We all know that moment when we're setting up a new ad campaign.
Targeting.
Determine the location, adjust the age, then go to work stacking a set of interests and affinities we believe match who we're looking for.
While these settings do work well, they're not personal to us.
Meta can only provide a stock set of options for us to use when searching for the right people.
But what if we didn't need those options?
What if the right people had been sitting in front of us all along?
What if we could target a selection of people relevant exclusively to us?
Well, we can.
The illusion of control
Meta knows more about every user on its platform than any of us ever could.
They know what we watch, who we follow, who they follow, what they watch, how long they watch it for, what they like, and on and on.
Meta—Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp—uses all of these data points to combine people into targetable groups in its ad platform.
This is where our detailed targeting options come from.
But just because someone likes music or software doesn't necessarily mean they like your music or software.
Just because someone is shopping for a new hoodie doesn't necessarily mean they'll like the hoodies you sell.
Every creator and brand is different, and what applies to one doesn't always translate to another, even if they're "categorically" the same.
Detailed targeting gets us close, because it's built on categories.
But it isn’t exact.
We can find people who like hoodies, but we can't find people who like our hoodies.
To do that, we need something more.
What your audience can tell you
When people engage with your content or choose to follow you, they're sending you a very specific signal.
Interest.
No one follows anyone online unless they like what they see and want to see more.
The same goes for views, likes, comments, and shares.
The entirety of the internet is constantly vying for our attention, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So when we choose to give that attention to a creator or brand, it is with purpose.
As advertisers, we can use this.
We can create audiences of people who follow us, who have engaged with our content, and who have liked, commented, and shared.
We can narrow these audiences down to the video and the day, if we want to.
Custom audiences let us find the exact people who've already shown interest in what we're doing—not search a categorized list that only gets close.
Then, if we want to look outside those people, we can create lookalike audiences or turn on audience expansion in an ad set.
But it all starts with capturing attention and building an audience.
Putting it all together
Customer profiles and avatars are a great place to start, but they can only get you so far.
If you want to build a truly effective marketing funnel to sell your product or service, build an audience.
Then retarget them with an offer.
That's basically the whole game.
The most powerful marketing isn't built on guesswork. It's built on consistently showing up and leveraging the audience your effort attracts.
Generate interest, capture attention, then use it to sell your product or service.
And leave the guesswork out of it.
P.S. If you want to learn more about creating custom and lookalike audiences in Facebook Ads Manager, check out this week's YouTube video.