Ecom Business Hacks w/ Rod

Hey everyone, welcome to the
Facebook Ad Hacks podcast.

I'm your host, Rod Bland,
and in this podcast, I talk

about how to get better
results from your Facebook and

Instagram digital marketing,
and the many lessons that

I've learned from being in
the business of e-commerce

for the last 20 years.

Enjoy today's episode.

What is going on with
Facebook's detailed

targeting options.

Now I spoke about this back in
November in another video, and

finally Facebook have released
updates to their detailed

targeting options, and they've
removed a lot of them that

you may have relied on before.

So does this mean the sky is
going to fall on your head

and that you're going to have
to go running off to another

platform to do advertising?

Maybe.

Now because I recorded this
as a video, it might be better

for you to watch the actual
video and I'll put a link

to that in the show notes.

Let's dive into it.

Hey I'm Rod.

I'm the founder of
Rod Bland agency.

We help people create,
optimize and set up

Facebook and Instagram
advertising campaigns.

We help customers a lot with
optimizing their websites

for conversions as well.

If this is your first
time to my channel.

Welcome.

Thank you very much
for your support.

So let's talk about
the detailed targeting

options that Facebook
has recently changed.

For that, I'm going to
first jump on the computer

and I'm going to review
the article that they wrote

about this back in November.

So here's the announcement
that Facebook made from Mr.

Graham Mudd, the VP of
product marketing and ads

about what was changing.

So everyone knew this was
coming, and it was basically

that as of January 19, some
detailed targeting options

that reference causes or
religions, or, relate to

health or ethnicity, political
affiliation, they're all

things that you might've been
able to use to target your

favoured audience in the past,
but now they're removing it.

But the really
important question is.

What can you do about
it now that those

changes have been made?

So if this is impacting
you, if you used to rely on

detailed targeting options
in the past, it's time

to learn some new tricks.

Not tricks, just some
new ways of doing things.

Anytime a change is made,
it always represents

an opportunity.

If you are doing ads for
another client, or even for

yourself, hopefully this
information is useful to you.

So I've got some notes here.

The first thing is, and this
has always been the best

solution in my view, is to
use a lookalike audience.

So I didn't really go into
detail about how we configure

a lookalike audience in the
past, but I will do this time.

The best lookalike audience
is one that is based on

your previous customers.

Something that we always do
is try our damnedest to make

a custom audience consisting
of every previous customer

that the client has had.

Because if you rely on
just the Facebook pixel to

give you that information,
firstly, it may not have as

many people in the audience
because of iOS 14 and it

only goes back 180 days.

But for example, if say your
client uses MailChimp or

Klaviyo - Klaviyo is a good
example - you can create

a segment in Klaviyo that
consists of every single

person who ever purchased.

That may go back five or even
ten years with some businesses

and you can synchronize
that to a custom audience.

Now you've got a large
audience of people that

Facebook can use as the source
for a lookalike audience.

Now, some rumors abound
that Facebook has got as

much as 52,000 separate data
points on each individual

person on their platform.

Sounds pretty scary, but
obviously the more people

that you put into a custom
audience, the more data

points Facebook has, the
smarter it's going to be about

creating a lookalike audience
that is actually effective.

So that's one of our
main goto's when it comes

to avoiding the whole,
targeting options issue.

I'm going to show
you how you do this.

Firstly, you need to create
a custom audience and let's

say, you're going to do
it from a customer list.

You go next.

And then what you do is
you can import it directly

from MailChimp, it does a
one-off download, or you

can import your audience
from other sources.

So if you want to do that,
you just go next and I've

got a whole video on this
already, which I'll put a

link to in the description.

You can choose whether your
audience has got a customer

value based on what their
sales have been, and then you

upload the file and then you
give your audience a name.

I'll just pause the video
while I throw up a dummy file.

You can also just paste in
your comma separated values,

but I always upload a file.

I would just map the email.

Don't bother mapping
anything else.

