes, I would start with the UK generally, if you want online service business. Um, pick whether you want men or women pick your age range. Um, and then we have to do is put in your audience interests. Now what I tend to do is theme them. So we'll be looking at, uh, themes, for example.
[00:15:17] So I did one. Um, this morning for a client. So it's a mindset coach. Okay. So we've got three different audiences that we're running at the moment. Uh, we've got the first one is like a self-development audience. So it's, and these FII on my favorite interests and audiences to use, or use these a lot cross quite a lot of different types of audiences. So self-development is a great one and things that come up under self-development are. Um, interests like self-improvement, self-love self-care, um, wellbeing and health psychology.
[00:15:49] Um, self-esteem, self-confidence, there's a lot that if you start to put in a couple of them and select them in where you add in your, um, [00:16:00] Demographics. Where you add in the interests. Um, and press suggestions. It will come up with quite a lot. Now I would tend to go for a maximum of 10. I tend to aim for about five, 10 as a maximum. And, uh, but keep it to that theme because it will start to take you off.
[00:16:15] Let's do the suggestions. We'll talk to start to take you off theme as well. You might think. Oh yeah, but that applies to, if you've got another group in mind, like another theme, then you can add the other theme, otherwise try and stick to one focus. So that would be my first suggestion. The self-improvement kind of collection at the moment is performing really well across a few different types of client.
[00:16:34] It can apply to things like people who want to improve their health and wellbeing. Um, people in business, you want to improve their mindset. Um, people who are interested in things like Reiki and, um, homeopathic remedies, and even things like fertility. Um, so yeah, loads of different ways you can use that audience.
[00:16:51] The next one that I use quite a lot is small business. Um, there are. Things like small business owner. Um, the [00:17:00] entrepreneur, I think there's even female entrepreneur. Um, that is.
[00:17:08] That are people who have, um, business pages on Facebook business pages on Instagram. Um, so there's loads of different ones you can choose. And once I, like I said again, you can put a couple of those in and do, um, suggestions and you'll see lots more as well. Um, Then the final one is it's another small business focused one. Um, and this one is really great for businesses who have like online courses and that sort of thing.
[00:17:32] I do a mix of and. I do a mix of kind of the more prominent figures in the online world coaching world. So you've got like Amy Porterfield, Jasmine star, Marie Forleo. Um, Brenae brown. And then again, click suggestions and it will come up with some more. Now I, in an ideal world, I would absolutely use people from the UK.
[00:17:55] Um, Steven Bartlett. Uh, Lisa Johnson. Like there's [00:18:00] loads I could use in the UK. None of them are in there. And you've got to remember. It's a very, US-based one Denise Duffield Thomas isn't even in there. I know she's obviously not. Um, from the UK, but if some people who think like really big diary of a CEO is not in that. Even with Steven Berlin. And not separately either.
[00:18:16] So. Yeah. There's a lot that aren't in there, which is really frustrating. So you kind of got to use ways, but I would really recommend, um, stacking those people as well. Those interests. I would really recommend this audience. If you are looking for. Um, Business owners that run online courses because often they will follow one of those main people. Um,
[00:18:38] And what we, um, Um, the other thing I just want to kind of pull in here is. The reason why we do these groupings. And the reason why we do these groupings is not because we really specifically want people who follow Amy Porterfield. We're just giving Facebook a direction. So an example I often use is we could guide Facebook towards beer and football, or we could [00:19:00] guide it towards Pimms and tennis.
[00:19:02] Yeah. Now they're both sports and they're both drinks are. And they're both alcoholic drinks, but the reality is they would take Facebook in quite different directions if they were trying to find people who liked those things. So that's really what you've got to think about. It's like, what, how could I guide Facebook into the right place to find me the right people? Now you're guiding Facebook in the right place. Um, and then you're going to need to use your copy, your lead magnet and your messaging to really then bring in your ideal clients.
[00:19:29] Okay. That's when you're getting really specific. Um, And then lastly, because it is turning into a much longer episode than 10 minutes, because I clearly have a lot to say on this topic. Um, lookalike audiences, generally, I don't use them, uh, with my small business clients. And I will tell you why is because to create a really effective lookalike audience, it needs to be. Hi. It needs to have really high quality people on it.
[00:19:54] And it needs to be really big. Uh, so by high quality, I mean, Um, let's [00:20:00] say. Uh, by high quality. I mean, if I was going to do a lookalike of your Instagram, I would, I find that the majority of people. The majority of people that follow you. Are your absolute ideal clients. And if the answer is like, Hmm, not really.
[00:20:15] I've evolved this counter account quite a lot. Most of them probably aren't my ideal clients. Then there's no point finding people that look like them. Similarly with your email list. Um, and then the issue we come into where you've got things like your leads. So maybe your lead ads. You're like actually, yeah, the majority of people coming in are my ideal clients.
[00:20:34] We're really going to need, I mean, absolute minimum, a thousand in an ideal world, closer to 10,000, um, of these ideal clients, um, I find that works the best that you can do it with smaller audiences. Um, but it doesn't. I find we don't find the right kind of people. So I would stick with interest based audiences.
[00:20:54] If you're going to do an, a lookalike, then I would maybe do a three to 5%. Now what that [00:21:00] means is how closely aligned are they to this core audience? So 1% is super, super, closely aligned. To the people you've already got on your list. And then 10% is like, no, as aligned. You'll get much more, many more people in the 10%, one than you will in the 1%, but obviously it's much high quality.
[00:21:16] The 1% I tend to go for like a bit of a balance in between. So maybe a four or a three to 5%, um, lookalike audience. But again, It's not something I teach in my courses. It's actually not something I use with most of my clients, unless they have a really big. Um, Highly qualified audience. Um, so that is what I look alike audiences essentially.
[00:21:36] Don't worry about it unless you really want to. So there we are. How are you this? So there we are. That is how you create audiences within ads manager that will help you get on the right track to find the right people. Who will then see your ads, your copy, your messaging, and. Your copy your messaging and your lead magnet. And then they will decide whether they want. [00:22:00] And they can decide then if they are right fit for you. I hope that was really helpful.
[00:22:04] Um, I will be back next week. Uh, on Tuesday and Thursday talking. I will be back next week. Um, I hope to see you then.
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