In a nut shell, interest targeting is social media's version of cold calling. Reaching new audiences who likely haven't heard of your brand before by serving your ads to people who have particular interests that are relevant to your brand or what you're promoting.
I've seen so many people making an absolute mockery of this and wondering why it doesn't work or simply being like "Nah, it doesn't work we've tried it". As with most things, if you don't plan, or have a strategy behind what you're doing, you are already setting yourself up for failure. How savvy and specific do you get when you're building your interest targeting audiences? I am not saying this you.. but too many times I have seen people putting in every.single.interest. that they are trying to reach within one ad set. For example, an online PT is trying to get new clients, they target people interested in fitness, weight loss, health and wellness, specific sports, the list goes on. But if you do this all under one audience/ad set and don't separate them, how will you know who is responding better, those who are interested in footy, or those who are interested in weight loss? These need to be set up and segmented to a fine detail in order to analyse your results and make adjustments accordingly to put more budget behind the interest audiences that are working - Ultimately giving you the best return on investment.
If you are to search something on Google, you have the intention to find this exact thing. You already know what you’re looking for. Facebook and Instagram on the other hand, people are looking to see what their friends are doing, to see some bikini pics, or see what new memes are trending. They have no prior interest in you or your ad. None. NADA.
It’s up to you to create that interest (or me ;)), and one of the sneaky ways to do that is by using what you already know they are interested in – the stuff they've clicked on, added to their profile, things they have 'liked' and in some way, shape, or form, have already shown interest in.
When you’re searching for interests, Facebook (also used for Instagram advertising) has keywords just like Google. However, on Facebook, it’s words that they tag to your profile to fit you into a 'box' that we, advertisers, can target. This is based on behaviours, which can come from fan pages people like, places they've checked in, life events and endless other variables.
Did you know you can view your interests? This allows you to see what advertisers could be targeting you with, and why sometimes you get completely irrelevant ads appearing on your newsfeed, let's not go in to details of some of the off-interest ones I've been dealt... These interests are usually very broad and hard to make useful, unless you read and take note of this blog of course.
If you open up Facebook ad preferences within your profile settings (screenshots of how to do so below), you’ll be able to see what you are supposedly interested in.
How much of what it says you're interested in are you actually interested in? Here's mine:
For one, I absolutely hate 99% of cats. Secondly, I have never hired a car in my life, and thirdly, I am all about sustainable living and taking my reusable bags to the supermarket, but I don't preach it or show interest (that I know of) over Facebook or Instagram. The rest is probably reasonably accurate. Unsure how good at DIY I am, but hey, I'll give anything a fair crack. Going through the entire list, I'd say about 50% of what is there are things I am genuinely interested in.
So let's for example sake, say I am working for a Casino who is live streaming a UFC Fight Card. What I am wanting to do is target those who are really into UFC and would actually be interested in going to watch it live, not just the generic fan who liked a Conor McGregor post once upon a time. We need to find the people who think about it, talk about it and all in all, love the UFC. Those who are interested in multiple components of the brand, and know things that aren’t common knowledge by the superficial fan.
Here's an example, Conor McGregor is a famous UFC fighter, but he is so famous that people would have shown interest in him for other reasons than watching UFC. Like the time he threw a chair at bus and and the video went viral on Facebook. Imagine how many non-UFC fans would have chucked their 2 cents in the comments section on that one. On the other hand, a UFC enthusiast would know who Anderson Silva is, but no one else would.
You can apply this when you look for interest targeting ideas such as people, events or specific sports. Instead of just Conor McGregor, you can expand to also target people who like both Conor McGregor AND Anderson Silva. That allows you to just grab the hardcore UFC fans who are far more likely to want to go watch a UFC Fight Card live.
My top tips for successful Interest Targeting:
1. Tap into recent behaviour among Facebook/Instagram users
Facebook has partnerships with huge data brokers including Epsilon, Acxiom, and Datalogix. (You're probably like who the F are they, but just know they have a F load of data, and probably on you). I should also note that all this data is encrypted, so as an advertiser I can't see specifically the people I am reaching, I just know what they're interested in.
This means Facebook knows whether you spent more time playing Farmville of Candy Crush. Getting married soon? Did you attend a Full Moon Party in Thailand? Recently get your teeth whitened? Facebook probably knows.
This gives advertisers the power to reach far beyond their own databases and tap into insights from consumer behaviour of all kinds, then match this to individual user profiles. Facebook advertisers use this data to target audience segments by thousands of different purchasing behaviours.
Here’s one that I use specifically to E-Commerce stores: People who have clicked 'Shop Now' via an ad off Facebook or Instagram (because we already know they are spending money online) BUT also match a selection of key interests relevant to the what the E-Commerce store is selling.
2. Get creative with life events targeting
Certain types of businesses or campaigns are based on selling to people experiencing certain life events. A moving company would want to reach you if you’ve just purchased a new house. Wedding photographers would want to target people who are engaged.
Facebook ad targeting life events is unique in that you can choose to target people at specific intervals of time after the change. For example, a jewellery company would obviously be interested in reaching people celebrating their one-year anniversary, so they could target audience members who were newlyweds one year ago. The date ranges possible are 3 months, 6 months and one year. You can then create ads specific to these dates.
Facebook has pretty much every conceivable life event targeting option, since we tend to post these to our timelines. Use them to your benefit.
3. Get super specific with layered targeting options
Taking you back to my UFC/Conor McGregor example earlier, the really powerful thing about Facebook ads is the ability to layer targeting options on top of one another, making your audience as specific as you want it to be. An extreme and one of my favourite examples of the power of hyper-targeting was featured in AdWeek in 2018, when a marketing pro targeted his house mate with ads so specific the guy thought he was being cyber stalked. I might actually try this myself. Stay tuned.
You can use combinations of behaviours, demographics, and geolocation data to really refine your audiences. What I find really useful is the ability to match ad creatives and offers to smaller audiences created using different combinations of data.
For example, a new brewery is opening, it has beer tours, kids meal options and student discounts available. Targeting would be set up for people with children aged between 3-12, who are also interested in beer and also interested in eating out and located within a 5km radius. Or, people who are currently in university, have an interest in beer and have clicked 'attending' to an event recently. See how much detail we can go into? This is far better than targeting someone who is simply interested in beer, who might have only clicked attending to an event that had the naming right sponsor as a beer company 7 years ago.
If you can understand the intent and needs of any given audience segment, you can layer Facebook Ads targeting options to tap into it and get in front of them. Whilst also being creative in what ads you're serving out.
Overall? It's one thing to do the research and find the interests you should be targeting. It's another to put it all strategically together. You need to creatively put the options together to reach the exact right people and the combination of doing so is a recipe to #MakeThemTalk
Teri 😘