FB Audience Insights Is Dead… What Now? (How We Use Google Trends and Google Analytics To Come Up With New Interests in 2022)

 In a nutshell:

You’re using Google to find new audiences that share similar consumer values/interests as your brand but don’t necessarily live in the same category as your primary audience.

If you’ve heavily relied on Audience Insights to do your interest targeting research in the past, then you’re out of luck. It’s time you start looking elsewhere for interests relevant to your market.

The methods I'm about to share are completely FREE and have proven themselves through some really great results in the past month. Let me show you exactly how:

Method #1: Google Trends 1. Visit trends (dot) google (dot) com 2. Type in your offer or keywords/terms related to it. (Get creative with your search terms)

3. Add in your filters (Location, Date Range, Categories, Web Search). I generally choose WORLDWIDE and leave the rest as is.

4. Scroll down to Related Topics/Related Queries 5. Toggle between Top or Rising to find more suggestions. 6. List down all the interests that you feel are appropriate to your audience.

7. Then go to FB Ads Manager -> ad set level. 8. Type in the interests and see which ones are available to target. 9. Click the “Suggestions” button to find even more relevant interests.

10. After you’ve listed down all your available interests, group them into categories (I generally look for an audience size of 5M+) 11. And then test out 1 category per ad set using your best performing creatives.

Method #2: Google Analytics 1. Go to your Google Analytics account 2. Go to Audience -> Interests -> Overview 3. Check out Affinity Categories & In-Market Segment 4. Analyze the data 5. Repeat steps 7-11 of method 1

For example: In the screenshot below, you’ll see that potential customers of your offer tend to have a high affinity for “Food & Dining/Cooking Enthusiasts/30 Minute Chefs.”

Mind you, our client isn’t selling kitchenware at all... But this lets me know that I should specifically target interests related to cooking/recipes/30 minute meals to let my ads reach a new audience that could potentially be interested in my offer. And guess what?

It’s performing really well for us right now. Point is: It’s about time we stop focusing on the obvious, common interests. Your competitors are targeting those same interests as we speak. If you continue to do this, expect high competition resulting in higher CPMs & CPAs.

TLDR: Use these 2 methods to come up with new interests. Method 1: Google Trends Method 2: Google Analytics Test these methods and let me know what you find.

credit: Mark William