Facebook Intro for B2B Marketers
Facebook has three primary audience types. In this article, we'll explain the pros and cons of each common use case.
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Facebook has three primary audience types. In this article, we'll explain the pros and cons of each common use case.
Last updated
Facebook has three primary audience types:
Saved Audiences
Custom Audiences
Lookalike Audiences
In this article, we'll explain the pros and cons of each common use case.
Saved Audiences are the audiences you can define by choosing people’s interests, location, age, gender, used devices, income level, etc.
You can create Saved Audiences both in the campaign setup phase or in the Audience Manager.
Prior to Cambridge Analytica, Facebook allowed for fairly granular demographic targeting, including the ability to target by position or role.
However, it's now quite challenging to create tightly targeted B2B audiences using Facebook's built-in interest and demographic features.
That's not to say they can't work. Interests are one of the best (and easiest) Facebook ad targeting options as they allow you to target people specifically interested in a subject related to your product straight from the Facebook UI.
You just have to closely monitor lead quality and spend to answer the question - "Am I getting high enough quality leads for a reasonable CPA?"
Unlike precise Interests, Behaviors allow you to target people by purchase history, events they like, personal anniversaries, etc. This data is gathered by Facebook; they analyze many factors and also use external data sets.
They are not always useful, but when they are, they work great! As an example, you can target people currently traveling or planning their next trip. This is priceless if you’re in the hotel or event booking market. Check them out and see if they can work for your business.
Pro: It's easy to use facebook's built-in capabilities to quickly set up campaigns
Con: Facebooks interests and behaviors are consumer focused and they have little accurate B2B data
Facebook Custom Audiences are probably the most high-value target audiences. These custom audiences allow you to re-target past website visitors and engage people who have pre-qualified interest in your product. There are multiple ways to create a Custom Audience, and we’re going to cover each of them briefly.
This first type of Facebook Custom Audience is based on your existing lists of customers and leads – the lists of email accounts, phone numbers, userIDs, mobile advertiser IDs, etc. The "Customer File" audience is a great way to target your contacts, leads, or users.
Your customer files can include 15 different identifiers, the most important ones for a high match rate being:
Personal email
Mobile phone number
Mobile advertiser ID
If you don't have the above identifiers, Primer is here to help! By tapping into our data providers, Primer appends those identifiers (AKA ad network matching data) boosting the likelihood that Facebook can match those individuals and serve ads to the people in your list.
Pro: You can target and serve ads to exactly who you want, preventing you from wasting ads on irrelevant people. You can also be more personalized in your ad copy/creative and significantly boost qualified conversion rates from Facebook.
Con: If you only have work emails in your list, match rates are typically 10-20%. Work email is not a good identifier.
Website traffic-based Facebook audiences allow you to create remarketing campaigns for people who have engaged with your website. These are high-value audiences as the users seeing your ads have already shown some interest in them.
To create audiences based on your website traffic, you first need to install the Facebook Pixel. See the Pixel setup instructions by Facebook. Once you’ve installed Facebook Pixel, you can simply go to the Audience Manager and create a Custom Audience based on past website traffic.
You can choose between multiple options:
Target everyone who visited your website
Target people who visited specific web pages
Target people who visited specific web pages but not others
Target people who haven’t visited your website for a certain amount of time
Other custom combinations
Pro: You're serving ads to people who likely have an interest in your product or category since they've already been to your website.
Con: The user has to visit your website before you can serve ads to them. While targeting based on a specific page can be helpful, creating audiences that are specific to a segment (i.e. industry, role, etc.) is still not possible.
The latest addition to Custom Audiences is the possibility to target people who have done one of the following:
Visited your Facebook Page
Engaged with your Facebook Page posts or ads
Clicked on any call-to-action buttons
Sent a message to your Page
Saved your Page or posts
Pro: These people have engaged with you in the past so they're likely to do so again in the future — they're interested.
Con: These users may or may not have a purchase intent. Just because they liked your post, doesn't mean they're going to buy your product.
Facebook Lookalike Audiences let you reach people who are similar to your existing custom audiences (e.g. lists or re-targeting audiences) making them highly likely to convert as well.
To create a Lookalike Audience, you first need to create a Custom Audience to tell Facebook what type of users you want to reach. Next, select the “Lookalike Audience” from the audience creation menu and select a target country and a percentage (1%-10%) of the targeted country’s Facebook users. The percentage signifies the people most similar to your selected Custom Audience.
Lookalike Audiences help you to extend your ad campaign’s reach so that you only target people who are likely to be interested in your offer.
They work particularly well when they are built off of a list-based audience or retargeting audience.
