Have you ever felt that there’s something missing from the Facebook ad targeting?

Like the time you wanted to reach people interested in Marketing AND Chocolate at the same time?

Well, now you CAN.

Facebook is rolling out probably the most exciting thing about their advertising tool (as exciting as multi-product ads and lead ads)…

…DETAILED TARGETING!

If previously all of the interests would get combined with the OR rule (interest A or Interest B), now you can create extremely sophisticated, multi-layer deep target audiences, that will give you the ultimate precision.

In this article I’ll show you exactly how you can use Detailed Targeting on Facebook, for even greater advertising results.

[Tweet “Discover How To Create LASER-Targeted Audiences With Facebook’s New *Detailed Targeting*:”]

What Is Detailed Targeting?

In essence, Facebook is bringing four different targeting options, Demographics, Behaviors, Interests and Categories, into one place – and it makes so much sense!

After all, if advertisers can access these targeting choices easier, they can make their ads much more effective.

That will result in better results and, of course, more money spent on Facebook – it’s a win-win for everyone!

It will also be especially be helpful to beginner advertisers – whenever I mention different targeting options (like reaching parents, who are working in the Banking industry, celebrating their wedding anniversary in the next month…) during my coaching sessions, I get surprised faces all the time.

Now, everyone will see all the targeting options in one place, without needing to explore multiple drop-downs.

More imporatantly, you will be able to use the AND or NOT rules to narrow your audience down by including or excluding some people:

Example audience: men in the US, aged 15-35, who use iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, AND are interested in action games, but NOT use 2g network.

Just one catch: right now detailed targeting is only available on Power Editor – yet another reason for you to start using it! 🙂

How To Use Detailed Targeting:

After you go to Power Editor and create a new campaign, go to the ad set level. There, click “Edit Audience” in the Audience section.

Once the new window opens, you will see the ordinary things: Custom Audiences, Locations, Age, Gender and Languages:

Basic targeting – US, men and women, aged 25-54, who speak English – yields a potential audience of 53,000,000 people on the desktop news feed placement… and there’s the Detailed Targeting!

And just below the basic targeting is what we’re really interested in, the new Detailed Targeting!

As you can see, there is now just one field where you can add demographics, interests or behaviours. The way Facebook explains it:

Choose new targeting details to refine your audience from the people above. Adding the first option will decrease the size of your audience, and then each new option will increase the size from there.

You start by typing in your demographics, interests or behaviours choices and select them from the list that appears, OR click on Browse, and go through the four categories manually, to see what is available:

These four main types of targeting haven’t changed much (at all?) – I won’t be able to type in all of them, but here are some of the top ones, and you can read this article by Jon Loomer to learn more:

• Demographics:
  • Education:
    • Education Level
    • Fields of Study
    • Schools
    • Undergrad Years
  • Ethnic Affinity:
    • African American (US)
    • Asian American (US)
    • Hispanic (US – All)
    • Hispanic (US – Bilingual)
    • Hispanic (US – English Dominant)
    • Hispanic (US – Spanish Dominant)
  • Generation:
    • Baby boomers (US)
    • Generation X
    • Millennials
  • Home
    • Household composition
  • Life Events
    • Anniversary within 30 days
    • Away from family
    • Away from hometown
    • Friends of…
    • Long distance relationship
    • New job
    • New relationship
    • Newly engaged (1 year)
    • Newly engaged (3 months)
    • Newly engaged (6 months)
    • Newlywed (1 year)
    • Newlywed (3 months)
    • Newlywed (6 months)
    • Recently moved
    • Upcoming birthday
  • Parents
    • All parents
  • Politics (US)
    • US Politics (Conservative)
    • US Politics (Liberal)
    • US Politics (Moderate)
    • US Politics (Very Conservative)
    • US Politics (Very Liberal)
  • Relationship
    • Interested In
    • Relationship Status
  • Work
    • Employers
    • Industries
    • Job Titles
• Interests:
  • Business and Industry
  • Entertainment
  • Family and relationships
  • Fitness and wellness
  • Food and drink
  • Hobbies and activities
  • Shopping and fashion
  • Sports and outdoors
  • Technology
• Behaviours:
  • Digital activities
  • Expats
  • Mobile Device User
  • Seasonal and Events
  • Travel
• More Categories:
  • Facebook Categories

Aaaand I’ll stop there!

NOTE: not ALL of the Demographics/Interests/Behaviours/Categories choices will be available to you – some of these, especially the Facebook Categories, are only limited to advertisers in the US.

If you start typing directly into the search field with a specific interest you want to target, you will get even more choices – thousands, probably even millions of different targeting criteria.

But for now, select just one, e.g. Marketing, and get ready for some fun!

You will see two active links below the targeting field: Exclude People or Narrow Audience:

Let’s start with the “Narrow Audience” option.

How To Use Narrow Audience:

After you click on it, a new section will appear, stating: “and MUST ALSO match at least ONE of the following”.

What that allows you to do, is to take Audience A and reach a subset of people who ALSO match B. For example, people interested in Marketing and ALSO in Social Media Examiner:

Targeting people who like Marketing and ALSO Social Media Examiner

And that’s not it!

You can click on “Narrow Further” to keep adding additional layers of targeting, say, people interested in Marketing AND interested in Social Media Examiner AND who are College Grads AND who are parents:

*Sound of heads exploding* – you bet!

In this scenario, the potential reach went from 53 million people, to just 26,000 people who match EXACTLY the profile of a customer I might be looking for:

Again, that’s just one example of how you could use it.

You can have multiple interests in section 2 for example, and keep the rest as it is. Or include broader categories, such as Sales or Banking, in section 1 – with a little bit of audience research, the combinations are infinite!..

Not to mention, that you can even go beyond that with Exclude People…

How To Exclude People From Target Audience:

Finally, at the bottom of Detailed Targeting section, click on “Exclude People”.

As Facebook explains:

Choose new details to exclude people from the audience included above. Each new option will decrease the size of your audience.

“EXCLUDE people who match at least ONE of the following: Crocs” – because no-one should EVER like Crocs!

And there you have it! You’ve just nailed your targeting in the most amazing advertising tool in the universe.

Conclusions:

Final result: my new potential target audience is 12,000 people – can it get any more precise than that?

Of course, that’s an extreme, but I’m already in deep LOVE with this feature!

It puts even more control into the hands of marketers. By making the targeting more precise, we can make our ads significantly more attractive and effective.

And will that lower the advertising costs?

My guess is that yes, and no…

More precision means smaller audience, means more competition. If there are too many advertisers competing for the same niche audience, that will skyrocket the oCPM and the average cost per click for that audience – only time and testing will tell!

But I’d much rather know exactly who am I reaching than bet on huge audiences that aren’t interested in my offers, wouldn’t you?  🙂

I hope you are excited as I am! So, tell me:

What detailed targeting combination will YOU try out first?