Have you ever watched Bruce Lee use nun-chucks?
It's a beautiful display of deadly awareness and honed skill, which he makes look deceitfully easy...
The world of Facebook Ads is a metaphorical nun-chuck: a powerful tool for your online business...if you know how to wield it.
More...
Facebook Retargeting is a potent ad strategy and it can ramp up your sales and take your online business to the next level...if and only if you have enough traffic to build a retargeting audience from in the first place.
I can already hear you groaning in frustration at the mention of having to generate traffic to your website.
Don't worry, what I'm going to show you is a cheat code to get around this frustration (and many others).
Today, you'll discover how to generate extremely relevant cold traffic to your website using the Facebook platform itself.
When you have extremely relevant cold traffic seeing your ads, you will:
- Spend less money in Facebook
- Have more conversions on your website
- Generate relevant traffic (warm leads) to build a retargeting audience later
To show you anybody can do this from scratch, I will take an area I know nothing about and use a few tricks within Facebook to learn everything I need to develop an extremely relevant custom audience I could then use to level up my online business.
Your Facebook Targeting MUST Be Focused - Here’s Why
Unlike other advertising platforms like Google Adwords, where ads are based on keywords people actively search for, Facebook targets ads based on demographics.
This means you’re showing ads to people who aren’t necessarily looking for a solution to a particular problem. That’s why showing relevant ads to a relevant audience is essential to a successful ad campaign.
The Goal Here Is Two-Fold:
- Target the most relevant audience you can
Again, this is because a highly focused audience means more conversions and more sales from your ad. - Building extremely relevant traffic to your website
People who click your ad are interested in what you’re promoting, even if they don’t convert on the visit. If you run the ad campaign long enough you will build up enough traffic to your site to take advantage of Facebook’s retargeting. You can then create a retargeting campaign to try to convert the warm leads into customers later on.
To show you how you can do this for your own industry, I'm going to pick a random topic I’ve never done research on—woodworking—and take you through the process step-by-step.
Building a Focused Audience From Scratch
Normally, to really understand what your potential customers’ interests are you need to do a lot of time consuming research to create an accurate buyer profile.
This involves things like: lots of brainstorming, customer calls, support calls, live chats, surveys, social media conversations, etc.
These are extremely valuable activities to do, but we're going to shortcut our way past all that for right now, if you don't mind...
Step 1 - You Gotta Start Somewhere
Most of you will already have a general idea of your competition and the relevant Facebook pages in your industry. But, since I know nothing about woodworking, I will be starting with the Facebook search bar to help me find a relevant page to begin.
In the Facebook search bar I simply put “woodworking” and hit search.
After results are loaded, I make sure to select “pages” at the top and then note down some relevant and popular pages (pages with > 100,000 Likes).
In this case I note down “Woodworking Enthusiasts” and “Woodworking for Mere Mortals.”
Note: If you can't find a decent amount of pages with >100,000, scale it back and look for pages with >50,000 likes.
Step 2 - Find Other Relevant Pages
Now, after going to go to the “Woodworking Enthusiasts” page I want to find their unique Facebook Page ID. To do this, I right click on the page and hit “View Page Source.”
A new page will open with lots of code. Hit “Ctrl+F” (“Cmd+F” for the Mac users) and in the search bar type “page_id:”.
The Facebook Page ID will be the number following. Copy this number.
Facebook has updated, so now you need to search for "page_id:" instead of "profile_id=" to get the right number.
Now, you’re going to use: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=ID and paste the number you just found for “ID” in the URL above.
For “Woodworking Enthusiasts” the URL becomes: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=254934824680430
This will give you pages similar to “Woodworking Enthusiasts” like you see above.
Again, note down relevant and popular pages and then pick a new page and do this process a few times to build a list of relevant and popular pages in your niche.
