Creating interest-based audiences on Facebook is an invaluable strategy for any marketer looking to target specific groups. With Facebook's vast user base of 3.6 billion monthly active users, there is a plethora of data available for creating detailed and effective audience profiles.
Starting with Facebook's Audiences area
To begin, you’ll need a Facebook manager with an ad manager set up. Access the audiences area within Facebook to start crafting your audience. Facebook's extensive insights into user behaviours, such as the websites they visit and their activity on Instagram and Facebook, provide a rich source of information to tap into.
Crafting your saved audiences
Accessing the Audiences tab: Navigate to the audiences tab in your business manager. You may need to use the ‘burger’ menu to find it.
Utilising pre-created Audiences: Your Maybe-created audiences, including social media audiences for Instagram and Facebook, will automatically appear here. These include users who have engaged with your content in the past 365 days.
Creating saved Audiences: This is where you can start building audiences based on specific interests. Click on the 'Saved Audiences' line to begin.
Defining demographics: You’ll need to define attributes like age, gender, and geographical areas, which are essential for your business.
Detailed targeting: The real power lies in detailed targeting. Here, you can search for interests relevant to your target audience, based on the personas you’ve developed. This includes demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Exploring and browsing interests: Use the browse function to explore different categories like demographics, interests, and behaviours. You can find interests as specific as those with birthdays within a certain time frame, or users who like specific magazines or brands.
Customising your audience: As you find relevant interests, add them to your audience. Be aware of the audience size and try to keep it above half a million for better results.
Narrowing down further: You can further narrow your audience by adding additional criteria. For example, you can specify if you want to target people who have an interest in horse-riding or golf - whatever is relevant to your campaign - and see the impact on audience size.
Saving and naming your audience: Once you’ve defined and built your audience, name it appropriately and save it for future use.
Interest-based audience creation on Facebook allow you to tailor your marketing efforts to specific groups, ensuring more effective and targeted campaigns. Keep experimenting with different combinations of interests and demographics to find what works best for you.