NEW Strategy To Test Audiences On Facebook Ads

In this article, I’m going to show you a new strategy for testing audiences on Facebook Ads that I’ve been using to find high-converting targeting options.

This uses a testing method that involves open targeting and using the correct budget to optimize this test for.

So specifically this article covers:

• Open targeting control strategy.
• Interest testing analysis.
• What to do with the winning audiences.

What You Should Know About Testing Audiences

Now there is no right or wrong audience targeting, and the key is about finding and discovering what works best for you and your business.

And you can only do that by getting your hands dirty and finding what works for you.

But this strategy is one that you can use if you're looking for a new high-converting audience to target or are struggling with your current strategy.

What Budget Do You Need When Testing Audiences

As a guideline, here are the budgets that I recommend for testing.

• If you have a budget between $800 - $1,500 then the ad set daily budget will be $5 with around 4 – 7 ad sets.
• $1,500 - $10,000 at $10 per ad set with at least 15 – 20 ad sets.
• $10,000 - $20,000 at $15 - $20 per ad set with at least 25 - 30 ad sets.
• $20,000 and above at $25 - $30 per ad set with the Facebook ad limits over 35 ad sets.

Choosing The Right Campaign To Test

Now once you have the budget, then you want to make sure you optimize for the right campaign.

But when choosing the right campaign for your ads always stick with the outcome in mind.

If you want a lead, pick the lead objective if you want sales, then choose the conversion sales objective.

The Facebook algorithm is super smart and will find the best person for the objective you select, so let it do its job!
And here’s a quick thing to mention.

Since you’re going to separate the ad sets for separate data testing, you want to select ABO (adset budget optimization) over CBO (campaign budget optimization so you can have full control over each ad set.

Once you know the right campaign objective for you then start with an ad set that will be the control this control will be what you will be comparing all the other ad sets you’ll choose from.

Basically in order to know how good an ad set is, you need to compare it, especially true if you don’t have much data.

What Type Of Targeting Should You Use

So for this control ad set I recommend you use open targeting because Open targeting usually performs differently from other types of targeting.

With nothing selected in the detailed targeting or custom audience, at first, Facebook will need to do a bunch of figuring out.

And if you want short-term results then usually open targeting might not deliver quickly so it could take longer to drive results even maybe past 7 days.

But in all honesty, this isn’t how you should look at Facebook marketing.

You should always aim for long-term results over short term because that should be your goal as an advertiser.
But with that said.

the good thing is, the more the algorithm is unrestricted it learns and begins to understand your audience more, and the open targeting has the largest room for scale that can run for a very long time.

Now I say you leave it open but there are some options in the detailed targeting you can control
such as...

What You Should Set Your Location Age And Gender Targeting To.

Location targeting can be used to can either spread the countries out if you sell your products or services internationally and you can test each country to find which works best.

Or you can do what I do and simply bunch them all together.

Then for age if you don’t know this I suggest leaving it alone or if you have enough data and know exactly your demographic then enter it.

Then again with genders if you're primarily selling to females or males then select whichever preference is best.
However, if you leave it open this can lower the cost of your ad.

Audience Targeting Strategy

When you have all of this information and put in your ad and creative then you can publish that ad set and now duplicate it to start finding the interest data for this audience targeting strategy.

Now depending on your niche interests are going to be different for everyone, select the interest that best suits your niche.

Do them individually and duplicate them out and separate each interest and leave everything else as it is.

Do not touch anything except changing at the interest level.

Should You Stack Your Interests When Testing

Now I always advocate that you should always stack your interests post IOS and it’s still very true today.

You shouldn’t do the old ways of advertising and separate them out because of multiple reasons, such as going too specific and small with your audience doesn’t work well with Facebook's machine learning as it restricts it.

But with that said this is different! Because in the testing phase, you are trying to learn what works best so you can find enough data to create the best-performing audiences.

And one of the top ways to stack your interests is to stack with the best interests where you know they convert and then scale that.

I mean logically having a stack of audiences that convert is going to have a lot more weight over random interests that you don’t know how they will truly perform.

However, once you select your interests, hit publish and repeat the process until you have the right amount of interests spread according to your budget.

And then once you’ve done all of this let the ads run for at least 7 days or at least 2 x your CPA.

Avoid These Common Mistakes

Please don’t be tempted to go into your ad account and keep checking the results.

Doing this is reactive marketing that’s controlled by your emotions and this will hinder the results you could potentially get, be patient and wait.

As a rule, I always say if you have a completely new funnel that you're testing be prepared to lose a bit of money at the beginning.

But with that said.

Once you let this run long enough to gather data about your interests, now you can take all the winning interests, create a CBO campaign, and stack all the winners, this stacking you’ve just done has now put your best audiences that you know will convert.

Giving Facebook the edge with its algorithm to convert better than it would with random interests.

But with that said you can find the best interests to test faster by knowing how to target your competitors audiences and knowing more about Facebook ads targeting in general.