After going through this process a few times, here’s the list of pages I’ve found:
- Woodworking Enthusiasts
- Woodworking for Mere Mortals
- The Family Handyman
- Woodcraft
- Daily Craftsman
- The Wood Whisperer
- Bob Vila
- WoodWorkers Guild of America
- The Outdoor Option
- HouseLogic
Step 3 - Learn More To Create An Ultra Focused Audience
Now it’s time to really dial in on an audience by using Facebook’s Audience Insights Tool, found here.
The first step is to enter the pages you found in step two into the Interests section of the tool.
Search for the pages you found in Step 2 and add them in the Interests section.
After inputting the interests, I get an audience size of 3-3.5 million people, which is still too large. So I’m going to use some of the information the tool provides to narrow down the audience even further.
Note: Not all of the pages you found will be listed as an interest, but the hope is some or most of them are. This is why you try to pick popular pages with over 100,000 likes.
First, I’m going to look in the Demographics tab and see what I can find.
The tool will compare the audience you’ve input with the rest of Facebook, which you can use to learn about the type of people in your industry.
Using the demographics tool to find out information I can use to target my audience further.
For example, looking at relationship status: 52% of the people who like the woodworking pages I input are married, when you look at ALL of Facebook, only 17% of people identify as married (a difference of 35%, seen in green).
Now compare this with the single column: 26% of the people who like the woodworking pages I input are single, when you look at ALL of Facebook, 59% of people identify as single (a difference of 33%, seen in red).
It seems people interested in woodworking tend to be married. Noted.
You can do this type of analysis on the other sections found in Demographics. I’ve boxed what I found interesting for the woodworking industry above.
Next, I move on to the Page Likes section. Facebook will show (and categorize) you even more pages resonating with the audience you’ve input.
Many of these will be similar pages you found using the related pages technique discussed in step two. But sometimes you’ll find pages you missed in areas you didn’t think about.
Use the page likes section to learn more about what your audience likes. It can give you great ideas for other areas to target later.
I’ve highlighted some other pages that could be added to your targeting above. If anything, these will give you more insight into what your audience is interested in for more targeting later on.
Finally, I’ll look at the location section to see where the majority of these people are living to get a good idea on what locations to start my targeting with.
Step 4 - Create Your Highly Targeted Audience
Putting it all together, I’ve used the Insights tool to learn the following and can add it to my targeting arsenal:
- Age and Gender — Male and Female 35-54
- Relationship — Married
- Job Title — Veterans; Cleaning and Maintenance; Military; Farming, Fishing and Forestry; Installation and Repair; Government Employees; Construction and Extraction
- Location — Ireland, USA, Thailand, Canada
I can put these new parameters into the Audience Insights tool to reduce the audience size from the 3.5 million we started with down to 80k-90k.
Note: Depending on your budget and the area your product is in, this might still be too large. If that’s the case, eliminate some parameters (for example, change from both male and female to only male) to narrow down the audience even further.
The final targeted cold audience I can use to serve relevant ads to
If you’ve performed all of the steps you now have an extremely relevant and highly targeted audience for your industry.
You can now save this audience (at the top of the audience insights page there is an option to save) so you don’t have to input all of these parameters again in the Facebook Ad Manager when you’re ready to create/publish your ads.
This is Where The Opportunities Start to Get VERY Interesting...
Once you have some ads ready, you can apply this technique immediately to start sending relevant traffic to your website and start leveling up your online business.
Not only are you sending relevant cold traffic to your website—meaning more conversions—you're also creating massive opportunity for your business down the line when it comes to Facebook ads!
Check this out:
Option 1: Continue To Hone In On Your Target Audience
There’s two ways to do this:
- Rinse & Repeat — Create a new audience using different pages and parameters found using this technique or from the results from this first ad campaign.
- Create A Lookalike Audience — Use Facebook to create a Lookalike audience from all the new traffic to your website. Once you have the Lookalike audience created, you can use the information you already know about your target audience (demographics, jobs, locations, etc.) to selectively target the lookalike audience even further.
Option 2: Start A Retargeting Campaign
Not everyone who visits your site is going to convert. So you can create a retargeting campaign to serve ads to the visitors who didn’t signup/buy. It’s an extremely effective strategy and you can learn more about how to do it effectively from this post.
