Finding Hidden Facebook Ad Segments (Redux)

Hello Facebook Advertisers 🙋‍♂️

Robert Collier, said to be one of the old pioneers of copywriting, once said:

“Always enter the conversation already occurring in the prospect’s mind.”

I am different to you and you are different to me, durrr.

The communication content, types, style etc l like will, of course, be different to what you like and vice-versa.

Nothing new.

But, I have to start this off with some obvious truths to setup the punch line later on….

There are 7.6 billion humans and the marketing industry has tried to pigeonhole those 7.6 billion people on things like:

• Geographic’s;
• Demographics
• Psychographics; and
• Behaviours.

Humans are vastly complex and complicated, far more than we currently understand, and attempting to describe 7.6 billion people based on those criteria is so rudimentary, it’s laughable.

There is no way those 4 categories can ever accurately encapsulate a human.

And even when you combine those segmentation criteria (and the sub-segmentation criteria, such as problem awareness, buying temperature and so on) with the need for multiple sales communications , in different modalities and lengths, you could end up with hundreds-of-billions of combinations of segments.

How could one ever list that many segments, practically?!

One way, with the help of machine learning, will get us closer: we’ll be able to track every behaviour and thought that occurred before a purchase happened and extrapolate that back in time to predict purchase behaviour and deliver the perfect sales communications at the perfect times. I think we will be able to do that for the entire human population at some point.

Artificial intelligence will likely be able to then create specific sales communications to match those billions of combinations of segments and deliver multiple specific sales communications customized to billions of individuals via distribution channels (of the future) at the snap-of-our-fingers/click of a button (or whatever the future equivalent is).

But, we are not there yet!

Regardless, what do virtually all brands do?

They create one sales message and distribute it to every segment that is somewhat related.

That is so far away from what Robert Collier wanted from us.

And it shows many brands have made no progress over the last 100 years from John Wanamaker’s dilemma:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted: the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

The wise brands:

1. Create communication around different awarenesses of problem, solution and product;
2. Translate it to different modalities and lengths;
3. Retrofit specific targeting messaging such as callouts; and
4. Distribute each version to the corresponding segment.

Now, recall, currently you only really have access to criteria such as geographic’s, demographics, psychographics and behaviours, so you may only have 100-or-so relevant segments in total, not billions, which ultimately is limited by the sophistication of current distribution channels.

As you know, when you are setting up Ads, you can target you Audience based on Geographic’s (location), Demographics (age, gender etc) and also “Detailed Targeting”:

1. More Demographic’s;
2. Interests (psychographics); and
3. Behaviours.

Ya know, the standard marketing segmentation categories!

Now, with Facebook Ads, under “Detailed Targeting” you can either:

1. Browse those three categories (you can download the full list as of February 2020 here for free (no email opt-in required): or
2. Start typing a keyword and get suggestions.

This is nothing new.

“Browse” (as of writing), gives you 323 categories (including related breadcrumb categories).

“Suggestions” displays the top 25 results for the keyword(s) you entered: for example, the top 25 results for the keywords “ice hockey”.

Now, this is not ALL the “detailed” demographics, interests or behaviours you can target on Facebook!

I am not sure if that is obvious to everyone?

Maybe, maybe not..

There are 2,380,000,000 Facebook users and Facebook has thousands if not hundreds-of-thousands of data points on every single user.

“Suggestions” displays the top 25 keyword results because the drop-down menu would be miles long (more on this shortly) and would be a horrible user-experience!

It would be utter overwhelming for the Ad user so, they only display the top 25 to make it manageable.

If you type three keywords (not like the two before) for example “ice hockey club”, into “Detailed Targeting”, “Suggestions” displays the top 25 keyword results for that combination (which gives another 25 different keywords or lack thereof).

The problem with this method of finding “Detailed Targeting” criteria is that these 25 suggestions have audiences of millions of people — meaning they are not very targeted or relevant.

