If you’re a business owner that has run Facebook and Instagram ads before, you know how overwhelming jumping into Ads Manager can be! Trust me, I completely understand how daunting it can be! There are thousands of different targeting options, so how do you know where to begin? How do you ensure you’re not wasting money and making a mistake when creating your audiences? Let’s dive into the top 3 mistakes business owners make when creating Facebook Ad Audiences, to ensure you’re on the right track.

1. Your Facebook Ad Audience is Too Broad

When you think about your ideal audience, there are many categories that they could fall into based on their interests. It might seem like the best option is to select all of these categories at once, but oftentimes that makes your audience way too large! 

Here’s how to prevent creating an audience that is too broad: 

• Narrow that long list of categories down to the most specific interests that your ideal audience would have!

Let me use my business as an example. With Ads Uncorked, let’s say I create a campaign for female entrepreneurs and I include qualifying categories, such as small business owners, that these women use a project management software, they are interested in business networking groups, and the list could go on. I may see that my potential reach is around 10-12 million across the US but this is way too broad! I’ll need to get more specific and possibly select just one of those interests, or come up with an interest that contains a smaller group of people!

2. Your Facebook Ad Audience is Way Too Narrow

As we talked about with mistake number one, there are times to be more specific, but on the other side, when you create audiences that are extremely narrow and specific, you end up driving up your costs and missing out on people that would fit within your ideal audience! Let’s not leave them out! 

Here’s how to prevent creating an audience that is too narrow:

• If we place too many qualifiers on top of each other, it creates an audience that is too narrow and it can make the cost per lead more expensive than you would like to pay. Rather than stacking all the qualifiers on each other, choose a few to narrow your audience down without removing too many potential leads.

I’ll use the Ads Uncorked example again. I wouldn’t want to say I am looking for female entrepreneurs who use a project management software AND are interested in networking groups AND follow a specific female business influencer. That is way too specific! You’ll see the potential reach on this is going to be small, and the cost of these ads is going to spike.

TIP: If you’re unsure about your audience, look at the gauge within Facebook Ads Manager. When the arrow is in the green, you nailed your targeted audience creation! Great job! If it is not in the green, try changing a few targeting parameters until you hit that sweet spot! 

3. Targeting Too Small of an Audience for a Small City

Running an ad that targets a small city is totally fine! You just need to make sure you don’t get too specific within that city. If you want to target entrepreneurs in Madison, WI you may have an audience that Facebook’s gauge puts in the red category, meaning it’s too small of an audience, but you can widen that umbrella by including small business owners or those who belong to small business associations. 

This is still targeting people that look like your ideal audience, while letting that gauge move into the green zone!

As you can see, making an audience that’s too small or too large can easily throw off the results of your Facebook Ads. You need to ensure you’re gathering just the right sized audience to keep your cost per sale/email sign up/engagement/etc. affordable.

PS- Did you know Ads Uncorked has a shop with easy-to-follow Facebook Ad video tutorials?! Learn the basics of Facebook + Instagram Ads, how to create Facebook Ad funnels, tracking return on ad spend and so much more here!

For more tips and helpful content, make sure to follow me on Instagram and  Facebook at @adsuncorked.