Introduction

Getting your advertisements in front of a competitor's audience might help you raise awareness and drive sales. We can accomplish this with Google and Bing by running advertisements against a competitor's brand and product-related keywords, but what about a social media site like Facebook? What do you target if there are no keywords?

The first thing that springs to mind is to target the Facebook fans of your competitor's page. This makes obvious sense, but you're not authorized to do it. You can't directly target the fans of a single page on Facebook, but that doesn't mean you can't target a competitor. You can't do it directly by targeting fans of their page, but you may still reach out to those people in other ways.

How does Interest Targeting work?

Interest-based targeting is effective since it may be used to target your rival. If you write in the name of a rival, Facebook will populate it with users who have indicated an interest in or liked pages linked to that competitor. It's highly likely that Facebook considers those who have directly liked the competitor's page. While this is not as precise as directly targeting the fans of a page, it is the closest that Facebook permits.

So how does the interface for creating this type of targeting look?

To begin, navigate to the settings menu at the ad set level. This is where your interest-based targeting will be created.

The keyword combinations reflect your competitor in order to see what Facebook populates. Begin with the website URL and work your way up. If Facebook has data, it will populate and provide an estimate of the size of the audience.

If the website address does not appear, you must enter individual keywords or phrases that describe your competitor or their items. However, take care that what you type might have numerous unrelated meanings.

If you've tried all other possibilities and Facebook isn't providing an audience for the web address or keywords you input, it's probable that the competition has a small following on Facebook and you won't be able to target them.

What's the Big Deal About Facebook Interest-Based Targeting?

The interest targeting option on Facebook helps you to send your adverts to the people you want to reach. These individuals have previously demonstrated an interest in your industry, for example, by interacting with one of your competitors.

As a result, people are more inclined to respond to your advertisements. In Facebook Ads Manager, you'll have access to thousands of interest categories for targeting your target audience. By limiting your targeting options, you may expose your adverts to more relevant and new people.

When is it appropriate to utilize Facebook interest targeting?

Facebook interest targeting is useful for all types of advertising, especially newbies. Beginning with Facebook advertising means you don't have enough pixel data to help Facebook's algorithm find your target market. Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns by tracking your website visitors' behavior.

However, with interest targeting, you can access Facebook's database and leverage what it knows about its users' interests. This would assist you in closing the knowledge gap caused by your missing customer data. By informing Facebook of the terms your potential consumers are interested in, you are providing Facebook with a picture of the people you want to show your advertising to.

Why is it important for beginners to target their interests?

As a new adviser, you don't have the funds to pay for trials and errors. This implies you'll refine your audience with extensive interest targeting research on Facebook and others. It will take time to refine your audience, but every hour spent searching around for interest keywords relevant to your specialty will be well spent.

A thorough examination of your target audience's appearance can assist you in showing your adverts to the proper people. While not every impression will be relevant to your specialty, you will have a higher ROAS when your targeting options match your target people.

This is due to the fact that you spend less money on CPA and irrelevant traffic with a specified audience. Showing your ads to more people who aren't interested in your business may get some results, but you won't meet your ROI target. That's why investing time in your audience is worth it because when it matters to sales, it's your specific audience who will turn into conversions for your brand.

How to take leverage of Facebook's detailed interest targeting?

Facebook announced the loss of marketers' access to its Facebook Analytics tool on July 1, 2021. Prior to the discontinuation of this service, advertisers could use demographic data and affinity for Facebook fan pages to evaluate and learn about their audiences.

Even when Facebook audience insights aren't available anymore, there's still a lot you can do with the available resources from Facebook.

1. Suggested Keywords
   After you've gathered a list of interest keywords, you can use them to search for comparable interests in Facebook Ads Manager's Detailed Targeting area. You may get results that appear to be far from what you were hoping for, but they may be worth a shot. Simply type each interest into the free search bar, scroll down, and uncover what's related to your specialty.

1. Searching for interests connected to your Facebook advertisements will assist you in refining your audience and achieving your ROAS. The number of interests accessible for targeting is limitless, but thorough interest targeting research will assist you in narrowing your targeting down to the most relevant ones.
2. Google
   If you're having trouble with what interest sets are connected to your brand, Google is your best friend. As such, you are one search away from knowing specific keywords related to your brand. Let's say you were searching for custom homemade goods on Google and on the first page, Etsy popped up. You have your primary audience to target now.

1. You can find other keywords to check by scrolling down to the bottom of the results page, where you'll discover what other queries people type to search for things relevant to your inquiry. These related search keywords are beneficial because they are themes that consumers typically check for when looking for businesses in your niche.
2. Markopolo Audience Maker
   Markopolo v2.0 will be released soon with an all-new audience maker with just a brief description of your company and, from your page performance, Markopolo's AI will determine what base audiences are correct for your business. Moreover, it's directly connected with Facebook's Interest Search API. That means you can add interests directly from Facebook, if you do not like the suggested audiences. It's a great way to utilize your precious time as most of your interesting data is shown to you, based on which you can improve by adding more.

Final Thoughts

Interest targeting is a handy targeting strategy that works for all levels of advertising experience. You can utilize it at the start and continue to use it in the future to diversify your audience.

While analyzing your target audience's interests is crucial, building and utilizing lookalike and custom audiences from your company's or Facebook's database is still beneficial.

Combining interest-based targeting with various techniques of targeting is always a fantastic strategy to narrow your audience. You get a better idea of who you want Facebook to show your advertisements to, which improves the performance of your ads.

Also, check out this post to learn about Facebook Advertising fatigue and how to prevent it.