Pro Tip:
It's best to create a Lookalike audience from people who have actually converted on your site, instead of creating a lookalike audience from people who have only visited.
If you're selling a product, it might take a long time to build up enough conversions to build the Lookalike audience. It's also much harder to get cold traffic to buy something without building rapport first.
Here's a more effective strategy:
- Create an irresistible opt-in offer
- Build a landing page for the opt-in offer
- Create ads to promote the irresistible opt-in offer
- Use this post to send relevant, cold traffic to the landing page
- Get conversions and build your list (to sell to later in emails)
- Create a lookalike audience from the conversions
- Serve ads to the lookalike audience (with targeting) to get MORE conversions
- Create a retargeting campaign for the people who saw the landing page but didn't sign up
- Create a different retargeting campaign for the people who signed up but haven't bought yet
- $$Profit$$
Now, go be Bruce Lee with your new Facebook nun-chucks!
If you have questions leave them in the comments below and if you have successfully tried this technique, leave those stories in the comments as well!
My 80/20 focus is on Facebook marketing since Google+ is dead and Twitter’s in trouble. I’m current building my Facebook page, so thanks for the excellent and detailed insights.
It’s definitely a powerful tool, so it’s a good spot to put your focus. Glad you enjoyed the post and glad it was helpful for ya!
Awesome ! Will be using this exact tutorial to set up my campaigns in the next few days! Fantastic post.
Awesome to hear Rebecca & I’m glad you found the post helpful! Drop back in and let me know how the campaigns go 🙂
I literally just launched my first facebook ad for a brand new blog about 3 hrs ago….and just now I get an email from Thrive showing me how to do it much better. Nice!
Ooooo looks like I was about 3.5 hours late to publishing this post! I’m sure setting up your fist ad was a great learning experience, and hopefully this post will make for a great second attempt 🙂
great post, will have to give this a shot for my books on amazon
Yes! Let me know how it goes Gary!
Another thanks! Great article…
Any examples of ads that work?
Glad you enjoyed the article Sherwood! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment and let me know 🙂 As for ads that work…it’s a tricky subject as what works for one person might completely bomb for another.
It’s all about testing for your audience to find what resonates with them. Here’s a huge gallery of Facebook ads you can use to get some inspiration for your own ads: https://adespresso.com/academy/ads-examples/
Boom! Great tips Dave. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Nat! Glad you enjoyed them and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment saying so, I appreciate it 🙂
Great article and neat ninja FB moves Dave D – and love your site too – especially as it’s the first I’ve come across to use Thrive’s text highlight feature. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed the article Quentin! And super stoked you checked out The Quest for Awesome and liked it 🙂
Sheer brilliance Dave! Thank you so much
I appreciate that Alfred 🙂 Glad you enjoyed the article and found it helpful!
*THAT* is awesome info Dave! Thanks so much for the marketing wisdom!
No problem Conrad, glad it was helpful and that you enjoyed it 🙂
Great detailed article. However, you lost me somewhat in the “Lookalike” concept which was discussed fairly matter of factly. Probably my fault but could you expand on that somewhat?
Ah yes, sorry I kinda breezed over that part. A “lookalike” audience is an audience Facebook creates for you.
You would place the Facebook tracking pixel on your website and then you’d tell Facebook: “Hey Facebook, look at every visitor that visited my “thank you” page (you can use any page on your site, but this one is helpful because it’s only the people that converted) and build a “lookalike” audience from those people.”
Facebook would then use their algorithm to create an audience of people who are similar to those people.
Hope that helps clarify. Glad you enjoyed the post, Carl 🙂
Awesome post Dave! What would you recommend for a B2B biz that caters to many different industries like a web agency?
Hey Chris, this post is still applicable for B2B as well.
For instance, one targeting option is “Facebook page Admins” this allows you to only target people who are admins of a Facebook page, most likely to be business owners.
