Facebook boasts 2.6 billion monthly active users – making it the biggest social network worldwide, and presenting massive opportunities to connect with your target audience.

But what’s the best way to find your ideal customers on this social media giant?

One word: targeting.

Before you invest time and money into any social media campaign, it’s important to think through exactly how your business will reach the people most likely to buy from you.

Thankfully, Facebook captures incredible amounts of user data, such as interests, location, behavior, demographics – even the type of car they drive! You can use this data to define parameters that target your ideal audience, and then serve ads to them while they scroll through their feed.

Here are 5 ways to optimize your Facebook marketing strategy – and home in on your ideal audience:

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While Facebook allows you to generate a lookalike audience for your marketing needs, most marketers find that these audiences are too broad. Optimize your campaigns by serving the same ads to two or more segments of your lookalike audience (use Facebook’s “Detailed Targeting” option to refine your audience based on their interests). Then, see which group has a higher conversion rate and/or lower cost-per-click.

Try the “Must Also Match” feature.

Beyond defining a group of interests, Detailed Targeting allows you to refine your audience by requiring members of your audience to match more than one interest. To see what works best for you, try testing two or three different interests in the “Must Also Match” box – and carefully monitor your conversion rates.

Use the Facebook pixel.

If your goals are to generate awareness acquire new customers, don’t waste money marketing to people who are already visiting your website. Install the Facebook pixel in the header of your site to track when a Facebook user visits your site or takes some sort of action (like placing an item in a shopping cart). Then, use what you learn to:

• Build a custom audience that excludes visitors to your website.
• Create and serve ads to a lookalike audience of people with characteristics similar to those who have engaged with your site.

Segment your retargeting audiences.

Depending on your marketing goals, you may be able to better align your messaging with your audience with digital marketing retargeting. Here are a few ways to consider segmenting your website visitors, and further refine your audience:

• By date of the last visit
• By dwell time on your site
• By specific pages visited
• By the number of pages visited

Run separate campaigns for mobile and desktop.

While you might think an ad would perform the same on both desktop and mobile, things aren’t quite as simple as that. Facebook doesn’t divide impressions evenly by platform, and your cost-per-click can vary substantially.

To determine if separating campaigns can improve your results, set up three tests:

1. One campaign with ads on both mobile and desktop.
2. One campaign with desktop ads only.
3. One campaign with mobile ads only.

If you receive different results, consider why that might be – and what it means for your Facebook marketing strategy. You may need to serve different ads to mobile vs. desktop users, or consider advertising exclusively on one or the other.

Want help maximizing the effectiveness of Facebook advertising?

You’re in the right place! BARQAR’s social media marketing experts can help you build and execute the ideal PPC strategy for your goals, audience and industry.