Advanced Facebook Ads Targeting Strategies for 2024

Facebook Ads targeting can be incredibly confusing. Most tutorial videos only briefly touch on what you should do and don’t even accurately show how to target within Facebook Ads today. In this article, we’ll reveal the strategy being implemented for numerous clients, including three unique strategies. Keep in mind that your business may have its own nuances, and the exact setup presented here may need adjustments based on various variables.

I. Total Broad Strategy

The first strategy is a total broad strategy, focusing on a sales-driven conversion campaign for e-commerce stores. We’ll go through the campaign level and the ad set level.

1. Create an Advantage Plus Shopping Campaign: Select “Sales” and continue. Create an Advantage Plus Shopping campaign and name it (e.g., ASC). Select “Website and Shop” (if applicable). Choose your commerce account.
2. Attribution Settings: Set the attribution to “7-day click, 1-day view” to get the most signals within the ad account. Set audience location per your needs.
3. Engaged Audience and Current Customers: Utilize an engaged audience list and a current customer list in the ad setup. In the ad setup, create a custom audience or select from existing ones. For the engaged audience, use “Website visitors in the last 30 days” (excluding purchasers) and “Facebook and Instagram engagers in the last 30 days.” For current customers, use 180-day pixel data and a purchaser list from your CRM.
4. Daily Budget and Creatives: Set a daily budget (e.g., $1,000). Utilize your best-performing, proven ad creatives. The Advantage Plus campaign has no ad set level, so targeting will be completely broad.

II. Generic + Interest Strategy

The second strategy is a generic strategy, but with an added layer of interests.

1. Create a Manual Sales Campaign: Create a manual sales campaign (not Advantage Plus). Name the campaign (e.g., Prospecting CBO) and select Advantage campaign budget. Set a daily budget (e.g., $500).
2. Ad Set Setup: Within the ad set, select “Website and Shop”. Name the ad set (e.g., Broad Pack 1). Each ad set will contain 6-8 creatives. Each time you have new creatives, create a new ad set to avoid disrupting existing ones.
3. Targeting: Don’t exclude any audiences. Choose Advantage Plus targeting. Select all placements. Keep detailed targeting expansion at “Medium” or “Broad.”
4. Adding Interests: Once a creative in “Broad Pack 1” performs well, move it to an Advantage Plus campaign and a new ad set with interests. For example, if you’re a fashion brand, use the interest “Lululemon Athletica.” Duplicate this ad set and add a suggested interest (e.g., Fabletics), removing the initial interest. Each interest ad set will have its own creative.

III. Retention Strategy

The third strategy is a retention strategy, for businesses with over $10 million in sales or a customer list exceeding 50,000 people.

1. Create a Retention Campaign: Create a manual sales campaign and name it “Retention.”
2. Audience: Create two audiences: “180-Day Purchasers” (purchasers in the last 180 days) and “All-Time Purchasers” (all-time purchaser list from your CRM). Utilize the source audience option and choose the respective custom audiences. Important: Uncheck “Advantage custom audience” to only spend on the provided list.
3. Exclusions (Optional): If budget allows (minimum $30,000 – $50,000/month), consider excluding purchasers in the Prospecting CBO campaign and set the budget cap for existing customers in the Advantage Plus campaign to 0.

Conclusion: Targeting is only one piece of running successful Facebook Ads. You need engaging creatives, accurate copy, and an optimized account structure.