Just turn off the
other mappings.

I find they don't
actually add anything.

Then you go import create,
upload anyway, and then

Facebook will then import
those email addresses

into the platform.

Now what you can do, you
can create a lookalike

audience based on that.

So you see, in this
example, there's a lot

of records in there.

You can choose which country,
so let's do Australia and

you can choose a size.

I'd say if your budget's
under a hundred dollars

a day, go with 3%.

If it's over that you
can go bigger, go 5%.

Then go create audience.

That's how easy it is.

So you've got your custom
audience, and you've got

a lookalike audience.

Now, if you're going to use
a tool like say make.com or

Zapier, then you'll need to
go into that platform first.

I really like Make because,
they have a free plan that

allows you to do stuff
with custom audiences.

If you're in the business of
generating leads, then you

can have it so that each time
a new contact gets added to

your CRM, such as Close that
it then puts that person into

the Facebook custom audience.

So it always keeps
it up to date.

So that's lookalike audiences.

Now, other things that
Facebook has got here

is broad audiences.

So you can still target people
based on gender age, location.

If you've not tried using
a broad audience targeting

option before then I really
encourage you to do it.

There's another video
I've made about this

previously, which is linked
in the description below.

Especially if you've got a
Facebook account, which has

a lot of data on the pixel.

If you've got more than a
thousand purchases on your

pixel and you consistently
spend money on Facebook ads,

like it's not patchy and all
over the place, then you may

find that if you use a broad
audience, that you actually

get better performance than
any other audience that

you could possibly use.

I found this with a
few clients actually.

We used to use lookalike
audiences, and then the

broad audience always
outperformed those other ones.

So I'm going to show you in
my demonstration account.

Basically it doesn't have
any additional targeting

options turned on.

We're going to choose
a conversions campaign.

Down in the targeting,
that'll always default

to your local country.

So me being in
Australia, default

Australia, and that's it.

You don't add any other
detailed targeting.

You don't select any
other custom audiences.

And as you can see, the
audience size is 18 1/2

million for Australia.

Now, some people say you
should only do this a, if

you've got a lot of data
on your pixel, and I agree

with that, and b if the
product that you're selling

has wide broad appeal.

I don't necessarily agree
with that because I think it's

more to do with the amount
of data that Facebook has.

So if you've got an,
a custom audience that

consists of 10,000 people
who have made a purchase

of one of your products for
your business, then it's

going to be really good at
finding other people with the

similar sort of data points.

Even if it's got to
work with 18 million

or 50 million people.

I think that you can still
use a broad audience,

even if you've got quite
a niche product, or you

should definitely test it.

So what else can you
do to mitigate the

targeting options removal?

So if we create a new custom
audience here, I've already

looked at the customer list.

Now you can also
use a website.

It's not as good as having
a list of people who

actually bought from you.

Cause there'll be a
lot of tire kickers.

So what you do, if you wanted
to create a custom audience

that consisted of all your
website visitors, you would

simply choose your source
is your pixel, and the

events is your all website
visitors and give it a name.

Then you go create audience.

Now 180 days is as far back
as you can go, and then

you can create a lookalike
audience that's based on that.

Now, is that a
terrific audience?

I don't think it is, however,
it may be good enough.

People who have actually
visited your website; chances

are quite a lot of them are
actually the sort of people

that you're looking for, who
may want to buy your products.

Now there are other options
for your source audiences for

a lookalike audience as well.

And some of those are based
on app activity and based on

video, on lead forms and for
Instagram and Facebook page.

So let's say you run a lot
of video ads and you're

interested in the people who
actually engaged or played

a certain amount of those
videos through cause chances

are, they might be, people
that you'd want to make a

lookalike audience based on.

So if you select at
least three seconds, you

can create a couple of
different layers here.

The good thing here is
you can look back over 365

days, and then we'll just
call this video viewers.

Then you've got to choose the
videos that you want to use.

