When To NOT Add Detailed Targeting To Facebook Ad Campaigns

0:00hi guys it's ben heath from lead guru and in this video i'm going to talk about those scenarios in which you absolutely do not want to be adding any detailed targeting options to your facebook ad campaigns it's a bit of a misconception among some facebook advertisers you always need to be putting stuff into those detailed targeting options and there are scenarios in which doing that will wreck your campaigns it will really make your campaigns perform a lot worse i'm going to cover those in this video before i get into that you want to very quickly ask you to smash that like button and of course subscribe

0:30to my channel if you are new and haven't done so already okay so i'm in an example facebook ad account here i've got an example campaign created and we're going to go ahead and jump to the ad set level and then click edit go into the ad set and scroll down to the the detailed targeting section here and so i'm going to delete that because there's a little example i prepared in advance i'm going to show you what that means in a second um but here you've got the detailed targeting options right so this is where you'd normally add in your demographics your interests your behaviors

0:57the sorts of things that people traditionally think of when they think of facebook advertising right they think okay you've got all these detailed targeting options we can be really specific with who we advertise to all that sort of stuff and there are absolutely scenarios in which you want to use detailed targeting options if you watch my other videos you'll see that you know we use them all the time but there are scenarios in which you don't want to and i'm going to give you some examples by coming up here in this custom audiences section i've added in a look-alike audience here there's nice at one percent like based

1:25on leads but it could be any sort of look-alike um it could also be any custom audience added in here as well if you have if you are targeting a look-alike audience or a custom audience you do not want to add any detailed targeting options that is a big big no-no okay so let me give you an example of why here we've got a look-alike audience uh one percent look-alike audience in the uk we're targeting the united kingdom based on previous leads so if you're not familiar with custom audiences or look like audiences i'll include links um in the video description below that'll take you to videos that show

1:58exactly how to create either custom audiences or look like audiences they are they are separate things but you can see that with this look-alike audience we've got a potential reach of 480 000 people roughly one percent of the facebook users in the uk facebook and instagram users in the uk okay now if we were to go ahead and add in uh where are we a detailed targeting option the example i popped in was a good one let's say i wanted to add in no not employers uh let's say i wanted people who people are interested in fishing okay it's quite a broad interest actually there's tons of people in the uk

2:30interested in fishing you can see that that took our potential reach from 480 000 to 62 000 people okay when you add detailed targeting options into an ad set that is targeting either look-alike audiences or custom audiences it's an and function so what you're saying to facebook is i want someone to be in this look-alike audience or in this custom audience and match this interest whereas that is different if i take out this lookalike that is different you can see seven million people in the uk interested in fishing if i was to go ahead and add in other interests let's say i've got phishing and let's say i go and add another one

3:06um being tennis um you can see my audience size increased to 12 million because when you add in interest um demographics behavior targeting options it's an or function so someone can be interested in phishing or tennis and they will be included you don't have to be interested in both okay now there are ways by using this narrow audience that you can make sure that people are interested in both but in general it's sort of the basic detail targeting level it's an or function someone could so when you add in eight different interests you're getting people who are interested in all eight things or interested in one of the eight things

3:42you're getting everyone right whereas when you add in detail targeting options if i get rid of that go back to when you're adding in detail targeting not just if you're targeting a customer or a lookalike it's an and function now with a lookalike audience if i go back and add in that lookalike audience again um the one percent right it took us we've got 480 000 we added in phishing oh let me get rid of that so it

4:03shows you the number the 62 000. we went down 60 000. so that's cut our audience down by like 80 not something that we want at all um if you're targeting a custom audience so that's obviously look like audience that starts with 480 000 if you're targeting a custom audience let's say people on your email list people who have visited your website people who perhaps have interacted with you on facebook or instagram those audiences unless you're quite a large company are going to be much smaller than 480 000. you might only have 5 000 people that visit your website or you know a thousand people on an email

4:40list if you start with a custom audience that's that small and then you go ahead and add in detailed targeting options you are just crushing the size of that audience and as we know when it comes to facebook and instagram advertising the larger the audience the better all things being equal okay and you don't want to artificially constrain your audience and if you're targeting for example a custom audience of people who've visited your website or on your email list you don't need to further qualify those people with an interest or any sort of detailed targeting because if they bother to visit your website or you know they're on your email list even

5:17if facebook doesn't have them categorized as interested in whatever it is that you sell you know they're obviously interested in whatever it is that you sell otherwise they wouldn't have taken those actions in the first place same with a lookalike audience right if you're basing in this case we've got a look-alike audience built off of leads we've generated now if those people are very similar to people that have become a lead of ours we know they're the right sort of people to target it's why lookalike audiences are so effective we don't need to further qualify those people by adding in detail targeting options what that'll do is reduce your audience

5:48size and worsen the performance of your campaign okay so whenever you've got a custom audience or a look-alike audience that you're targeting in an ad set do not add detailed targeting options very very important okay there so that's the sort of the main point of this video that's scenario one there is another point that i want to quickly make and that's it you can decide not to add in any detailed targeting options and if i get rid of the look-alike and get rid of fishing and just go with everyone okay so one of the scenarios where you just want to target everyone what's often called open or broad targeting

6:22on facebook well if you're a local business if you're just advertising in a local area and the population size that you're advertising to is not that large and let's say anything less than 100 000 people you'd almost certainly want at least one ad set well you'd want one ad set that is just targeting everyone in that area you don't get too specific because you're already really constrained by the geographical area which you're advertising okay so that's one scenario in which we use it all the time um if you are a larger advertiser you've got large budget you know at least six figures a month plus and you've got a product or service with

6:57broad appeal so it's not like it's really niche loads people could love what what what it is that you have to offer um then you may want to test completely open targeting even nationally or maybe even internationally and just keep it really broad and allow facebook to work out who within the audience is going to perform well so the scenarios in which you want to use yeah open targeting broad targeting a sort of it's it's probably not gonna be the end of the world if you add in detailed targeting options in those that i've just described it might be you know if you're if you're just advertising to a town of 20 000

7:27people adding any detailed targeting options is again a big mistake it might take your 20 000 down to 6 000 and your campaign's a lot of trouble if you're advertising in a in a relatively small population area or just to a small population period you do not want to be adding in detailed targeting options go with everyone but most most importantly if you've got custom audiences or look-alike audiences that you're targeting no detailed targeting options which actually means that i would probably say that more than half of our all the ad sets we create in all the campaigns we create for our clients don't have any detailed targeting

8:01options because we focus so much on look-alike audiences and custom audiences um particularly look-alike on the cold side of things when we are running our ad campaigns for our clients okay hopefully that's been useful before we go free thing i want to quickly mention is my facebook ads mastermind group so it's a free facebook group 75 000 plus members one of the biggest communities of facebook advertisers in the world it's full of people just like you who are um just trying to get better results with facebook and instagram ads you know they're asking questions getting them answered i'm in there every day um i do free live trainings in the group

8:33as well so if that sounds something you want to be part of go ahead and click on the link in the video description we'd love to have you and join our community and and yeah we'll see you over there if you if you found this useful please give it a thumbs up and please don't forget to subscribe and of course comment below to let me know you know comments are always much appreciated they help me create future content if i know what you like what you don't like if i know what questions you guys have got all really helpful so please get them in i uh i go through them all and i try to

9:00answer as many as i can so um so yeah best of luck with your facebook ad campaigns guys and i'll talk to you soon bye for now