How to Target an Audience on Facebook Ads

Running a brilliant Facebook ad that gets zero results feels like shouting into the wind. It's all down to one thing: reaching the right people. This guide will walk you through exactly how to master Facebook Ads audience targeting, from finding brand-new customers to bringing back indecisive shoppers. We'll cover the tools Meta gives you and show you how to build a real-world strategy that works.

Understanding the Three Core Ad Audience Types

Meta breaks its targeting options into three main categories. Understanding what each one does is the first step toward building a successful ad campaign. Think of them as tools in your toolbox: one for discovery, one for retargeting, and one for expansion.

1. Saved Audiences (Meta calls them "Core Audiences")

This is where most advertisers start. A Saved Audience is one you build from scratch using Meta's vast repository of user data. You define your ideal customer profile using a combination of demographics, interests, and behaviors.

• Demographics: This is the basic stuff. You can target based on location (country, state, city, ZIP code, or even a radius around a specific address), age, gender, and language. It's your first filter to make sure you're not showing ads for a local Chicago bakery to people in London.
• Detailed Targeting (Interests and Behaviors): This is where the magic happens. You can refine your audience based on what people do and what they're into.
  • Interests are based on the pages people like, the content they interact with, and the information they've added to their profiles. Selling vintage clothing? You can target people interested in "Thrifting," "Sustainable fashion," and "Vogue."
  • Behaviors are based on actual user activity, like purchase behavior, device usage, and life events gathered from both Facebook and third-party data partners. This includes things like targeting "Small Business Owners," "Frequent Travelers," or even people celebrating an "Anniversary within 61-90 days."
• Connections: You can choose to include or exclude people who have a specific connection to your Facebook Page, App, or event. A common use case is targeting friends of people who already like your page, leveraging social proof.

Example in action: A company selling high-end, eco-friendly yoga mats could create a Saved Audience targeting women ages 25-45 in major U.S. cities who are interested in "Yoga," "Lululemon," and "Sustainable living."

2. Custom Audiences

If Saved Audiences are for finding new people, Custom Audiences are for reconnecting with people who already know you. These audiences are highly effective because they're made up of a "warm" group that has already interacted with your brand in some way. You're not introducing yourself for the first time, you're continuing a conversation.

You can create Custom Audiences from several sources:

• Website Visitors: Using the Meta Pixel (a small piece of code on your website), you can create an audience of everyone who has visited your site in a specific timeframe (up to 180 days). You can get even more specific, like targeting people who visited a certain product page or spent a certain amount of time on your site.
• Customer List: You can upload a list of customer data (like email addresses or phone numbers) in a CSV file. Facebook will hash the data for privacy and match it to its user profiles, allowing you to target your existing customers or email subscribers directly.
• Engagement: This is an incredibly powerful option. You can create audiences based on people who have engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram. This includes people who have watched your videos, liked a post, sent you a message, visited your profile, or saved a post.

Example in action: That same yoga mat company could create a Custom Audience of people who have watched at least 50% of their Instagram Reel demonstrating the mat's grip, then show them an ad with customer testimonials.

3. Lookalike Audiences

Once you know what your best customers look like, Lookalike Audiences help you find more of them. This is Meta's scaling tool. You give Facebook a source audience (usually a high-quality Custom Audience), and its algorithm goes to work finding new people who share similar characteristics and behaviors with that group.

Here's how it works:

• Choose a Source Audience: A strong source audience is the most important part. Good sources include a Custom Audience of your past purchasers, your most engaged followers, or website visitors who have completed a key action. Your source audience needs at least 100 people from a single country for Meta to build from.
• Select Your Audience Size: You'll choose a percentage from 1% to 10% of the total population in your chosen country. A 1% Lookalike will be the smallest and most closely matched to your source. A 10% Lookalike will be much broader, giving you greater reach but with less similarity to the source. A good starting point is often to test a 1% audience against larger percentages to see what works best.

Example in action: The yoga company uploads a list of its top 500 customers (those with the highest lifetime value). They then create a 1% Lookalike Audience based on that list to find new, high-intent prospects who strongly resemble their best buyers.

Building Your Targeting Strategy: A Funnel-Based Approach

Knowing the audience types is one thing, but stringing them together into a coherent strategy is what drives results. Think of your audiences in terms of a sales funnel: cold, warm, and hot.

