Facebook remains the world\u2019s largest social media platform. That means it has the largest potential advertising audience. But there\u2019s no way you\u2019re going to reach everyone on Facebook with your ads. And realistically, you wouldn\u2019t want to. There\u2019s no point in advertising your business to people who don\u2019t care about the products and services you offer.<\/p>\n
Enter Facebook audience insights. Using these research tools, you can laser-target your audience to maximize the ROI of your Facebook ad campaigns.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bonus: Get the Facebook advertising cheat sheet for 2022.<\/span><\/strong> The free resource includes key audience insights, recommended ad types, and tips for success.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Facebook Audience Insights was an analytics tool built into Facebook. The standalone tool was discontinued in 2021.<\/p>\n Facebook audience insights<\/em> (notice the lowercase \u2018a\u2019 and \u2018i\u2019 here) is a term used to refer to analytics data about advertising audiences that can be reached on Meta platforms. Confused? Don\u2019t panic. We\u2019ll walk you through everything you need to know about where to find audience insights on Facebook to make the most of your Facebook ads budget.<\/p>\n Like we said above, the answer is technically yes. They did indeed remove the specific Facebook Audience Insights tool. But they didn\u2019t remove the data that was available through that tool. Instead, they folded that information<\/a> into Meta Business Suite Insights and Meta Ads Manager, tools that provide data for both Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n You can still use the same strategies to build ROI-maximizing audiences. You just have to adapt a little to the new tools. We\u2019ll walk you through the details below.<\/p>\n Knowing who already engages with your content is critical to building your audience even more. Audience insights help you learn about what your existing audience responds to. But even more important, they help you research your potential audience to look for new ways to connect.<\/p>\n Facebook ads<\/a> can get expensive if you don\u2019t target them appropriately. Using audience insights, Facebook ads can be laser-targeted so you pay only to reach the exact people who are most likely to become your new best customers.<\/p>\n The average social media user is on seven social networks<\/a>. That absolutely does not mean you should run your campaigns across seven platforms. You need to know where your audience is spending their time, when they\u2019re there, and what they expect out of each platform.<\/p>\n Facebook audience insights are great in isolation, but it\u2019s even more valuable to track your advertising insights across platforms so you can adjust campaigns and budgets on the fly to maximize ROI.<\/p>\n Audience insights can also help you tailor the content you post on your Facebook Page to make sure you\u2019re providing the right content, in the right voice, and at the right time<\/a> to best connect with the fans you already have.<\/p>\n Note: If you don\u2019t have your business set up on Facebook yet, you\u2019ll need to create your business page<\/a> before you dive into these steps.<\/p>\n Open Meta Business Suite<\/a> and click on the Insights<\/strong> icon in the left menu. If you have more than one ad account, choose which one you\u2019d like insights for from the drop-down menu at the top of the screen. Then, select Audience<\/strong> in the left menu to get your audience insights.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Business Suite<\/em><\/p>\n On the overview screen, you\u2019ll see information for both your Facebook and Instagram audiences. We\u2019re going to focus on Facebook in this post.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll notice two options at the top of the screen that allow you to choose between your current audience and your potential audience.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what each one can tell you:<\/p>\n Since this guide is all about using Facebook audience insights to better target your ads, we\u2019ll focus on the second option\u2014your potential audience. Here\u2019s how you can use the information here to focus your Facebook advertising strategy.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s time to start using the information available here to build a target market for your ads.<\/p>\n Click the Filter <\/strong>button on the top right to select audience characteristics to target.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Business Suite<\/em><\/p>\n Every time you make a selection to refine your audience, the graphs and percentages showing data for your potential audience update automatically, so you can always see how your choices impact the audience available.<\/p>\n You can choose any country, region, or city.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re managing a local business with a bricks-and-mortar location, you\u2019ll likely want to choose only your city, or your local area. If you\u2019re selling online services, you may want to include countries worldwide. If you sell a physical product, you should stick to the countries for which shipping is available and not cost-prohibitive.<\/p>\n For audience insights, Facebook only tracks users aged 18+, so you won\u2019t be able to target anyone younger than that. Otherwise, you can use these options to narrow your targeting based on your existing customer research and audience personas<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t know which ages or genders you want to target, go ahead and leave these as the defaults for now. You\u2019ll get some valuable information about the gender and age makeup of your audience when you start refining your audience by interest.