Stage 1 – Facebook Targeting

What is Facebook targeting concept?

Facebook targeting is an advanced technology based on the data that Facebook collects for every single Facebook user through the info that they reveal about themselves directly such as: job titles, hobbies, age, marital status, check-in or indirectly by engaging with certain posts, page, profiles falls under certain topics or industries such as liking an arty page or follow specific fitness trainer.

This data are being offered to you as filters you can select from to choose who should see your advert.

Examples:

• Show my ads to people who are between 18-30 years old (From their age).
• Show my ads to people who are married (From their marital status).
• Show my ads to women only (From their gender).
• Show my ads to people who live in USA (From their country of residence).
• Show my ads to people who travel often (from the frequency of their Travel status).
• Show my ads to people who work in the marketing field (From their job title).
• Show my ads to people who are interested in fitness (From their hobbies or pages they like that posts about fitness).
• Show my ads to people who can speak English and Spanish (I don’t know how).
• Show my ads to people who use Amazon or Spotify app (From the apps installed on their devices).
• Show my ads to people who don’t like my Facebook page (don’t need to say how here).

Is this everything I can target? 

No it is not because you can also target using your users data or list of contacts you have collected before. This can be done by uploading a list of email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, names, birthdays, zip codes or even Facebook user ID; and Facebook will get them for you and show them your ad.

*All the different targeting options are in a link at the end of this awesome article.

So instead of wasting your marketing budget by showing your ads to the mass, you can now select people who lives in specific city, specific country, in certain age group, work in specific industry, married, interested in certain topics and have certain hobbies.

Smart, isn’t it?

Yes it is, but this is not everything or where you should stop at. Facebook retargeting came to give you more control and power over who should see your advert.

Stage 2 – Facebook Re-Targeting

What is Facebook re-targeting concept?

From it’s name “Re-Targeting”, you can tell that it is the stage after targeting when you run another advert campaign or when you want to bring back people who engaged with your previous ads or your website/app before.

Do you remember this website you visited before to buy a product and you left the website without completing the purchasing? Then you started to see this product on Facebook later chasing you saying “I have discount now” or “Here I am again, I know you want to buy me so bad, don’t resist” … This is Facebook retargeting.

Basically this is an advanced concept of tracking your behaviour not only on Facebook but also on other websites outside Facebook using something called Facebook Pixel.

Stage 3 – Facebook Pixel

What it is Facebook Pixel?

Simple explanation:

Facebook Pixel is a virtual spy, not in a bad way, that the website or the app owner decide to hire from Facebook, for free, to track every or certain actions you do on their product and record it for later use.

Then when you run a campaign on Facebook and target these people, the Facebook Advert manager will ask this spy “Hey spy, who are the users who did these actions?”. The they Facebook spy will reply back with list of Facebook accounts and start showing them the ad when they are using Facebook.

Technical explanation:

Facebook pixel is a snippet of code to be injected in your website page header that drops cookies into the user browser to track their engagements with your website. It also can be a third party library, Facebook SDK, you integrate into your native app (android or iOS) that tracks and stores the user engagement with your app.

Then when you run a campaign on Facebook and target these people, the Advert manager will check for this information in the cookie or the mobile device then show the ad for this user.

Example of what this naughty Pixel can track:

• User who has opened the website this week.
• User who has not opened the website in the last two months.
• User who has spent more than 2 minutes on the application.
• User who has uninstalled the app from your phone.
• User who has opened this bag (product) on the website before.
• User who has used the application only once.

*All the different tracking options are in a link at the end of this awesome article.

So now you have the power to say to Facebook ad Manager, please show my ads only to people who installed my app before, spent less than 1 min on my website, opened this product, added this product into their cart and didn’t buy it and more.

Smart, isn’t it?

Yes it is. Now you need to stop creating ads for the mass and start build personas to your potential users and start target/retarget them.

Note: It does not take more than 30 minutes to setup Facebook Pixel on your website or Facebook SDK in your app but collecting data about your users takes time, so you better start now.

let the targeting game begin!

Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed – Dan Zarella

References and sources:

• http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-install-facebook-remarketingretargeting-pixel-in-wordpress/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5BeNCBpRNs
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events/android
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events/ios
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1472206006327390/?helpref=hc_fnav