Another targeting option helpful for B2B would be the “Job Title & Employer” option, which allows you to target people working in specific companies or users with a certain Job Title. For example, you could target CEO’s.
Hope this is helpful and I’m glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
This is a very cool way of finding out the common denominators with paid clients. Add their emails into FB and build a lookalike audience from them. Then see what their commonalities are – is it gender / age / location or a combination of those? When you have this data you can recreate your ideal customer avatars to fit. This means going forward all your online content is more likely to convert.
Of course, it will all work so much better if we actually talk to our buyers to understand their language, but until then why not let FB do it for you?
Exactly Sarah 🙂
It’s definitely a quick shortcut before digging into the more time consuming research, which is still EXTREMELY helpful.
Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Hi Sarah!
Very interesting tactic here.. adding their emails into FB and build lookalike audience. Can you expand on this step? Is this considered ‘spam’? Recreating your ideal customer avatars to fit? Can you expand on that as well? I am interested in building my 1st FB campaign for my online course for Periscope.tv, but really am intrigued by some of the hacks here. Thanks again for sharing.
One of the best I read ! Thank you so much
Glad it was helpful, David!
Great information Dave. I primarily help local businesses with their Facebook marketing, and some of your insights will definitely help. Is there anything specific you would add that my be beneficial to local marketing that was not covered in your article?
Glad you found the post helpful, Patrick 🙂
Dig deeper into the location targeting as it will allow you to even target specific cities, which will be helpful for you.
This is a fantastic article and it came at just the right time! We are setting up some specific sites for local markets and I will be using this information when setting up our FB campaigns. Thank you for such a great and actionable resource!
Awesome to hear it was perfectly timed for you, Steve!
Stoked you enjoyed…come back and let me know how it worked after you’ve experimented 🙂
Top notch post right here. Going to do this tonight and let you know my results.
Love to hear that, Derrick. Can’t wait to hear your results 🙂
Thanks Dave. My target audience is generally B2B but I think I can adjust your methods to help me find them on FB.
Hey Tom, this post is definitely still applicable for B2B as well.
I mentioned this in a comment above as well but there are options you can take advantage of as well. One targeting option is “Facebook page Admins” this allows you to only target people who are admins of a Facebook page, most likely to be business owners.
Another targeting option helpful for B2B would be the “Job Title & Employer” option, which allows you to target people working in specific companies or users with a certain Job Title. For example, you could target CEO’s.
Hope this is helpful and I’m glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Thank you Dave! I have been meaning to do another FB campaign and now is a great time to try out your strategies.
Warmly,
Leelo
Sounds like it was perfect timing then 🙂 Glad you enjoyed the article Leelo, let me know how the strategies work for ya!
Great stuff! Facebook ads have always been something thats easy for me to understand the concept, but really confusing for me to undestand in practice. Thanks for explaining all these details about how to actually use Facebook audience targeting.
Glad it was helpful for you Lij! I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment and let me know.
Hopefully your Facebook audience targeting will be more successful going forward 🙂
Thank You, I needed that, your awesome for sharing:)
Stoked it was helpful for you, Debbie 🙂
Dave, very timely article. I am about to venture into FB marketing and this is one of the best explanations of how to go about it I have seen so far. I will be following your recommendations to the letter. Thanks.
Awesome to hear that William and I’m glad you found the article helpful 🙂
Let me know how it goes for you!
Unfortunately, with FB Ads in Spain options are much more limited, which is why I think some of your strategies cannot be implemented! Also, I am finding that, altough my campagins with FB ads are sucessful in terms of new leads (subscribers to newsletter), I am not so ure these leads are high quality and will convert into customers. Many people are just attracted by the freebie. Once they download it, the unsubscribe. O as soo as I start an automation and they see that I not only offer “free” stuff, the leave. Any thoughts?