<\/p>\n This is where it gets interesting. Start typing in the Interests box and suggestions appear. You should get as detailed as you can here based on information you know about your existing customers.<\/p>\n You can learn a lot just by watching what happens with the graphs as you refine your choices.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Business Suite<\/em><\/p>\n If you\u2019re marketing a local coffee house, rather than a chain, you\u2019ll also want to narrow your audience geographically. For example, let\u2019s say our coffeehouse is in Portland, Oregon, so we select Portland as the location.<\/p>\n The percentage of genders changes again\u2014it\u2019s less skewed towards women. In Portland, women represent 65% of your coffeehouse audience, rather than 71.7% across the whole country.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re marketing a Portland coffeehouse, you\u2019ve just learned some incredibly valuable data about who your ads should be speaking to.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not done yet. But for now, click Create audience<\/strong>, then give your audience a relevant name and click Save audience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n To get more advanced here click the option to See your audiences in Ads Manager<\/strong>, then select the name of the audience you just saved and click Edit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In the pop-up window, click Browse<\/strong> in the box to add (or exclude) demographics, interests, or behaviors under Detailed targeting<\/strong>. You can narrow your audience by factors like relationship status, education level, and job title. You can choose to target parents, or even parents of a specific age of child. You can also target using life events like people who have recently moved or started a new job.<\/p>\n Remember that the more detailed you get in your targeting, the smaller your audience will be. Always keep an eye on the estimated audience size.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Ads Manager<\/em><\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve finished narrowing down your audience, click Update<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Get as detailed as you can, since more detailed targeting tends to make for a more responsive list, increasing your return on investment. But be sure to test your new audience<\/a> against your existing Facebook campaigns to see how the conversion rates compare and which delivers the best ROI<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now that you\u2019ve selected your demographics and learned some key intel about the makeup of your target audience, head back over to the Audience <\/strong>tab in Business Suite and scroll down to Top Pages<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is some really juicy information. In this section, you can see which existing Facebook pages are already connecting with people in your audience.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Business Suite<\/em><\/p>\n You should click through to all of these pages to do some competitive research about what these businesses are doing, and get ideas about how you can model their success.<\/p>\n You can use the audience you build as the target audience for an ad.<\/p>\n Head back to Ads Manager and select the audience you want to target. Click the Actions <\/strong>drop-down and select Create Ad<\/strong> to place an ad targeted to this specific group.<\/p>\n Source: Meta Ads Manager<\/em><\/p>\n For a step-by-step walkthrough on how to actually create the ad, check out our post on how to advertise on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ads Manager will automatically populate the targeting fields with the options you have pre-selected for the audience you built.<\/p>\n Be sure to track the performance<\/a> of each targeted ad campaign you run, and test it against your usual Facebook ROI. As you place increasingly more targeted ads, you may see the overall number of conversions drop off\u2014but keep in mind this is because you\u2019re showing your ad to a smaller audience.<\/p>\n Your ROI may climb even if your conversions decrease. Testing and tracking will allow you to find the sweet spot that maximizes ROI while bringing in the number of conversions you need to meet your social media goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you look back at the interests targeting in the last section, you\u2019ll notice that some guesswork was involved. Sure, it\u2019s easy to choose coffeehouses as an interest if you\u2019re running a coffeehouse. But what other interests might help you narrow that audience further? Here are some ways Hootsuite can help you figure that out.<\/p>\n Hootsuite Streams is a social listening tool that allows you to understand your Facebook audience and your competitors by tracking social posts relevant to your business.<\/p>\n Facebook limits the amount of content you can gather to specific mentions of your business or posts shared to your timeline. However, if you have an Instagram account for your business, you can also use it for audience research here by adding a stream to track hashtags. Since Meta ads can be placed across both Facebook and Instagram, this is all relevant info.<\/p>\n For our Portland coffee houses example, you could use streams to monitor mentions of your business on Facebook, so you can get a sense of the conversation about your company happening already on the platform<\/p>\n Then add Instagram streams to monitor relevant hashtags. Try to focus on detailed hashtags like #pdxcoffee rather than more general ones like #coffee. See what people have to say and which kinds of accounts are talking about coffee in general. For each hashtag, you can create streams for both the most recent posts and posts that are trending.