With the fifth and final instalment in our Core Audience mini-series, we cover the importance of Connection and Exclusion Targeting Parameters.
If you’re yet to, please read our previous articles in this series on;
If you have already, then let’s get stuck into this final post.
What Is Connection Targeting?
Within your Core Audience, you’re able to specify whether you’d like to target people based on an existing relationship that they may already have with your page, app or event.
Whether you’re utilising the Page, App or Event Functionality, you have three options that you can choose to add to your Core Audience:
- People who like your page, use your app or are going to your event
- Friends of people who like your page, have used your app or are attending your event
- Exclude people who like your page, have used your app or are attending your event.
These options allow you to add more specific and tailored messaging to your campaigns based on the relationship that the target audience has with your Page, App or Event.
This parameter allows you to put up-sell, retention or referral-based marketing messages in front of those with an existing relationship with your business.
For those who are friends of those who like your page, use your app or are attending your event, you can leverage the existing relationship that their friend has with your business as a piece of “social proof” to establish a relationship with them.
This option is perfect for top of the funnel campaigns where you’re looking to elicit a low commitment action like an email sign up, content download or low-value sale.
Finally being able to exclude those who like your page, use your app or are attending your event allows you to ensure that your campaigns are only reaching new audiences; those who are yet to establish a social relationship with your brand or business.
Utilise this crucial targeting parameter for introductory offers or awareness-based campaigns designed to introduce your brand or business to a new audience.
What Is Exclusion Targeting?
When it comes to finding your ideal target audience on Facebook or Instagram, it is just as important to identify who your DO NOT want as part of your Core Audience as it is to specify who you DO.
Enter Exclusion Targeting.
Exclusion targeting allows you to specify the demographic, interest or behavioural parameters that you want to ensure ARE NOT part of your Core Audience. Say you’re offering a training course designed to help Small Business Owners get up to speed with the latest digital technologies.
Your ideal target audience may be found within the Small Business Owner Behavioural Targeting parameter however you’ll want to EXCLUDE any Early Technology Adopters from your Core Audience.
Similarly, by utilising Narrow Targeting (an alternative to exclusion targeting), you’re able to use multiple targeting parameters that your Core Audience MUST HAVE, rather than either-or.
Rather than targeting people who are interested in either clothing or online shopping, you can target audience members who are interested in BOTH to develop a Core Audience which is likely to complete a clothing purchase online.
In Summary
We’ve covered quite a bit of detail over the past 5 posts, so let’s bring it all together.
The key things to keep in mind when it comes to using Core Audience Targeting are:
- Core Audiences allow us to access data that has been explicitly provided to Facebook, i.e. data Facebook acquiries via our use of the platform and data from Facebook’s third-party data providers.
- When it comes to developing your Core Audiences, it’s not so much about where your Target Audience COULD be but finding the interests and identifiers that ONLY they would be part of.
- In many ways, it’s just as important to identify who you DO NOT want as part of your Core Audience as it is to specify who you DO.
- Make sure that you’re A/B testing audiences and adding additional targeting parameters to ensure accuracy across multiple Core Audiences.