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Why broad targeting?
Hi, I’m fairly new to PPC.
The agency I work at is adamant about narrowing down on audiences/keywords and being somewhat specific, so that the most relevant traffic comes through.
But I’ve been reading on this subreddit that broad targeting is actually preferred?
It would be super helpful if someone could explain why you’d want to go broad when targeting. Thanks!
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1 Reply
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It really depends on what you’re trying to do.
Broad targeting for lithography machines? Doesn’t make sense.
Broad targeting for beauty products? Might work…
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Broad match can work but it really depends on what you are selling. It works great for a lot of ecom and DTC brands. It might not work as great for a niche insurance brand potentially.
If doing exact and phrase match gets you more relevant traffic and that converts into paying customers. Your business should do that. It does not have to be either or. A brand can use all 3 match types.
For most it would make sense to test out exact and phrase match first and then go to broad match to either expand what they can target or to test something new if exact and phrase match don’t work.
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It’s not just this subreddit’s advice for fb ads, it’s the industry. Go out and test it, when you go broader, you win more on facebook almost all of the time over a very meticulously targeted campaign.
Without knowing the exact way that facebook’s algorithm functions, everyone will only be guessing to a certain extent on why broad works better. Since ios 14, facebook has been running more blind and has to rely more upon its first-party data and broad targeting gives it a large base to work with and prune away from rather than being limited by a smaller initial targeting – but again this is only a guess.
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Broad will bring the best long term results overall and prevent you having to constantly find new interests that might or might not have an interest in your offer.
Broad is also much more scalable.
Interests are just about dead on Facebook, with the proliferation of new ad units such as ASC etc. this is where the platform is going, in the very near future it will not be possible to target interests.
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My personal strategy that I don’t see people use…
Take a list of all relevant audiences from largest to smallest.
largest has 100M people, smallest has 10K people.
Layer 4-5 audiences (AND Must also include…) from the 100M down to the 10K. It may result in only 1-2K people in total with the overlaps. Then, slowly remove the lower, smaller audiences by cloning the remaining layers into a new ad group. Turn off the old one once the new one is working. Repeat this until you get all the way up to the largest audience size. The concept is that it allows you to have fb build a buyer profile using your most detailed audience first, then expand the reach as you remove each layer.Example, layer these audiences together:
Interest: Fitness = 100M
Interest: Weightlifting = 50M
Similar to people who follow: Progenex = 1M
Interest: CrossFit = 300K
The above may result in a total of 25K total audience that has ALL of those audience traits. -
Like all of the ideas in this sub, I’d recommend testing it out to see for yourself. Depending on what vertical you’re in, your specific product/offering, and your site/pixel setup, letting the algo do the heavy lifting can either be great or a disaster – I’ve seen both ends.
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Broad generally works when the audience for your product isn’t niche, but generally a commodity or aspirational product. Now broad or interest targeting I feel is more of an external factor that depends on the category you are in.
With broad targeting, creative must appeal to a lot of people, otherwise, you might lose money, but then if creative is good, scaling is more effecient and easier
There are accounts that have scaled solely on interest targeting, and then there are purely based on broad targeting, so look into your category and then decide
Testing both with small budget can give you an idea
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Sometimes is the best way to find new keywords.
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