Digital Marketing Blog

How big should your Facebook audience size be when you run an ad campaign?

You have to answer this question, especially when you want to post content online and want your ideal people to see or engage with it. 

Most of the entrepreneurs and marketers find it really difficult to create and run Facebook ads efficiently within their budget.

For example, one of the major obstacles is to understand how big their Facebook audience size should be so that they can produce optimum ROI. 

If you’re one of those mentors, influencers, entrepreneurs, or marketers, it’s time for you to understand the concept of good audience size for Facebook ad campaigns.

One thing is for sure: if you choose the wrong audience size, you’re likely to ruin an otherwise profitable Facebook ad campaign. 

That’s exactly why it’s critical to create the right message and show it to the right audience at the right time.

Or, you will fail to make an impact on a limited budget. 

In this blog, I am going to teach you how to create a Facebook ad and choose the right audience size for them so that the right people see and engage with your content.

All you have to do is focus on the small things that I am going to highlight in the post. 

⭐ Related Post: Why You Should Use Facebook Ads For Your Business

What Is A Good Audience Size For Facebook Ads?

Every business is different and unique, so does its audience and needs.

There can be no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

However, it’s critical to select the right audience size in creating Facebook ads - the success of your Facebook ads will largely depend on your ability to target the right people. 

A widespread myth: 

“The bigger the audience, the better”. 

Have you heard this statement? And I am sure you have because there are people who like the idea of targeting a broad audience.

I would like to discard this idea as it could cause too much dent in your budget and impair your ability to focus on your ideal customers or clients. 

There are businesses that need to target broad audiences to achieve multiple goals ranging from brand awareness to sales.

For example, if you sell winter hats online, it might make sense to target thousands and thousands of people. 

However, if you’re a mentor, coach, influencer, or entrepreneur providing services or products in a specific state or to specific audiences, it wouldn’t make sense to target broader audiences unless there is a valid explanation on how its relative. 

Let’s say you’re a family coach and you help parents with issues like parental alienation.

Now, it’s not hard to identify audiences who would be interested in your services. Your content would be about parents living in a specific city facing a specific problem. 

Luckily, Facebook offers seemingly endless options to help you narrow down your audiences and target the right ones. 

Why Is Audience Size Important? 

Let me identify 3 key points here to better answer this question: 

1. Reach and Frequency

2. The general rule of 7

3. Audience message alignment

1. Reach And Frequency 

When a business tries to reach a big target audience, let’s say 800,000 people, there’s no way Facebook can show the message to those people all at once -  the platform might pick random people out of the audience and show them the message.

Besides, it’s almost impossible to develop and nurture a relationship with thousands of people on a limited marketing budget. 

This is where you need to narrow down your options and get the right reach and the right frequency. 

“Reach is the number of unique people that you can reach, while frequency is the number of times you want to reach those unique people.”

2. The General Rule Of Seven 

In the Digital Age, people are overloaded with information. Therefore, showing your message to your audience just once wouldn’t be sufficient. 

The rule of seven is an old marketing concept that says that your audience needs to hear or see your message at least seven times to get them to take action.

The concept has an important application here as it helps you define the frequency or how many times your audience needs to see your Facebook ads before they buy or sign up for your services. 

You can get the right reach and frequency only when you carefully narrow down your audiences.

This will help you get the right impact on the right people at the right time. 

Use the #R3MAT method to reach the right people at the right times while applying the general rule of seven to set the right frequency. 

⭐Related Post: What Makes A Great Facebook Ad?

3. Audience Message Alignment 

Is your message aligned to your key audiences?

Once you find the right audiences, create messages that resonate with them.

The way your message aligns with your ideal people is probably the most important thing you could focus on.  

Your audience must be relevant to your brand.

Audience message alignment is important because it makes your audience realize the potential value of your services or products.

If you get the messaging wrong, it might cause prospective customers to think of your services as not meaningful or irrelevant.

So, do some homework to make sure your message is spot on. 

What Does Impact Facebook Audience Size?

Audiences can be built based on a variety of factors: interests, location, demographics, age, gender, and so on.

Think about the characteristics of people who would be most interested in whatever you’re offering.

Take into account your current customer base and write down their interests, age, gender, etc.

Based on this, you can determine how broad or narrow your audience can be, giving you an ideal audience size. 

Let’s take a look at the primary Facebook audience types to help you select and create more effective Facebook ads.

