Broad Targeting Facebook Ads: When And How To Use It?

Broad targeting Facebook approach may sound random, but it’s becoming a popular choice for advertisers to create a target audience on Facebook these days. So, what is Facebook broad targeting, when can you benefit from it and how to use it? Let’s explore the potential of broad targeting and how to implement this strategy for your ad campaigns. 

What Is Broad Targeting Facebook Ads?

Broad targeting, also known as open targeting, means you don’t use any specific targeting options like interests, behaviors, demographics setting up your ad. Instead, you just target everyone within a chosen location, choose age range and gender (if necessary), and let Facebook’s algorithms determine who to show your ad to.

For example, instead of targeting Facebook users who are specifically interested in weight training and aged from 18 to 50 years old for your newly opened gym, a broad targeting Facebook ad simply included all people who live within 50 miles of your gym.

Advantages of broad targeting Facebook ads

Broad targeting Facebook ads can bring several advantages for your campaign when compared to specific targeting. These are: 

• Less data required: When you choose Facebook broad target, you simply don’t need to make a potential customer profile or have a customer list. Your work will be easier as Facebook will do most of the things for you.
• Reach a larger audience: Facebook ads broad targeting is like fishing with a big net, so you can reach more people for advertising.
• Discover unexpected customers: Broad targeting gives you a chance to discover unexpected new customers. They have explicitly shown any interest in the kind of product/service you offer, but might find your offering perfect.

Disadvantages of broad targeting Facebook ads

However, the broad audience targeting Facebook approach also has certain disadvantages:

• May lower conversion rate: When opting for broad targeting Facebook, you should be aware that your ad may be shown to people who aren’t interested in your product at all, which will reduce your conversion rates.
• Higher ad spend: Obviously, targeting a larger audience size requires a larger budget.
• Fine-tuning challenge: Using broad targeting may make it tricker for you to measure success and optimize ad campaigns.

Can You Rely On Facebook Broad Targeting?

An expert opinion

According to Ben Heath, a digital advertising expert, Founder & CEO of Heath Media, broad targeting Facebook has become more popular due to Meta’s advanced algorithms. Facebook now is better at determining who to show ads to than it was several years ago.

In fact, broad targeting Facebook is commonly the most successful cold audience targeting option.

Read more: All Facebook Remarketing Audience Knowledge That You Cannot Miss

Scenarios where broad targeting Facebook ads excel

Here are some scenarios when businesses can benefit from broad targeting Facebook ads.

• When your campaigns aim at nurturing brand awareness, you may target ads to all people above 18 years old in the US.
• When your product or service has a broad appeal and most Facebook users are likely to find it resonate.
• When you are running a local business or operating in countries with smaller populations, where a specific targeting approach could limit your audience too much.

How To Set Up Broad Targeting Facebook Ads?

To set up a broad audience targeting Facebook ads, you can follow these basic guidelines.

Create a new campaign and select your objective

Go to Ads Manager, click ‘+ Create’. Select your ad objective based on your goals. For example, I’ll choose Awareness.

Use location, age, gender parameters only

When creating broad targeting Facebook ads, leave all Facebook ad targeting options as broad as possible. 

In Audience controls, you may choose the location, age and gender, but don’t add detailed targeting options like interests, behaviors, demographics, so that your ads can reach the widest audience.

Protip: Ensure to aim for at least 2 million audience. This will allow Facebook’s targeting system to perform better.

Choose Advantage+ placements

Under the Placement section, you can choose the recommended option, which is Advantage+ placements, to show ads to more people in where they are more likely to engage with.  

Set your budget

When you change your budget, your estimated reach will also change. Thus, you should calculate your ad budget properly to make sure your ad can reach enough people as well as avoid overspending.

Read more: Ad Budget Facebook: How To Calculate Effective Ad Budgets

Craft your ad creative

With broad audience targeting, you should produce an outstanding ad to attract people to your product or service. You can use compelling images, provide your unique selling point that your competitors can’t offer, use a powerful headline, utilize the call to action.

Conclusion

In short, broad targeting Facebook ads can help businesses reach more audience, discover new customers and simplify the process of launching Facebook ads. It is becoming more popular than ever with the development of Facebook’s algorithms. Implementing our suggested guidelines can help you leverage all potential of Facebook broad targeting for your ad campaign.

If you encounter any challenges in Facebook advertising, you can contact SpeedX Agency Expert Team. We are willing to help you overcome your problems.