Yes Olga, many of the targeting options are only available in the US at the moment. I imagine FB plans to expand to other countries as well, but for now, you might have to make the most as to what’s available in your country, unfortunately 🙁
I would need to know more specifics about your freebie, your site, etc. to be able to offer any thoughts on that area. However, it’s reality there are many people who will join just for free stuff. Consider it a blessing they unsubscribe, because they never have any intention of buying.
Shane – Outstanding material! I’ve been using this for several months. In fact, there are people who SELL this very method as a course for $497 – so Kudos to you for benefiting your clientele this way. You are genuine for sure!
Love to hear that our free content is good enough to be paid content! Glad you enjoyed the article Nick 🙂
Awesome Dave. This is an incredibly valuable post. I’m taking the Udemy course now (paid) and one tip is to use a video ad instead of a picture ad. It supposed to be 80% cheaper since fewer people do it. Not sure approval rates for the ad though or exactly the type of video they are looking for. Got to do some testing once I get my Thrivetheme site going. I’m a monthly member and love what Shane and the team has created.
Glad you enjoyed the post Martin! I’ve also been hearing good things about video ads and we have plans to try them out as well. We’ll see what the results are!
This post is amazing! I’m just starting out with this whole online business stuff so I’m trying to learn as much as I can before I take the leap. I checked out your personal website too, you lead a crazy life! Do you take on consulting clients? You seem like you’d be an amazing teacher, doesn’t hurt that you’re cute, either… 😉
Hahaha, glad you enjoyed the post Sam and I’m stoked you enjoyed my personal site as well!
Great post. I took a look at FB but for the life of me I cannot find that audience insights tool. Where exactly is it?
Glad you enjoyed the post Will! Here’s a link to the insights tool: https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience_insights/
Hi Dave,
Thanks for this awesome article.
May I check if “profile_id=” is unique? I just tried it out on a page, and the source code showed a few “profile_id=”.
Ben
The profle ID is unique for each page, yes. It’s possible the source code will show more than 1 result when you search for “profile_id=”
The first result should be the one you’re looking for.
Great post Dave. Very clear action steps here. I knew some of these steps already but getting the audience targeting right has been a challenge for me. I like the page id trick to find other similar pages. Ninja! And how awesome is Bruce Lee playing table tennis with nun-chuks! Cheers
Glad you enjoyed the post Jeremy! Bruce Lee playing table tennis with nun-chucks?!?! I must see this…
Great inputs, Dave! Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed the post Ferdinand, and thanks for taking the time to let me know. I really appreciate it 🙂
Great article, Dave and I can’t wait to start implementing these techniques. One issue that I’m having is the “pages similar to” is bringing up pages similar to an entirely different Page than the one that I’m looking for even though I followed all the steps. For example, I pulled the source id for GQ but it’s bringing up pages similar to Wired. Any idea why that could be?
Hmmm, the only reason that would be happening is you found the wrong page ID. When you do the search for “profile_id=” make sure you use the FIRST result that’s found.
Hopefully that will solve your problem 🙂
Beautiful post!
Thanks Marco! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Hi Dave,
I’ve tried looking for the profile_id= number and plugging it into https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=
However I keep getting the same results or it says “Pages Similar to Kereta Murah” aka it is always personal page and not a group page.
Any suggestions of why it is doing this?
When I follow your example exactly I come back with MY top page suggestions and pages I’ve been invited to.
Sounds like you’re not getting the correct Page ID number. Make sure you’re looking at the source code for the correct page and not accidentally looking at the source code of a different page.
When you search for “profile_id” in the source code of the correct page, make sure you use the 1st result that’s found.
Hope this solves your issue!
This is the single most useful post regarding Facebook targeting that I have seen, AWESOME!! The Thrive Themes team Rock :-D. Thanks Dave.
So stoked to hear you enjoyed the article and found it useful, Jason 🙂
Awesome article! I’m going to use this with my next launch. Question: what if your ads aren’t driving them to your website but an opt-in or landing page instead(I have thrive landing pages)? Can you still use a pixel for retargeting?
Glad you enjoyed the article Kysha 🙂 This strategy will work BEST if you’re sending the traffic to a dedicated landing page instead of your homepage.
