My flabber was well and truly gasted recently, I can tell you.
I decided to look at the ‘why am I seeing this‘ info for every ad I saw in my Facebook newsfeed, and the amount of poor Facebook ads targeting I saw left me stunned!
(You can see this info for ads in your newsfeed by clicking on the upside down ^ to the right of the post, then select ‘Why am I seeing this?‘ from the drop down menu:)
It was shocking to see the COLOSSAL amounts of money being wasted by business owners who clearly do not have the foggiest idea of how to target their ads to the right audience.
A couple of examples I spotted…
The local tourist information organisatione who are running an advert showing an image of an area of coastline to everyone who likes their page.
No Call to Action to book a day trip or holiday, or to visit a specific attraction. They hadn’t even bothered targeting ‘people who like our page but don’t live on the Isle of Wight’!
Then there was an advert for holidays in India, targeted to lookalikes of people who have visited a specific travel website.
This ad was shown to EVERYONE in the lookalike audience. They hadn’t added any additional targeting to segment out people who had ‘indicated an interest in India’.
It’s just crazy how much money is being wasted!
Then, like a beacon of light, I saw an ad promoting a cruise.
This ad was targeted to people who had liked the cruise company’s page, AND who were aged 40+ (the average age of their customers), AND who had indicated an interest in the specific ship.
Ahhhhh… warmed my heart, it did!
Recent Facebook changes have also given the user far more control over the ads they see, which has made getting specific with your targeting a much higher priority.
If you’re advertising on Facebook, take the time to get specific with your targeting, using the ‘include‘ and ‘exclude‘ audiences feature in Ads Manager and Power Editor.
When your ad is relevant to the people who see it, not only will your conversion rates increase, but so will your ‘relevancy score’.
The higher your relevancy score, the less you pay for each conversion too.
Veronica Pullen
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