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In Power Editor, you can exclude folks you DON’T want to hit. For Google PPC veterans, this is the equivalent of negative keywords. For example, if you ran a personals site, you’d bid on “dating”, but have “carbon” as a negative to not match on “carbon dating”.
With Facebook, we can choose targets and exclude audiences within them. For example, maybe we want to target the entire US minus San Diego.
Or maybe you’re a mortgage company licensed to operate in 47 states– you could list out all 47 states as a target or just just select United States and negative out the three states you don’t serve.
Let’s say that you’ve got your marketing automation running smoothly. You have content for those new to your brand and then content bucketed out mid-funnel as well as conversion.
You can exclude folks who are already fans, so they don’t see top of funnel messages.
Same for those you already have emails for– exclude them if they’re on your list already.
The pros by now are nodding their heads vigorously, as using the right combos of positive and negative audiences is critical to not wasting traffic. Even if you bid CPC or optimized CPM, not targeting as precisely as possible will cause your CPC to be higher. Remember that Facebook is maximizing their eCPM (effective CPM), so they will charge you more when you waste inventory to make up for who didn’t click.
Negative feedback will hurt your organic rankings, as well as damage your brand value. Don’t want to be known for irritating users, right?
Many folks have asked for boolean logic– the ability to specify ANDs and ORs wherever they like.
For example, there is a difference between those folks who:
like Coke
like Pepsi
Like Coke and Pepsi
Like Coke or Pepsi
With precise targets, we can determine the audience size of those who like A or B as well as A and B. However, we are, as of this writing, unable to target those who like A and B– despite being able to extrapolate the counts via some Venn Diagram magic.
In broad category targeting, you actually can get this.
You can specify ANY (which is OR) as well as ALL (which is AND). So if you add in a bunch of broad category targets with AND, you’ll keep cutting down your audience size the more you AND along.
Likewise, if you choose ANY, then you’re expanding the audience, since you’re saying you’re looking to reach folks who like one or more of these topics, as opposed to ALL of them.
Watch your counts.
Put too many in the ALL bucket and you end up slicing your audience down to zero. If the estimator says “20 or fewer”, that means zero.
We have 50,000 people when we target ANY of these broad interests:
But we have just 1,260 when we try to do ALL of these broad interests. I had to remove one of them, since it was too many for Facebook’s tool to estimate.
One day we’ll be able to specify ANDs and ORs (boolean logic) between target groups and within target groups. But until then, you’ll just have to make a lot of ad combos and clever custom audiences.
In our next segment, let’s talk about how to determine the right audience size for your targeting and budget.
Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is a former search engine engineer who has spent a billion dollars on Google and Facebook ads for Nike, Quiznos, Ashley Furniture, Red Bull, State Farm, and other organizations that have many locations.
He has achieved 25% of his goal of creating a million digital marketing jobs because of his partnership with universities, professional organizations, and agencies. Companies like GoDaddy, Fiverr, onlinejobs.ph, 7 Figure Agency, and Vendasta partner with him to create training and certifications.
Dennis created the Dollar a Day Strategy for local service businesses to enhance their existing local reputation and make the phone ring. He's coaching young adult agency owners who serve plumbers, AC technicians, landscapers, roofers, electricians in conjunction with leaders in these industries.
Mr. Yu believes that there should be a standard in measuring local marketing efforts, much like doctors and plumbers need to be certified and licensed. His Content Factory training and dashboards are used by thousands of practitioners.