So yes, you can still use the pixel for retargeting 🙂
Ive just started advertising with fb for the first time as a next step. The lookalike audience option has led it to be profitable from day one, but this info will deff allow me to do a better job. Thanks!!
Stoked to hear you’re already having success with FB ads Michiel 🙂
Thanks Dave, this is great info!
I really like how you explain this step by step and will give it a try.
Glad you found it helpful, Daphne 🙂 Would love to hear your results once you give it a try!
Great advice – thanks. How can I use this to target book readers in a specific genre?
Hmmm, a good question…I’d search for interests of well known books that are in the same genre of the book you want to promote.
Very informative. Thanks.
Glad you found the post helpful, Dayanand 🙂
So good! I knew how to find pages my audience is interested in, but not how to get their demographics from the back end. Thanks a lot!
No problem, Jaya! Glad you enjoyed the post and found it helpful 🙂
I’m just in the process of creating a new micro continuity membership site – will definitely use this to drive traffic to my landing page. Time to build a my new facebook page for this new site/niche
Love to see you’re taking action, Leo! Stoked you found the post helpful 🙂 Good luck with the new facebook page!
Hi Dave,
i can’t finde the profile_id= on the page source code in the german Facebook. Has it another name?
LG
Der Brian
Oh wow, yeah, I have no idea, unfortunately. Not sure what it would be tagged as in the German Facebook. My best guess would be to switch your preferences to English and see if you can find it. Sorry I can’t be more helpful with this issue…
I posted an AD last month and got over 2000 likes and 1 conversion. I will use your technic next time I have the extra cash.
Hope the technique works well for you, Dan!
Solid piece of content Dave! Love the way you combined FB Graph Search + ID + Audience Insights 🙂 I’d add the following Facebook marketing hack for those going Pro: Lead Ads targeting your WCA & LA (1% best) .
Stoked you enjoyed the post Krisz 🙂
Great pro tip as well!
Thanks Dave, a very helpful and futuristic content. Please is there any hack like this for linkedin and/or twitter? I will like to learn your hack for these two also.
Thanks and keep posting the good stuffs.
Glad you enjoyed the post Akintomiwa 🙂
I haven’t done much work with Linkedin or Twitter. As they are different platforms I’m sure they have their own lil tips and tricks. I’ll have to look more into them for myself and see if I can develop a sound strategy for the platforms.
An excellent post with info others would want paying for!
Thanks.
Stoked you enjoyed the post and found it helpful, Brian 🙂
Hi Dave, thank you for the detaile tips.
When I enter in audience insights *Revista PSYCHOLOGIES* one of the pages of interest with more than 300k likes I am told this:
You have selected an audience of fewer than 1,000 people. To protect the privacy of people on Facebook, we don’t share data for a group this size. Please change your targeting criteria to include more people.
Do you have any tips?
Make sure the ONLY thing you have in your targeting options is the *Revista PSYCHOLOGIES* page. Sometimes when you open the insights tool it will automatically select the United States of America in the location section. Make sure you delete that, because it will make your audience extremely small if you’re targeting a page in a different country/language like it looks like you’re doing.
Hope this helps 🙂
Thank you Dave,
I did try to eliminate the United States option and still getting the annoying message.
(You have selected an audience of fewer than 1,000 people. To protect the privacy of people on Facebook, we don’t share data for a group this size. Please change your targeting criteria to include more people.)
I did the test with Safari and Chrome… still the same frustrating message…
Can you please give me another option?
Hmmm, I’m not sure why it’s giving you that message and I’d have to see your screen to be sure. The only thing I can think of is to try to enter more pages and see if have better luck with the strategy…
Fantastic article Dave, grabbed a few little golden nuggets from this that will help my Facebook campaigns.
Awesome to hear that Jimmy! Glad you found it useful 🙂
I love this article, very helpful. Unfortunately I can’t quite figure it out for my own audience, as my product isn’t ‘interest’ based, but need based. So I can’t find a way to find out what Facebook pages they might be following. Once I *do* I will follow your plan!
