Size Matters: Ideal Audience Size for Facebook Ads Success 2024
Table of Contents
What is a good audience size for facebook ads?
This is the million dollar question all marketers want to know. But before getting into the best audience size for your advertising campaign, I'll start with emphasizing what sets Facebook apart from other online advertising platforms.
It's the ability to use detailed targeting to show ads to the right people, and If you're new to Meta ads and wondering how the heck to figure out the whole audience thing you're in the right place.
Facebook ad targeting
When I talk to small business owners about why Facebook advertising is an excellent marketing strategy, I share many different reasons but what makes Facebook the darling in my eyes is the 2.9 billion monthly user base combined with audience targeting. Before you say “Stacy Facebook is dead” I'll agree with you-It has its issues, but it's still the most cost efficient paid online advertising for small businesses.
How Big Should Your Facebook Audience Size Be?
The short answer is: there's no right answer because it depends on some important variables:
- your ad budget
- your target market
- local audience or global
- Do you have a warm audience?
- campaign goals
- Are you in a niche market?
Your Budget
When it comes to starting a Facebook ad campaign, the first variable we need to know is your budget. I know I pointed out that advertising on Facebook is the most cost-effective, but you still need to have enough of a budget so your ads have a large enough potential reach to be successful. The larger your audience is, the bigger your budget needs to be.
I advise clients they need to have a minimum of $10 a day to start the testing phase. If it's the first time you're running ads, you need to see what works with your audience, check your metrics for cost per result, and other KPI's (key performance indicators) before you increase your budget for scaling.
You need to be willing to spend money gathering data without necessarily having any ROI.
I get that's a tough pill to swallow, but try and think about it as money well spent, because you're finding out what's working and be able to leverage that for next time!
Your target market
Hopefully, you're already familiar with who your ideal customer is. Don't worry though, despite of what you may have heard, you don't need to be as detailed as knowing their Starbucks order, but as a general rule, you should know some basic demographics. Start with Age, gender if specific, what their pain points are, and some interests, and location.
Local audience or online
If your business is local, obviously, your audience size is limited to that area. The challenge here is having enough of a broad audience to target to get good results. This can be tricky if you're in a small town.
Online businesses on the other hand, have a larger audience pool as a starting point, but let me caution you about throwing your offer out to the entire universe!
Just remember, the magic of Facebook ads is the unique targeting options. Your campaigns will be more successful if the right people see your offer.
Do you have a warm audience?
A warm audience can fall into some different categories. Do you have an established a following on social media? Do you have an email subscriber list? How's your website traffic?
There's no right answer here, but your audience can be smaller if it's warm. If you don't have a website, email list, or social media following, that's okay too, because you can build an audience with your Facebook ads immediately for as little as $1 a day. I've got you with this free resource below:
What's your ad objective?
If you need to build up a warmer audience, your ad objective, or goal might be to get leads, or traffic to your website. In this case, you would want a large audience size. I like to make sure a cold audience is at least 1-2 million. Facebook recommends between 2-10 million as your initial audience size, but pro tip: their advice isn't always what works.
Are you in a niche market?
If you sell pet supplies, you could easily have a broad audience of a million+ people. However, If you only sell food for exotic birds that are from South America, for example- your audience is going to be smaller. Sometimes this poses the same challenges as local businesses in small towns, of getting an audience size large enough to have enough people see your ad.
Having the right audience size is a factor in achieving optimal return on investment (ROI) for your Facebook ads , so here's a table with a very general guideline that answers the question: What is a good audience size for Facebook Ads?
| objective | warm or cold | niche | size |
|---|---|---|---|
| engagement | cold | no | 1+Million |
| Traffic Campaign | Cold | No | 1+Million |
| Lead Generation | Cold | Yes | Start 1+ Million |
| Conversion/Sales | Warm | Yes | At least 1000 |
Begin with Research
Familiarize yourself with your potential audience. Facebook's Audience Insights could be a good place to start. Although, my audience insights don't seem to mesh with my target audience.
Test Test Test
Start with a broad audience with at least one ad set and test against a more targeted smaller audience with another ad set.
