Types of targeting in Facebook Ads

For your advertising campaigns to work and get the best results, correctly segmenting your target audience will be the key to ensuring that all your marketing efforts do not get lost along the way. For this reason, defining the types of audiences by which you can classify your target audience will determine the success of your ads.


Segmenting Facebook advertising
And to start off on the right foot, we share with you the most important types of segmentation to get started on Facebook Ads : Main audiences, custom audiences, and similar audiences.


Facebook Ads: Main Audiences

Targeting by primary audiences allows you to establish certain guidelines or rules to direct who you will show your ads to. In other words, you can define your audience well and establish a clear and precise objective by guiding yourself with the following search criteria:

Location targeting (geographic data)

Where your target audience is located is one of the many pieces of the puzzle you have to figure out in order for your ads and, of course, your products or services to hit the mark. Fortunately, Facebook gives you several different targeting options to choose from: everyone in a location, people who live in a certain location, people who are visiting a location, and people who have recently been to a certain location.

Another advantage of the Facebook platform is that it allows you to apply filters to specify the segmentation in more detail. For example:

  • Countries
  • Cities
  • Postal codes 
  • Directions
  • DMA


And finally, if you still want to focus on a more specific niche by location, there is “radius” segmentation. With this you can more precisely delimit the area of ​​people to whom you want to show your ads or, with this same function, you can exclude areas where you do not want your ads to appear.

Segmentation by demographic data


Facebook allows you to choose, or rather, classify your audience based on demographic levels such as age, sex and language. Fortunately, once again the same platform gives you a range of possibilities (filters) and of course, options to be able to carry out a more detailed segmentation. 

  • Education: level of training, search for fields of study, search for school fields, etc.
  • Work: companies, sectors
  • Relationship: sentimental status
  • Important events: anniversary, new relationship, new job, etc.
  • Parents: all fathers, mothers
  • Financial institution
  • Policy
Interest segmentation

This is another type of segmentation that allows you to classify your target audience based on what they like and other topics they are interested in. This way, your ads will reach only people who share the same tastes. For obvious reasons, your brand has to meet this need in order to use this type of segmentation to your advantage.

Currently, the Facebook platform shares a series of interests with you that you can use to perform good segmentation:

  • Fitness and wellness
  • Family and relationships
  • Shopping and fashion
  • Food and drinks
  • Sports and outdoor activities
  • Hobbies and Activities
  • Business and industry
  • Technology 
  • Entertainment

Behavioral segmentation

In order to segment in this way, Facebook takes into account the user's movements and behaviors, both on and off the platform. In this way, aspects such as purchase history, trips, important dates, etc. are evaluated, all with the aim of strategically directing your ads to a specific audience.

Some filters that can help you classify by behavior are:

  • Digital activities
  • Classification of consumers
  • Expatriates
  • Mobile device user
  • Mobile device usage time
  • Cultural affinity
Segmentation by connections

Connection targeting is based on people who are literally connected to your Facebook Page or events. This type of targeting also allows you to exclude those audiences in order to find and target new audiences.

Connection segmentation shares the following filters with you:

  • Facebook Pages
  • Applications 
  • Events

How to segment audiences in Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads: Custom Audiences

Custom audience segmentation allows you to get in touch with users who have already shown a certain interest in your brand, product or service , whether they are people who visited your website , interacted with your App , who have been regular customers or who have had minimal contact.

In order to classify by custom audiences, the platform offers the following options:

  • App Activity
  • Offline activity
  • Video
  • Instagram business profile
  • Contact lists
  • Website Visitors

For this last point, I recommend setting up the Facebook pixel , with which you can automatically create custom audiences made up of users who visited your website or performed certain actions on your site.

With this configuration you can show users strategic ads for products or services that they previously viewed on your website or e-commerce site.

Facebook Ads: Similar Audiences

Similar audience targeting is the fastest and most efficient way or strategy to connect with users who are most likely to respond to your ads.

To achieve this goal, you must create a source audience made up of users or people you already know, and then redirect your ads to profiles with common characteristics and interests.

For segmentation to achieve optimal reach, it is recommended to have a minimum of 100 people from the same country or region to properly design the type of audience.

segment target audience

If you want to know more about this topic or require advice, at MHA you will find the solution,  Because my commitment is to guide you in the best way possible in this highly competitive digital era.

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