That, and Facebook shows the same 25 results to all 7 million advertisers on its platform.

The more competition for the same targeting criteria means the ad price go up.

You need to hunt there no one else is hunting.

Doing this means Ad prices go down and your ads also become more relevant to your audience.

Yet, this highlight the other major problem with Facebook showing the same 25 targeting results — you don’t know exactly what keywords you can target on Facebook or not.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem!

You don’t know what you don’t know!

For example, I cannot target “ice hockey lovers” on Facebook Ads.

That seems like a relevant and useful targeting criteria prospects who likes ice hockey.

The only way I would know that is typing it in the Suggestions and it returning no results.

I can however target “Penn State Nittany Lions men’s ice hockey” on Facebook.

My guess is that anyone interested in “Penn State Nittany Lions men’s ice hockey” likes (or even loves) ice hockey!

But how would I know that?!

It’s a matter of typing in keywords, one-at-a-time and patiently waiting for Facebook Ads Manager to populate possible results.

That is a lot of wasted time.

Facebook’s Ad Manager interface for targeting research is broken.

So how do you find all the thousands of targetable “detailed” demographics, interests or behaviours that are hidden from the “public” and are still available in Facebook Ads Manager interface WITHOUT wasting time?

Because I am lazy and love building tech, I built a cloud-based software tool that gives you the whole drop-down list (not just the 25) of all targetable the “detailed” demographics, interests or behaviours.

All you have to do is enter a keyword and ALL targeting results will appear for:

• That keyword(s);
• The keyword(s) total audience size (note this will be smaller as you will target Geographic’s and Demographics);
• The keyword(s) category (if applicable); and
• The keyword(s) topic.

You can then download the targeted list in CSV format for further analysis or copy/paste keywords you want to use into “Detailed Targeting” in Facebook Ads Manager.

It’s as simple as that.

The tool also has the ability to:

• Search for interest suggestions based on the original keyword;
• Search for employers (and employees of employers);
• Browse demographics;
• Browse interests;
• Browse behaviors;
• Browse languages;
• Browse countries; and
• Browse regions.

And again, you can download the targeted list in CSV format for further analysis or copy/paste keywords you want to use into “Detailed Targeting” in Facebook Ads Manager.

Get your FREE 3-day trial here.

This is the most comprehensive Facebook Ad targeting tool available.

*Honestly, I am surprised Facebook hasn’t built this themselves!

And because of this, the creation of this software was particularly hard: accessing the data and then coding it all. It took me hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and effort to build and cost me what I estimate to be thousands of dollars to hire coders.

Now I have it, it makes finding hidden highly relevant targeting criteria easy and quick.

What used to take me hours of time and effort in research is now vastly reduced.

So, if you:

1. Struggle to find more targetable keywords to use; or
2. Want to use keywords that are not popular to save ad spend and be relevant.

Then this software will help you!

Now, If you don’t love the tool, I am going to assume all the risk and give you a no questions asked 100% money back guarantee in the first 3 days.

Then it is a small $45/month after that.

How does that sound?

Get your FREE 3-day trial here.

Now this offer is not available forever!

Version 1 of the tool was only $30 for lifetime access.

That was an amazing deal, yet is no longer available!

Version 2 went for $5/month.

Again cheap-as-chips, but again is longer available.

Like always — all good things must come to an end (otherwise they wouldn’t be good).

So here it is: This offer ends on Sunday 5 April 2020 and will likely go up in price again.

So, get in quick before the offer runs out, because once it is gone…IT IS GONE!

And there is no going back in time.

Get your FREE 3-day trial here.

That will take you directly to PayPal.

Do your thing there, then you will be redirected to login (or click the “Return to Sellers Website” button and create access credentials and then you are off-to-the-races!

For those who skipped to the end, here is what you get:

Monthly access to the web app that makes finding hidden targeting criteria your competition cannot see easy and quick.

NOTE: Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc and this site is not part of Facebook and is not endorsed by Facebook.