So just for the sake of this
exercise, I will select all

of them, and obviously you
could be more selective about

which ones you want to look
at, and you can see how many

people have viewed them and
then you go create audience.

So that'll be an audience
based on your video

viewers and how long
they viewed videos for.

And that might be a
relevant source audience.

It will certainly be a good
warm retargeting audience,

but it might also be a
good source for making

a lookalike audience.

I'll show you one more source.

So you can do a source that's
based on your Instagram

account or your Facebook page.

So if you choose Facebook
page, there's a few options.

So by default it will
select everyone who's

engaged with your page.

So that includes people who
visited your page or taken

an action on a post or an
ad such as a share, or made

some sort of reaction or a
comment or clicked the link,

they've done a carousel swipe.

It's all those things.

So this is an audience that
we always set up as a warm

audience in our re-targeting
ad sets and it may be

a relevant source for a
lookalike audience as well.

Once again, I don't think
this is anywhere near as

good as a decent sized
lookalike audience that's

based on your past purchases.

But if you don't have a lot
of history or you've got a

new business, well this could
be a good option for you.

So I'll just go back to
the Facebook article.

The other thing to remember
is when you're running reach

campaigns for bricks and
mortar businesses, one of

the best options is to use
location based targeting.

So that's the ability
to reach people within a

certain vicinity of a store.

Now you can do that based
on a region that's already

defined in Facebook or
you can do it based on

just a spot on the map.

So I'll show you
how that works.

If I go back into
the ads manager here.

If you scroll down to the
detailed targeting section,

you've got your locations
here and you can edit those.

So it'll always default
to the country that you're

in, but if I wanted to do
something that's local to,

let's say Bronte in Sydney.

So when you type in the
suburb, it'll bring up a

couple of different options.

So you've got the suburb.

There may also be what's
called a neighborhood, or

they may be defined as a city.

So you can see you've got
Bronte is now the location and

I've got some options up here
as far as the location goes.

So by default it's people
living in or recently in

this location, and you may
want to say people living

in this location, Facebook
uses a few different ways to

determine where someone lives,
based on their behaviour,

what their IP address is.

It's one of those 52,000 data
points that Facebook has got.

If you've chosen a suburb,
you can't then define

further what distance from
there, because the suburb

is already a defined area,
so let's have another look.

There's a Bronte in Texas
in the United States.

So now that I choose
that I've now got some

options with regards to
the radius of the city.

And then you can say what the
estimated audience size is.

Twenty-five miles
within Bronte Texas,

not too many people.

You might want to make
that a lot bigger.

So let's just max
it out to 50 miles.

You can see now
we're up to 220,000.

So that's how you define
how close you want to

be to your location.

We'll do one more with
the neighborhood option.

So if you ever get
something that shows up

as a neighbourhood, then
you also don't get the

option to choose how far
from that neighborhood.

I'm not really sure how
it defines a neighborhood,

but it seems to be
similar to a suburb

So just to recap, we've
covered what we can do to

mitigate the effects of
the removal of some of the

detailed targeting options
in the Facebook ads manager.

You've still got loads of
things that you can do,

and your number one choices
are a lookalike audience

based on previous customers.

Or it can be based on one
of the other in-app sources

that I've just talked about.

It can be simply broad
targeting, location-based

targeting, and you may
just need to get a bit

more creative about your
targeting interests when

you are setting up your ads.

Maybe you can have a look
at, okay, what are some of

the media sources that people
might consume, what magazines

do they read or what social
influencers do they follow?

So you'll still find
that there are detailed

targeting options for
all of those things and

Facebook is constantly
adding them in all the time.

Thank you so much
for listening.

If you found this episode
useful, here's two ways

I can help you grow
your business for free.

Firstly subscribe to my
YouTube channel at rodsyt.com,

and secondly, you can join my
free group at rodsgroup.com,

and finally leave me a five
star review so that I can

reach more people and I
can get the attention of

some amazing guests that
I can bring on the show.

I'll catch you in
the next episode.