I recently went into The Visionaries Collective to see what our members have been asking in the “give + get biz advice” space, and I saw someone had a question about running ads, and she noted that she felt like her ads were being targeted to the wrong type of person. Well I’ve got LOTS of thoughts on this (spoiler: this is SO in depth), so I thought we could have a lil chat about how to make ads actually do what you want them to, yeah?
Specifically… Meta ads (Facebook + Insta), as that’s what I know best.
(For reference, I’ve been running FB + IG ads since 2016 for myself, and my -now closed- agency also offered DFY Meta ads management – I was getting 3-20x ROAS for my ads clients across the board and we managed 6-figure campaigns… so I know a thing or two about how to run ads!)
Let’s start by addressing the main grievance:
What if your ads are getting delivered to the “wrong” type of person?
Well there’s two big things here-
Big thing #1: How much data does Meta already have about you and your ideal target?
This can come from either a past history of *successfully* (that’s the operative word) running ads to the same target audience in the past…
OR it can come from having a highly engaged organic audience on Facebook and/or Insta – and those people are the same you’d be trying to target.
If your answer to that Q is “not much,” the algorithm has to cast kind of a wide net.
If the algo is casting a wide net, it’s possible that soon after your ad turned on, the wrong type of person started engaging with it, and that signalled to the algorithm that’s the person it should be delivering it to.
If this is the case, there’s very little you can do to fix it other than turn the ad off and start again with better context clues around to whom it should be shown. (More on that “context clues” part in a minute.)
The exception to this would be to check how you’ve setup your Advantage+ targeting, assuming you’re using that.
(Side note: I overall really dislike Meta’s Advantage+ features – you will NEVER catch me using this for ad placement – but it’s audience targeting is FREAKING INCREDIBLE.
Yes, I’m screaming… there is absolutely NO match anywhere else that you can run ads that has targeting as advanced and as intuitive and as, frankly IMO, GREAT as Meta, hands down. Advantage+ for audience all day!… *IF* you understand how to give it those “context clues” I’ve promised to talk about!)
How Advantage+ targeting may affect your ad performance
Advantage+ targeting, for reference, is basically giving the algorithm free reign to pick who your ads are right for…
But you DO have the ability to specify age, gender, and location.
For each of these things, if you specify them, it’s going to usually default to the setting of “use as suggestion.”
Unless you’re okay with Meta going outside of what you’ve specified, you need to make sure “use as suggestion” is turned off… so it know’s it’s NOT a suggestion, but rather the 100% rule 🙂
For example, I work with a lot of business owners who specifically target women, and they’ll come to me saying “it’s all sleazy dudes commenting and sliding into my DMs, these ads aren’t working!!”…
And 99% of the time, it’s happening because “use as suggestion” is not turned off. And Meta sees that demographic (the sleazy dude demo 😆) as being highly engaged, so they start showing it to the same type of person.
Does turning Advantage+ off and doing manual targeting solve the problem?
Ehhhhhhhh… probably not.
But maybe.
You could try it – if you were to try this, I’d create “layered” audiences to target, by which I mean:
→ You create one “layer,” then select “and also,” then create another layer and again select “and also” and so on – I’d have at least 3 layers, if not 4.
Let’s say you’re a fitness coach, and you primarily coach using a combo of cardio and strength training…
Ad audience targeting layer #1
→ The first layer could be ACTIVITY interest-based, so you’d select targeting people with interests that match the type of fitness activities that make sense for you, in this case, things like: running, marathons, strength training, etc.
You could also add something like “yoga”… if you think that makes sense for you, but even part of you does NOT think it makes sense, I’d skip it – running, marathons, and strength training are so broad, it’d be fine.
So now you have a layer of targeting that looks for people who have signalled interest in running OR marathons OR strength training, and so on.
Then you add the next layer by creating a new group of targeting, selecting “and also” and so on.
Ad audience targeting layer #2
→ The second layer could be LOCATION interest-based, so you’d select targeting things like: Planet Fitness, SoulCycle, Anytime Fitness, LA Fitness, etc.
So now you’re signalling to Meta that your people must like either running or marathons or strength training…
AND they ALSO must like Planet Fitness or SoulCycle or Anytime Fitness or LA Fitness.
Picking up what I’m putting down on this layering concept? They must like one of the things in the first layer but ALSO at least one of the things in the second, and so on.
Ad audience targeting layer #3
→ Then the third layer could be BRAND interest-based, which could be a personal brand or a product brand, so things like: Kayla Itsines, Yoga with Adrienne, lululemon, Alo, Peloton, Sweat (the app), etc.
You could also separate people from products if you wanted an additional layer.
Ad audience targeting layer #4
→ Then the last layer is the stealth layer where you go deeper into uniqueness of your demographic or psychographic.
I used this a lot when the person I was working with needed to target a much more affluent audience. Meta has the option to target people in the top X% average income level within their locations, but there’s another more subtle way of doing this too…
…which is to add a layer for bougie interests, so things like luxury cars (Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes Benz, etc), places like Whole Foods or Nordstrom, even luxury brands (Hermes, Louboutin, etc).
