# The Ideal Facebook Ads AUDIENCE SIZE Channel: Ben Heath Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEYMDeroDg Duration: 11 min Language: English Words: 2324 Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/vYEYMDeroDg --- [0:00] hi guys is Ben Heath from lead guru and in this video I'm gonna talk about the ideal Facebook Ads audience size how big should your target audiences be when you run a Facebook ad campaign now this is a question I get asked all the time and people always want to know I think they create a campaign they get to the ad set level they start entering in targeting options and they see you know this audience definition come up over here and they see is that audience too big is it too small and cetera cetera so I'm gonna answer that in a few other size audience size related questions in this video and [0:32] it is something that you need to get right you know if you don't so you choose the wrong audience size you can really mess up your your Facebook ad campaigns so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna split the way I approach audience size the way I'm going to explain this into sort of two categories so there's the national and international advertisers in one category so businesses are marketing their products or services to really large markets and then there's the local businesses the local advertisers another cat weeks you need to do different things depending on which of those two criteria you meet so to start with the national and [1:02] international businesses in general if I had to come up with a rule I would say that I don't like to advertise to audiences that are smaller than two hundred and fifty thousand people now there's quite a bit larger than what people used to recommend on the lower end but really I don't want to go below two hundred thousand people so if you're adding in interest targeting options and things like that that give you an audience size of a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand I probably part those for now and look to focus on broader interest targeting options so that's on the low end on the higher end [1:35] I would say in general and there are times when we break this I don't want to be advertising to more than five percent of the population within the country or countries that I'm targeting so in the UK there are 45 million Facebook users therefore I wouldn't usually like to target an audience that is larger than let's say 2.25 million two and a half [2:00] million something like that in the u.s. they're about two hundred and fifty thousand Facebook users so I don't want to be targeting an audience that is larger than 12 and a half a million users as I said there are times when we were right that and I've created videos around open targeting things like that but in general if I have to give you some guidelines it would be that 250,000 on the small end and then a maximum of five percent of the number of Facebook users in your target countries and what you see is that some massive range mean if we take the US for example we've got [2:28] 250,000 on the lower end all the way up to 12.5 million that's an enormous range and the reason why it's an enormous range is because audience size as a predictor of success it doesn't really add up so there's no like oh it needs to be 1.5 million if you get your audience size 1.5 million your campaign will work no that's not true at all there's loads of elements to a Facebook ad campaign you need to get right for it to work but you can get audience size wrong and it will mess up your campaigns so provided you're within those sorts of windows you should be absolutely fine but wait [3:02] absolutely don't want you guys to do is target an audience that is too small Facebook ad campaigns struggle big-time with audiences they're too small you're much better to have an audience size that is too large and I have no issues whatsoever with advertising to an audience you know let's say I'm running an ad campaign like we do for loads of clients that's in we're targeting the US Canada Australia New Zealand UK you know the classic sort of big english-speaking countries and we might be targeting an audience that has 15 million people in it or 12 million people in it I'm not worried about that that is not too big [3:34] not when you add in all the populations in all those countries okay and that's changed so five years ago people used to want much more specific target audiences but I think as Facebook has gotten much more sophisticated as an ad platform Facebook is now much better at working out who within your audience is most likely to take a specific action because Facebook just have so much data they have an unbelievable amount of data on who buys you know jewelry via Facebook Instagram ads what sort of person becomes a lead for a fishing guide you know they know all this sort of data because billions is being spent on the [4:13] platform every year so you can give Facebook a lot more leeway now you can advertise to 1.5 million and Facebook might work out the hundred thousand people in that group that are actually your perfect ideal prospects and who should be advertising to and they will put your ads in front of those people if you give Facebook a much smaller audience you give them less leeway they have less and less of an ability to find those people you might miss out quite easily and and yes so in general I like to trust Facebook I like to give them a large audience and what you can see in front of us actually I [4:41] brought this up is an example Facebook ad campaign in one of our Facebook ad accounts you can see in this ad set we're targeting people in the UK that are 25 plus and our small business owners which is a very broad targeting that comes out eight hundred and forty thousand people there are definitely Facebook advertising experts that five years ago would have told you that is too big for a market like the UK that's not the case anymore so you can see Facebook up here is saying that this is on the broad side doesn't bother me in the slightest as I said I don't worry about audiences being too large and that [5:09] something to quickly mention on the audience definition by the way is that I don't really pay much attention to that I'm gonna take a look at the potential reach and just put that into all I know about Facebook advertising if this tells me it's too broad etc this is so unreliable and so often the potential reach will be unavailable that you can't rely on it okay so that's on the national and international side of things