“Present the right stuff, to the right people, at the right time”. This is the basic agenda of any marketer using Facebook as a platform for advertising. You may have the right stuff to show but what about determining the right people and the right time? There are over 2.27 billion monthly active users on Facebook sliding in and out at different times. This is where targeting the audience with respect to your brand comes into play.

There are three segments of Facebook audience charged with purchasing potential. This includes the Saved Audience, Custom Audience, and the Lookalike Audience. Saved audiences are segmented according to various interests, location, income levels, and behaviours among many other factors. Custom audiences are those who are already familiar with your brand and are aware of its offerings. Lookalike audiences are also called cold audiences because, despite having similarities to your custom audiences, they are unaware of your brand.

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Facebook ad targeting can be optimized in a number of ways. All these techniques have few common motives that include: 

• Analyzing the customer’s requirements.
• Determining the customer’s demographic factors.
• Analyzing the customer’s psychographic attributes.
• Gaining insight into the customer’s behavioral traits.
• Constructing a persona that is basically a digital replication of your ideal customer.

Attempting to master the targeting techniques on Facebook can present you in front of a vast user base who can be impacted by your brand or service. The targeted audience can be broadly classified into 2 spectrums: Cold Audience and Retargeted Traffic.

Cold Audience includes the section who are not aware of your brand but might be interested if presented to them. Brand awareness can be increased by reaching out to such audiences. This classification is done based on a wide variety of criteria including:

• Interests. 
• Brands and services previously engaged in.
• Profile status and life events.
• Gender.
• Age.
• Location-specific audience.
• Language-specific.
• Lookalike Audience. 

Retargeted Traffic includes users who are already aware of your brand and have come into some form of interaction with your service or product. The retargeted audience is determined based on the following features:

• Website visitors.
• Video viewers.
• Organic post engagement.
• Page likes.
• A custom list that you can provide.

Once such classifications are done using the extensively functional features that Facebook offers, optimization and specifications have to be done to ensure maximum profitability. 5 powerful strategies to consider while optimizing your customers to increase conversion rates are mentioned below. 

• Gain insight into the purchasing behavior of your target group. Facebook collaborated with data brokers such as Epsilon and Acxiom to gain information about data transactions. This gave them insights into the purchasing habits of their users. Marketers can now leverage this information to target customers based on their buying background. 
• Chisel down the lookalike audience base according to interests. Lookalike audience groups tend to be large. This poses the conundrum of getting more clicks but fewer conversions. To overcome this, Facebook allows you to narrow down the lookalike audience based on their interests. The catch is that this tends to be a trial and error method. Each combination of interests must be given a chance. Finding the right combination can increase conversions and prove to be more profitable.
• Increase accuracy by using the Layered Targeting option. Facebook Ads is equipped with the capability to layer targeting options so that you can gradually specify your audience. Mergers of segmentations such as behavior, demographics, and location data can be layered on top of each other to cut down the target to a super-granular level.
• Add the Pixel code to your website. This is a remarketing tool that caters to the users who have already interacted with your website. Pixel tool records the user profiles who are interested in your brand by keeping a tab on everyone who ever visited your site and matching their Facebook profiles. Later, when these people access their Facebook accounts, your ads are shown to them.
• Choose the appropriate format for your advertisement. Displaying ads in proper format helps a lot in conversions. There are four formats that Facebook is compatible with: 

1.  Carousel: This is a scrolling format with 2 to 10 images. This is a unique ad format and is very distinctive from a normal Facebook post. The format can be useful for promotions displaying various products.
2.  Single Image: This is the most natural form of a Facebook element. This format will garner greater attention due to its similarity with a Facebook post.
3.  Video: Videos are generally very engaging and, if done right, excellent awareness spreaders. The images will be more ingrained into the users’ minds, thus facilitating awareness.
4.  Slideshow: This is a loop of videos and up to 7 images.

Facebook advertisements are effective owing only to its large user base and the information gathered from each user. Lookalike audiences are important due to the data that goes into determining them. Creating buyer personas contributes to hyper-targeted advertising that can increase conversion rates. Facebook presence is a vital ingredient to your marketing mix and its advertisements are relatively cheaper. If employed appropriately, these techniques will present you with greater conversions and loyal customers.

It is necessary to understand the audience and their mindset to indulge in effective advertising. The tools provided by Facebook to gain insight into the user behavior and preferences are feature-rich and accurate. The best ad campaign is usually a consequence of extensive analyzing, planning, and execution based on trial and error. And in the end, the best ads are those that bring you more revenue. Our team of skilled digital marketers can make your ads profitable for you. Talk to us to learn more.