2 Types Of Facebook Audiences

Facebook Saved Audiences 

Saved audiences are those that can be defined by choosing people’s location, interests, gender, age, income level, etc.

You can create Saved Audiences in the Audience Manager or in the campaign setup phase. 

The following are some of the targeting options you can use to create your key audiences: 

• Location-based targeting: target people in a specific location such as country, state, region, DMA, and postal codes. 

• Demographics-based targeting: the Demographic table allows you to refine your audience based on their age, gender, and language. 

• Interest-based targeting: it’s one of the best targeting options that enable you to narrow down your audience based on their interests. 

• Behavior-based targeting: it allows you to target people based on their purchase history, personal anniversaries, and events they like. 

Facebook Custom Audiences 

Facebook Custom Audiences should be your high-priority target audiences as it enables you to retarget your past website visitors or people who’ve engaged with your content before. 

Custom Audiences are created based on your existing customer files; for example, the email lists, Apple IDs, or phone numbers.

This is a great way to show your Facebook content to your subscribers and app users.

How To Create A Custom Audience On Facebook: 

• Create a Facebook Custom Audience 

• Select the “Customer File” option

• Import contacts from Mailchimp or add a customer file 

• Import your customer data 

• Select identifiers 

• Upload a customer file 

• Name your audience 

You can also create custom audiences based on engagement.

For example, you can target all those who’ve visited your Facebook page or users who’ve sent you a message on Facebook.

This way, you can reach a high-potential audience that is likely to be interested in your business. 

Lookalike Audience 

If you want to reach people who’re similar to your existing customers, create Facebook Lookalike Audience.

You have to choose a Custom Audience created with the data pulled from your Pixel, page, or mobile app. 

Facebook identifies the common attributes of the people in a Custom Audience to deliver your ad to people who’re similar to existing customers. 

Facebook typically recommends a source audience of between 1,000 and 50,000 people.

In other words, your source audience should be made up of your best customers in order for you to produce better results. 

How To Amplify Content On Social Media With Facebook Ads

Your budget plays a key role when you run social media ads to get more customers.

The goal should be to achieve maximum results within your budget.

To achieve this goal, you have to amplify your content on Facebook with well-thought-out Facebook ads. 

Let’s say it costs $50 to show your message to 1000 people on Facebook.

Since you need to show your message 7 times (the rule of seven), the cost would be $350. 

As you can see, the potential reach is 39,000 when I select the United States as my target market.

Now calculate how much it would cost me to show my message to 39,000 people seven times. 

So, what you can do is narrow down your audience because you want to reach the right people with the right frequency without spending thousands of dollars. 

Let me narrow down my audience to Florida and see what happens. 

Here we go. 

Now I’ve got only 3,000 potential users to target. Still, I need to spend roughly $525 to target those 3,000 people, which is fair. 

Pro Tip: Don’t check that box under the “Detailed Targeting Expansion” option. 

Let’s say I want to target the whole United States, but my ideal audience is someone who’s an admin of a Facebook page.

Here is what I’ve got: 

I reduced the number from 39,000 to 24,000. 

What if I further narrow down my audience based on interests.

I personally like cooking and dogs so I’ll use my personality traits to refine my audience. 

Let’s say I want to target only those who are interested in cooking and dogs. I’ll be able to further reduce the number from 24,000 to 16,000. 

Interest-based targeting enables you to create an audience based on personality traits. 

Now, whenever I share my Facebook stories about cooking or dogs, they will relate to people who’re reading or watching them because I just showed the right message to the right audience at the right time.

This is where the magic comes in. 

What you have to do is stack in a couple of things that you’re interested in to make your audience slightly more narrow to build stronger relationships. 

When you implement these tactics to create an ideal audience, you’ll be in a better position to understand what is a good audience size Facebook ads. 

⭐ Related Post: How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

Final Thoughts 

The end result of creating these ads is to greatly increase the amount of impact and the number of people who love, follow and trust your business or brand.

If you want to see results immediately, follow these tips that I’ve discussed in the blog.

It’s possible to get seen by thousands of your ideal people, instead of being seen by a couple of hundred random people. 

Do you want an expert to do all of this for you so that you could focus on other important things?

If you need a coach or mentor to help you create the right message and show it to the right people at the right time, I would love to help. 

Just be in your magical zone and make a lot of money in that process. Let my team take care of your advertising needs.