<\/p>\n Start free 30-day trial<\/a><\/p>\n Not sure which hashtags to track? Check out our guide to hashtag research<\/a> or the OwlyWriter AI hashtag generator tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n Above, we talked about clicking through to the Facebook Pages of the top Pages your target Facebook audience follows to see what they\u2019re up to. There\u2019s an easier way to do this in Hootsuite Analytics.<\/p>\n First, get an overview comparison of how you\u2019re doing compared to the competition by clicking Industry<\/strong> under Benchmarking<\/strong> in the Analytics<\/strong> tab of the Hootsuite dashboard. Choose your industry, then scroll through the detailed reports of how your efforts stack up. Take particular note of your audience growth rate to see if you\u2019re keeping up.<\/p>\n Then, go back to the left menu and choose Competitive analysis<\/strong>. Add in pages you think are your top competitors. Or, grab that list of top pages you found above and add some of them in here.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll get a graphic report of how your performance and audience growth compare. Take a close look at the graphics showing performance by post type \u2013 as well as post length and number of hashtags \u2013 to get a sense of what kind of content is working well for your competitors.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also see top hashtags that could be useful in reaching your desired audience.<\/p>\n Hootsuite can show you when your audience is online and suggest the best times to post for your desired goals. The best time to post information is designed for organic content, but you can also use the data found here to target the times for your Facebook ad campaign display.<\/p>\n Under Organic Reporting <\/strong>in the left column of Hootsuite Analytics, click Best time to publish<\/strong>. You\u2019ll see a heatmap showing when your Facebook audience is most likely to be online, as well as recommended days and times to maximize your impact.<\/p>\n Start free 30-day trial<\/a><\/p>\n Connect your CRM to Hootsuite to use it to build advanced audiences within the Hootsuite Social Advertising tool. You can design campaigns to re-engage customers and leads, or find people similar to them.<\/p>\n Or, you can build audiences using include and exclude functions just like you can in Facebook audience insights.<\/p>\n Once your ad is running, you can see how well it performs alongside your organic content and your ads on other platforms, so you can make budget changes on the fly to maximize the amount of your audience to reach.<\/p>\n Get the most out of your Facebook advertising budget with Hootsuite. Easily create, manage, and optimize all your Facebook ad campaigns in one place. Try it free today.<\/strong><\/p>\n Easily plan, manage and analyze organic and paid campaigns from one place<\/strong> with Hootsuite Social Advertising. See it in action.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWhat is Facebook Audience Insights?<\/span><\/h2>\n
Did Facebook remove Audience Insights?<\/h3>\n
Why are audience insights so important?<\/span><\/h2>\n
Build an informed advertising strategy<\/h3>\n
Optimize your ad spend<\/h3>\n
Prioritize social networks for advertising<\/h3>\n
Get more from your organic content<\/h3>\n
How to use Meta Business Suite Insights (f.k.a. Facebook Audience Insights)<\/span><\/h2>\n
Step 1. Select the audience you want insights for<\/h3>\n
![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-1-620x401.png.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n
Step 2. Build your target audience demographics (and learn as you go)<\/h3>\n
![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-2-620x380.png?resize=620%2C380&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nLocation<\/h4>\n
Age and Gender<\/h4>\n
Interests<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"Estimated](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-3-620x391.png?resize=620%2C391&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nStep 3. Dig deeper in Meta Ads Manager<\/h3>\n
![\"Edit](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-4-620x461.png?resize=620%2C461&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nStep 4. Competitor research<\/h3>\n
![\"Audience](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-5-620x376.png?resize=620%2C376&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nStep 5. Target your audience with an ad<\/h3>\n
![\"Create](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-6-620x177.png?resize=620%2C177&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nDefining your advertising audience with Hootsuite<\/span><\/h2>\n
Social listening<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-7-620x274.png?resize=620%2C274&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nCompetitor research<\/h3>\n
![\"Performance](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-8-620x351.png?resize=620%2C351&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n![\"Find](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-9-620x500.png?resize=620%2C500&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nFind the best times to post for your specific audience<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Facebook-audience-insights-10-620x363.png?resize=620%2C363&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nCreate advanced ad audiences based on your CRM<\/h3>\n