right you're talking 250,000 a small end all the way up to 5% of the population of Facebook users in those countries that you're advertising them local businesses you need to do things a [5:40] little bit differently because the potential target audience is usually much much smaller now the degree to which you need to shift away from the national international way of doing things depends on again your audience your your potential audience size so if you're advertising in a big city like London or New York or something like that with you know probably 10 million plus people right you can probably get away with doing things a bit more like a national international business but if you're ever ties into a city with 300 thousand people in it usually things very very differently okay so what are we gonna do with local businesses in an [6:15] ideal world I would still like to have a minimum audience size of 250,000 people but I am aware and I appreciate that's not always possible particularly if you only have 150 thousand people in the town that you're advertising in for example if your total potential reach of just no targeting options whatsoever is less than 250 thousand then that's what you should go with don't add in any putting options leave it completely open any targeting options you add will make your audience too small that's the first thing second thing is that if you're targeting a look-alike audience instead of going with a 1% or 2% like we will [6:51] often do for national or international advertisers we will make that look-alike audience as large as possible all the way up to a 10% again that does depend on the area that we're advertising in and you know if you're advertising to I don't know the whole of London and there's eight point five million people in well it's 10 percent local our audience is going to produce eight hundred and fifty thousand in that audience you might be able to get away with a six percent or something smaller so just run it through a sense filter here and but so two things we're gonna do get rid of all targeting options if [7:22] the target audience locally is really small we're gonna increase the percentage size of look-alikes big time and we're going to stick to the larger interest targeting options so for example this small business owners has produced eight hundred and forty thousand people when we're looking at the whole of the UK if I advertise to a local area I can't use small business owners it's gonna make it too small okay because you know agent forty thousand out of that's roughly two percent of Facebook users right so if I'm only advertising to a city with three hundred thousand people in it and I use the same targeting options I'm only two percent [8:02] of the people within that area two percent of three hundred thousand is six thousand people way too small to advertise to way too small okay so in general when you're advertising nationally internationally or locally I'm really concerned with an audience being too small ideally is going to be 250 thousand with some local businesses that's not always possible and if you are a local business and there's only seventy five thousand people in your area don't artificially inflate your area to advertise to other people that's a waste of money just go with the 75,000 people and be aware that you're going to need to refresh ad creative more often [8:38] and do certain things I've got videos talking about ad fatigue I'll include a link in the description about that in case you meet that criteria the other thing I'll mention is that I've sort of split into nationally and internationally versus local but you have to be aware that it's all to do with potential audience size so if you operate in a really small European country that has a population of right know six million people or something I'm sure there are some that in Norway for example it is five million people in Norway or something like that okay or Ireland there's four and a half million people [9:10] in Ireland I think and you have to operate more like a local business even though you are operating let's say nationally and that's just because of audience size okay so that's the criteria here and but as I said don't get hung up on audience size make sure is if you have nationally internationally if you can get between 200,000 and in the US 12.5 million is huge window you should be absolutely fine that's not going to be a deterministic cess just don't get it wrong instead you then want to focus on other things like spending some time in Facebook's audience insights to find really good targeting options and [9:44] creating look-alike audiences based off of previous customers because that is a targeting option the performance really really well I'll include links to tutorials to show you how to use do both those things in the video description okay Sophie that's been useful and before you go to an acquit you mention our Facebook advertising services so if you find yourself that you're worried about Facebook audience size or any other form of Facebook and Instagram out sizing we can take that off your hands for you we can fully create manage and optimize your Facebook ad campaigns we're specialists Facebook Ads agency have a track record of producing fantastic results most likely without [10:14] trying to be arrogant much better results than you'd be able to produce yourself so if you're spending more than three thousand dollars a month on facebook and instagram at campaigns or you'd like to get to that budget level that's the minimum starting point to work with us I'd love to have a chat with you you can book a free call with me free 30-minute call just click on the link in the video description below that'll be right to the bottom book a free 30-minute strategy session and we can discuss our services I can find a bit more about your business see if we'd be able to help you completely informal [10:40] we could just get to know some add some more info but hopefully I have a chat with you and maybe even we work with each other going forward either way I want to wish you the best of luck with your Facebook ad campaigns guys and your targeting options and if you enjoyed this video please give it a like please comment below to let me know comment below if you've got any questions happy to field questions subscribe to my channel for more Facebook advertising related content and I what you see that's guys --- About this transcript Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com). 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