Hello, everyone! Welcome back to the podcast.

Today, I want to talk about something that’s on all of our minds—audiences. It’s a topic that seems to confuse a lot of people, including me! What’s the best approach these days? Should we be using lookalike audiences, interest groups, or skip them altogether? Should we be relying on Meta’s Advantage Plus or just going broad? It can be really confusing, and if you're new to advertising on Meta, I completely get how overwhelming it feels.

Even as someone with experience, I’m just as confused because I see different strategies working for different clients. This episode is about sharing what I’ve learned from working on two separate accounts—mine and a client’s—and how different audiences have produced wildly different results, even when everything else stayed the same.

Let’s dive into the first example from my own ad account. We’re running ads for the Ads Clinic, and recently, I decided to restart our campaigns after a break. The creatives are simple—mostly video clips from our Fake Marketer podcast where we discuss the Ads Clinic.

In one campaign, I targeted a "digital marketing" audience. This included interest groups like lead generation, marketing strategy, social media marketing, etc. Initially, it worked. We got 33 leads at around £43 each, and I was happy with that. But things started to decline. By August, the cost per lead had spiked to £208, so I analyzed which creative performed best. One video stood out, where James starts by asking, “So Nic, what’s the Ads Clinic?” That video was the hook.

I kept the dynamic creative running but decided to test a broad audience to see if that would perform better. Unfortunately, it flopped. I didn’t get a single lead, despite spending hundreds of pounds. So, I went back to a more targeted approach, stacking interest groups like small business owners, Facebook page admins, and digital marketing.

Since then, we’ve spent £119 and got six leads at just under £20 each. The lesson here is that even when we’re told to go broad or use Meta’s new tools, the old-school method of stacking interest groups still works. It’s all about testing what works best for your audience.

Now, let me quickly mention our sponsor, Rupert, an AI platform that helps manage Facebook and Instagram comments by automatically quarantining negative ones and generating responses using AI. It’s a game-changer for businesses trying to stay on top of their social media. You can try Rupert for 14 days using my code, NickB. Check it out at Rupert Digital.

Back to the podcast. The second example I want to share is from a client in the beauty industry. We’ve been testing different audiences, from “natural beauty” to “anti-aging” and even some unexpected ones like “frequent travelers” and “fitness enthusiasts.”

Some audiences worked as expected—like the natural beauty group, where we saw purchases coming in at £18.86 each. But then, something surprising happened. A "yoga and fitness" audience, which the client didn’t expect to work, ended up halving their cost per purchase to just £10.50! Sometimes, trying something out of the box can lead to better results than sticking to the obvious choices.

So, the moral of this episode is to keep testing different audiences. Don’t get too caught up in what Meta or the media tells you to do. Broad audiences and Advantage Plus can work, but so can good old interest groups. Stack them up, test them, and keep refining your strategy.

Thanks for listening, and good luck with your ads! Take care!