Top of Funnel (TOFU): Reaching Cold Audiences

This stage is all about awareness and getting your brand in front of new people who have likely never heard of you before. Your goal is to introduce your brand and the problem it solves, not to go for the hard sell immediately.

• Who to Target: Use Saved Audiences based on well-researched interests and behaviors. You can also use broader Lookalike Audiences (e.g., 3-10%) based on your customer list or website visitors.
• Content to Use: Educational blog posts, engaging videos that solve a problem, entertaining Reels, or visually appealing brand-story ads.
• Example: A meal prep delivery service targets people aged 22-40 in its delivery zones who are interested in "Healthy eating," "Meal planning," and "Fitness." Their ad is a short, energetic video showing how easy it is to have healthy meals ready to go for the week.

Middle of Funnel (MOFU): Engaging Warm Audiences

These people have seen your brand but aren't yet customers. They've shown some interest - maybe they visited your website, watched a video, or liked a post. Your job here is to build trust and show them why you're the right choice.

• Who to Target: Use Custom Audiences. Target website visitors from the last 30-60 days, people who have engaged with your Instagram or Facebook page, or users who've watched a significant percentage of your video ads (e.g., 75% or 95% video viewers).
• Content to Use: Customer testimonials, case studies, behind-the-scenes content, product demos, or ads that overcome common objections.
• Example: The meal prep service retargets everyone who watched 50% or more of their first video ad. This new ad features a happy customer talking about how much time they save each week and how the food helped them reach their health goals.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Converting Hot Audiences

This is where you close the sale. These are your hottest prospects, people who have shown clear buying intent but haven't pulled the trigger yet. They may have viewed a product multiple times or even added it to their cart.

• Who to Target: Highly specific Custom Audiences. Target people who have added an item to a cart in the last 7-14 days. Create an audience of visitors who viewed specific product pages but didn't purchase.
• Content to Use: Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) that show the exact items a person viewed, ads featuring a special offer or discount code, or messaging that highlights your fast shipping or return policy to remove a final barrier.
• Example: The meal prep service shows an ad to anyone who added a specific meal plan to their cart but didn't finish checkout. The ad features an image of that exact meal plan and a headline offering "15% Off Your First Week's Order."

Actionable Tips for Better Targeting

Ready to put this knowledge into practice? Here are a few final tips to refine your approach and get more from your budget.

• Don't Overlap and Over-Narrow: It can be tempting to layer dozens upon dozens of interests, thinking you're creating a "perfect" audience. Often, this just makes your audience too small and drives up costs. Start with 3-5 strong, related interests and let Meta's algorithm do some of the work. If your audience size is too small, Meta will tell you.
• Master the Art of Exclusions: Using exclusions is just as powerful as using inclusions. When running a prospecting campaign to find new customers, be sure to exclude Custom Audiences of your recent purchasers and website visitors. This stops you from spending money on people who already know you and prevents you from annoying your loyal customers with introductory ads.
• Use Detailed Targeting Expansion Wisely: You'll see a checkbox for "Advantage detailed targeting" (formerly "Detailed Targeting Expansion"). For cold, top-of-funnel campaigns, leaving this on is usually a good idea. It allows Meta to deliver your ad to people outside your defined interests if it thinks they are likely to convert at a lower cost, helping you find pockets of customers you might not have considered.
• Iterate and Test: No audience is perfect forever. Your best targeting strategy is one that evolves. Every month or so, test a new interest or a different type of Lookalike Audience against your proven winners. Let the data tell you what your audience responds to, and be ready to adapt.

Final Thoughts

Mastering Facebook ad targeting isn't about finding a single secret audience, it's about building a system. By using a combination of Saved, Custom, and Lookalike Audiences, you can guide potential customers from their first interaction with your brand all the way through to purchase.

Once your ads bring in this amazing, highly-targeted audience, keeping them engaged organically is the key to building a real brand. After all, a successful ad campaign results in more comments, DMs, and questions about your products. We built Postbase to help with exactly that - our unified inbox brings all your social conversations into one place, so you can easily manage the communities your ads create. At the same time, our visual calendar makes it simple to plan and schedule the supporting organic content that keeps your new followers warm and converts them into loyal customers.