Are you targeting your Facebook and Instagram ads the same way for every type of ad? Use different Facebook ad audiences for different points of your sales funnel.
In this post you will learn how to target your audience at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.
How you target your ads is going to be a little dependent on your business and also the assets and traffic you have available to you.
If you are using Facebook ads for a local business, typically you should keep your Facebook targeting a little open and just focus on the local area while varying the messaging in your ad.
For online businesses, you have more flexibility in your targeting since you are drawing from a wider population.
Clients can come in at any time in the “funnel” or customer journey. They might be ready to buy right away or they might move through the sales funnel quickly from awareness to purchase.
Google ads are a little different as people might be searching for your product at that very moment rather than Facebook Ads where people are interested in your product but may not be in “buying mode”.
Facebook Ads Audiences for the Top of Funnel
Top of funnel Facebook and Instagram ads should be more educational around the pain points you solve and what makes you different.
Video ads can do really well at the top of the funnel because you can then use the video views to build retargeting audiences later.
In terms of targeting, you may want to reach a COLD audience. Which means that you are going to target your Facebook ads with keywords or Lookalike Audiences and then EXCLUDE your warm audience. Your warm audience is created with custom audiences of website visitors, email subscribers, Facebook Page engagement and possibly Instagram Page engagement.
You may not want to exclude all of your warm audience at the top of the funnel. Depending on your goal, you may just want to exclude people who have not already become a lead.
I am finding that broad audiences are working very well if you are using the Facebook pixel in a Leads or Sales ad.
Facebook Ads Audiences for the Middle Funnel
In the middle of your funnel, a potential client might be more interested in giving you their information as a lead. So you might do more Lead Generation ads.
Here you might be targeting more Lookalike Audiences or even doing some retargeting of people who have engaged with your videos at the top of the funnel.
Bottom of the Funnel Audiences
If you are targeting potential customers who might want to buy your product, I typically suggest only using Retargeting audiences.
The exception would be in Ecommerce as you can go wider and target a cold audience but you may need to entice them with a special deal.
Many businesses will need to combine all their retargeting audiences into one because there won’t be enough volume. Usually you need an audience of at least 1000 – 2000 in order for your ads to get Reach.
Make sure you subtract both the Purchase Pixel audience and an email list of customers to avoid targeting people who have already purchased.
If you have a large enough volume of traffic, you can target just the people who have been to the sales page minus the people who have already purchased.
And if you have a really high amount of traffic you could target the people who have abandoned the cart as long as you have the Add to Cart or Initiate Checkout pixel set up.
In the end, your Facebook and Instagram ads will be a combination of messaging and targeting.
Sometimes your Facebook ad audiences aren’t going to be perfect but the ad text and offer will do the work for you.
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