It depends.

It’s not easy to find the ideal Facebook audience size as it depends on several factors. In this blog post, I will try to guide you identifying how large your audience size should be when your first launching your Facebook ads.

It can be confusing to select your audience size. Should you go for 100,000 or 45,000 or 1MM, or less… 

I’ve had several people ask me that same question over and over again. From my experience, it really comes down experience. The more ads you launch, the better understanding you will have with audiences but there are some basics that can help you get started.

It’s also key to learn the basics as you will get some questions regarding audiences on both exams.

What does it depend on?

There are primarily four factors in determining your ideal Facebook audience size:

  1. Population size in the location being targeted
  2. Stage in your funnel
  3. Your budget
  4. Your past experience creating ads within that industry

Those four factors are determinant in selecting a broad or narrow audience when defining an ideal audience size.

Why population size in the location being targeted?

A number of people living in the area you are targeting matters.

1% of the US population is very different from 1% of India’s or Guatemala’s population.

 

how find ideal facebook audience size

  • For the USA it’s ~3.2MM
  • For India its ~12.5MM
  • For Guatemala its 154K

You could do the same exercise and narrow down to regions, states, cities or zip codes. So location really matters.

Why?

Because the larger the total population living in the target area, the larger your audience size should be. We usually do some rough estimates first, without looking at Facebook.

For example, if we are trying to target married moms between ages 25-30; we try to estimate the total potential target market by looking at census data, studies or research.

Once we have this number, we go into Facebook and start segmenting the target audience. If we see a miss-match between our audience size and the target market we guesstimate; we keep narrowing and broadening our audience accordingly.

Why the stage in your funnel?

This is probably one of the most important and forgotten aspects when finding your ideal audience size in Facebook. There is a really good recorded webinar in the Facebook Blueprint I highly recommend you watching.

There are basically four stages in you funnel as seen in the image below:

  1. Awareness
  2. Demand Generation
  3. Acquisition
  4. Transaction
facebook audience size - loyalty

Facebook Webinar

The closer you get to your transaction stage, the smaller your audience should be. If I am launching a new product campaign, I want a large and broad audience. Especially if you are not sure of your target market.

The closer you get to your transaction stage, the smaller your audience should be.

By expanding and broadening your audience size, you are allowing Facebook to help you select the best people who will interact with your ads.

As users move along your sales funnel, you should be narrowing more and more your audiences.

Think about it.

If you are an eCommerce, there will be fewer people who visited the “Check Out” page than the “Shopping Cart”. If you built an audience with your Facebook pixel, you audience size should be different.

ideal facebook audience size - broad vs narrow

Facebook Webinar Screenshot

Identify first which stage in your funnel you are targeting. This will help you better define your ideal Facebook audience size.

Why your budget?

Because of the larger your budget, the more ad spent.

The more ad spent, the larger your reach. More money can allow you to reach a broader population much quicker.

facebook audience size - budget

If you are going for reach and frequency, I would suggest you try the Facebook Planner in your business manager and understand how many users you can reach with your current budget.

Otherwise, Facebook will give you a range of the estimated potential reach with your budget.

The ratio between your audience size and potential reach (with that budget) should give you an idea of how quickly you can reach your audience.

There is no specific ratio with the percentage of people you should reach within your audience but budget definitely plays a role in how narrow or broad your audience should be.

Facebook does not provide any data or suggest how large your audience should be. My only five-cents is that if you are starting out, narrow your audience and increase the size once you get results.

Why your past experience within that industry?

Because experience still matters.

And I am not talking about working in the digital marketing space for a while.

What I mean is that you’ve been working in specific industries with various companies that allow you to have a pretty good understanding of segmentation.

Get really f&#@ing in one industry.

It really helps!

Trust me on this one.

For example, we have specialized over the past couple of months in the real estate industry. We’d worked with several real estate developers in finding new leads and how found 3-4 audiences that work really well for apartments selling for $180K vs. other 2 audiences that work well for high-end apartments going for +$500K.

The more experienced you get in one niche industry, the better you will be able to get your audiences rights.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there is no data around your ideal Facebook audience size.

Facebook has not published any data or study suggesting ratios or specifics on how to select your audience size; however, we try to follow these rules:

  1. Try to guesstimate the number of people you target in that specific location
  2. Go into Facebook and segment your target audience
  3. Compare your guestimation with the number Facebook gives you
  4. If it’s too low or high, adjust accordingly
  5. If you have a small budget, start with a narrow audience
  6. Identify which stage in your funnel you are targeting. As you move closer to the sale, your audiences should be really narrow

Don’t forget to join the community, download our FREE Study Guide and leave your comments below 🙂