So you wind up with layering where they must like at least one of the activity-based interests, AND ALSO they must like at least one of the location-based interests, AND ALSO they must like at least one of the brand-based interests, and then ALSO they must like at least one of the bougie interests (🤣).
Sounds great, yeah? This *used* to be the ultimate audience hack, but.. not so much anymore.
The reality is the Advantage+ audience is so much better (if and only if those “context clues” are there… I promise we’ll get to this) that doing the layered audience trick kind of… tethers it.
So if you have a tiny audience and/or very little engagement organically AND you’ve never run ads AND you’re not confident you can provide those context clues (once you know what this means hehe)…
Doing the layering tactic is probably worth testing…
But it still may not solve the problem. As with basically anything with running ads… it’s all a test.
Big thing #2: Do your copy and creative give Meta the right info to find the right person?
Okay okay okay we’re finally getting to the ‘context clues’ part of the chat!
Meta literally cannot function properly if you’re not giving it the right signals.
Your copy AND your creative should VERY CLEARLY spell out who this ad is right for.
Here’s a screenshot from my notes app for an ad I ran for my networking challenge earlier this year:
I literally open it with “calling all [identity]”…
There are SO many keywords: “networking” is used multiple times, which is the big, necessary interest; also “relationships,” “visibility,” “collaboration,” “connection.”…
Honestly, this is the bread and butter.
If you can write copy like this that is also catchy to and aligned with your target market, and you have create that also uses keywords… Advantage+ audience is going to understand the assignment. It may take it a minute, and depending on how much you’re spending per day on that ad, it may take less or more time… but it WILL find the right people.
THAT’S what I mean by context clues.
It’s honestly not all that different from understanding how to write for SEO and knowing how to properly “keyword” your writing and your images.
If your ads are NOT doing this, YOUR ADS WILL NOT PERFORM. Yes, I’m yelling again because it’s just flat out the absolute truth. THIS is fundamental for Meta to do its job well.
It’s also important to note that if you sell multiple offers that could potentially be for different types of people, this is almost impossible these days with Meta… but there is a workaround.
For example, my ad account is *dialled in* to target people who are interested in networking. I could write copy and create creative that isn’t keyworded to the moon and it would still understand who to show it to because it has so much data. But if I wanted to, say, sell an ads course (😆 I don’t have one of these BTW), my ad account would be useless at this point.
This was not always the case, but with the “Andromeda” update, it’s made it harder and harder for the ads algorithm to do this well.
The fix is kinda simple though… I’d create a completely separate ad account.
So I’d have one ad account (and a unique pixel) for networking, and another for people interested in running ads, and so on. It’s annoying to have to train another account on your target market, but in the long run, it’s an excellent fix and is 100% what I’d recommend FWIW.
All of that said… none of this is the be-all-end-all.
Other factors for your Meta ads to perform well
Getting your ads to be shown to the right person IS fundamental, and without this… well, do not pass go, do not collect $200… ya know?
This is already really long, so I can’t get into everything I’d want to say, but there are some other things I’d feel remiss to NOT say:
1️⃣ If the content isn’t good, it’s not going to work
That sounds harsh, but… there’s not really another way to say it.
If the content doesn’t perform well (or as intended) organically, why would it work just because you’re paying to have it shown to more people?
(Sometimes you can’t get enough visibility to know whether it works or not organically, but if you have enough data that show it’s not an engaging piece of content, don’t spend money to run paid traffic to it regardless of how well you might like it.)
2️⃣ If you target one objective but want another, it’s not going to work
It’s so much less expensive to run ads to video views or for engagement or for clicks than it is to run ads to generate leads or get purchases.
But if what you actually want are leads and you run ads to get website views… you’re going to get lots of views, very few leads.
Straight up.
Meta is going to do it’s job. You asked it to get you views, it’s going to get you views.
The thing is: it tracks people who demonstrate the behavior of giving their email address in exchange for freebies differently than it tracks people who demonstrate the behavior of clicking on links and window shopping the page without doing anything else at all.
And it’s going to find you the latter, not the former.
If you want leads, pay extra to get the algorithm to get the people who demonstrate the desired behavior.
Okay, I’m going to leave this here because WOW that was so much info.
I could keep going 🙃
Speaking of that imaginary “ads course” I mentioned above, SO many people have asked me to create one.
The problem is that I have SO much info kicking around in my head about this that I get really overwhelmed on where to start to actually get someone the marketed outcome they’d be paying for, and so I’ve just never done it.
Maybe I will one day, because I don’t disagree that I should 😅
In the meantime, I highly highly recommend Laurel Portié’s $7/mo ad membership.
That isn’t an affiliate link, I have no skin in the game – but I’ve personally worked with Laurel, and what she teaches is so, SO similar (not exactly, but pretty darn close) to what I’d teach. I recommend her to everyone!
Hope this was helpful, I love talking about this stuff!