Monitor Key Metrics
What metrics to monitor will vary depending on your ad objective. If your objective is engagement, you'll want to know the cost for likes, comments and shares. If your objective is traffic, a good metric to monitor is your CPM. How much are you spending to have your ad shown to 1000 people?
How to Create Audiences
Choose what demographics you'd like to reach including location, age range, gender, language spoken and any other interests or behaviors you think would pertain to your ideal customer. If your audience is too small after adding these parameters (under 1 million people if an online business) try broadening the age or location.
If you're doing a brand awareness campaign because you really don't know who to target, start with a broader audience. After the ads have optimized you can see your audience insights trends to create a more narrow audience for next time.
Remember, you want to show your ad to people who are the most interested. It's a good idea at first to go broad while testing and let Facebook work its magic by finding people you might not have thought would be interested.
Pro Tip:
Once you have the minimum size audience save and name it with a description that's easily identified. Next time when you are looking for a starting point, you will have it as a saved audience for simplicity, but note: you will have to add location each time as this doesn't save.
You won't yet know if it's the ideal Facebook audience size until you start testing your ad campaigns.
Facebook Custom Audience
These are audiences made up of people that are already familiar with your brand, and are considered warm audiences. You can create custom audiences from 2 sources:
Your own platforms
- email subscribers
- Website visitors- if you have your facebook pixel installed
- Catalog
- App
- Offsite events
Meta Sources
- events
- shop
- lead form
- ar experience
Lookalike audiences
Lookalike audiences are based on audiences you already are familiar with. The ability to target people similar to your custom audiences is a powerful feature of Facebook Ads.
- Your facebook page
- email list
- custom audiences
Facebook will use these audiences as a basis and show your ads to people that are similar. I've had great experiences with lookalike audiences, in fact some perform better than my custom audiences.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the minimum audience size I should target on Facebook?
Generally, starting with an audience size of at least 1,000 for a retargeting campaign, but please note: it won't take long for Facebook to reach all those people, so you would need either a high conversion rate, or a high ticket offer to make it worth your ad spend.Pro tip: you can combine audiences to make them larger. For example, your 1000 retargeting and a lookalike of your retargeting.
Can I tweak my audience size post-campaign launch?
Definitely! A good rule of thumb is to not touch your ads until they've been running for 7 days. 5 days if your budget is too small to wait, because that's how long it takes for facebook to optimize your ads for best performance.
How do custom audiences come into play?
Consider custom audiences as your brand's VIP list. Typically more compact, they often yield higher engagement.
How do “Lookalike Audiences” benefit my Facebook advertising strategy?
Lookalike Audiences allow you to target users similar to your existing customers or followers. This means you're reaching out to individuals already predisposed to your brand, boosting the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Should I focus more on demographics or interests when defining my audience size?
Both are essential, but the emphasis depends on your campaign goals. Demographics provide a broad overview, while interests offer a deeper dive into user behavior. Combining both ensures a well-rounded targeting strategy.
How often should I review and adjust my audience size and targeting?
Let your ads optimize for at least 7 days before making any changes. Check in weekly or bi-weekly, especially during campaign launches. As you gather more data, you'll find opportunities to refine and optimize.
What role does the Facebook Pixel play in determining audience size?
The Facebook Pixel is a tracking tool that monitors user interactions on your website. By understanding this behavior, you can retarget these users, create custom audiences, and even develop Lookalike Audiences, helping you better define and adjust your audience size for future campaigns.
To Sum Up
Finding your sweet spot for a good Facebook audience size is not an exact science. You'll need to consider everything about your campaign, including budget, campaign goals, what kind of business you're in, are you local or online, do you already have brand awareness, and more.
Facebook ads are all about testing to see what's working well, and making changes to what's not. It's important to know that Facebook is an ever changing platform. What used to work in 2019 doesn't work today. What worked last summer, might not work in the fall. You need to have the mindset of being okay to spend money for data collection.
And, the bottom line: as much as size matters you need to have a good offer, eye catching ad, speak to your ideal client, and the tools in place for a good user experience to have a successful Facebook ads campaign.
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