Both Google Analytics and Facebook give you so much data that it can be really tricky to know where to start. It’s also really easy to miss out on some ‘low hanging fruit’ that can help improve your audience targeting in Facebook. In this blog we’ll share a few tips that will help you make the most out of all that data and show you why you should definitely not treat your data from social and Google separately!

Demographic Targeting

The demographic information available in both channels can really help you fine tune your audience targeting. We have a client who had always targeted women over 55, as that was who they believed brought their products. When we analysed the data in GA we could see that the younger audience converted much faster. We switched their display targeting from the over 55s to the under 45s. CTR improved, more sessions came from the younger audience and they continued to convert at the higher rate. Campaign wins all round!

Age breakdown screenshot

Using Google Analytics to Help Facebook Audience Targeting

One of our Telecoms clients was struggling to get traction with their Facebook leads campaign, with Cost Per Lead over £40 with a target of £10. We took a look at Google Analytics to see what the make-up of their converting audience was across all their channels.

Interestingly over 7% of the converters fell into affinity audiences linked to bargain / value shoppers. This helped us in two ways; firstly it meant we could focus on a more value-led proposition in our ads. Secondly we could use this information to refine our Facebook audience.
We added an extra layer to our targeting by saying we also wanted our audience members to like one of various value brands (Lidl, etc). This new refined audience delivered CPL of just over £13 straight away. With further optimisation of audience targeting and messaging we believe we will now be able to reach the £10 Cost Per Lead target!

Using Facebook to Help Google

This tactic works both ways. Using Facebook Analytics you can see the other pages that people who engage with you like. For a client selling products aimed at parents we looked at Facebook Analytics and found the top web pages their engagers were interested in, as shown below:

We could see quite a few pages linked to certain subjects such as TV and Value shopping. We added the topic ‘discount & outlet stores’ as an additional target in our display campaigns. We set targeting to Bid only and increased our bids by 30%. Click Through Rate for this segment was double that of the control audience.

Hopefully these examples show you the benefit of a taking a holistic approach to audience data and audience targeting across different channels. These tactics don’t always work but are nearly always worth testing!