Glad you enjoyed the article Clare! Would love to try and help you start the process even if you have a need based product, but would need some more information from your end 🙂
Wonderful post with lots of great information. Thanks for writing!
No problem Bryce! Glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful 🙂
Sweet! This post is exactly what I needed. I’ve been trying to use facebook ads for the last few weeks and can’t seem to drill down to the right audience…
Glad you enjoyed the article, Robert 🙂 Good luck with the facebook ads!
That was a great post Dave. Thank you. I’ve been wanting to get better at dialing-in an audience for better ROI on FB ads.
This might be user-error, but I’m getting the same results as some of the others – multiple profile_id=’s on each page.
Take a look at the source for the Facebook page for Aweber (https://www.facebook.com/aweber/). I find 3 profile_id= numbers (155426534507558, 47720438030, & 623215027710699).
They all seem off – or way off. What am I missing?
Hey Don, I had a look at the Aweber page and did the profile_id= search. You will always find multiple numbers in the source code. Usually it’s the first profile_id in the search results but sometimes it won’t be.
If I perform the technique I discussed in the post and it gives me “Pages Similar to [Some page I’m not interested in]” I know I found the wrong page id, so I’ll go back to the source code and go to the next number, put it in the URL and check to see if it worked.
For Aweber, this is the profile id I found: 34786336879
So the Link would be: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=34786336879
Hope this helps!
Thanks for your response, Dave. I appreciate it.
I looked again and ended-up seeing the SAME results as before (the 3 ids, none of which were for Aweber).
On a hunch, I got the idea to check again, but this time using Firefox (I had been using Chrome). When I viewed Aweber’s Facebook page source, I found that there was just one profile_id=, and it was the one you found (34786336879). Not sure why that’s making a difference, but it did.
Thanks for helping me solve the dilemma!
Getting stuck on something so basic as profile_id= doesn’t show up in the source code ??..
Got profile_id without the “equal” sign 19 times.
Also, must somehow relate back to my own site as the 1st profile_id without “=” gets me the same id from 2 different pages.
Hey Lasse, not sure what the issue could be. What FB page are you trying to find the page ID for? Let me know, I’ll check out the source code, see what I can find and then we can work together to help make sure you can do the correct process going forward 🙂
Maan… what an incredible post… awesome!!
i knew a few things of facebook audience insights but that “https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=ID” trick is great… since the graph search was down….
Thanks Dave!
No problem Mauricio! Glad you found the post helpful 🙂
Just ran the demographics for my new athletics line and realize immediately why my ads aren’t working so great… my site and ads are targeted to middle aged women, but my FB demographic is overwhelmingly 18-24, followed by 25-34. I’ll make changes immediately! Thank you!!!
Awesome information to find out, glad the article was helpful for you, Jen 🙂
Thanks….really really hope I’m not missing something obvious,
but,, really doesn’t show up when I try;
https://www.facebook.com/invictustraveltraining/?fref=ts for instance.
So the page ID I found when running the search was: 1533698566845893
Which gives you this when you plug it in: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=1533698566845893
When you search the source code make sure you’re searching “profile_id=” and make sure you’re not using quotation marks in the search bar. Hope this helps and let me know if you’re still having issues 🙂
Hey Dave, AMAZING article! Thank you so much!
Just a note, I believe Facebook changed their code. I get IDs for different pages when I search using “profile_id=” but I get the correct ID when I search using “page_id:”
Try it out and if you find the same thing, consider updating the article so others don’t run into the same issue 🙂
Thanks for letting me know about this Ashao and for letting others leaving comments about the change! Super helpful 🙂
I’ve updated the post to reflect the FB changes!
Thanks Dave,
wonder if it’s a country setting or, simply the fact that I’m not in the US.
(still all text/code is i English) With the “=” there’s is none. But, what seems to be unique per page by searching with the number you got me is instead; fb://page/”numberxxx”
Tried both chrome & firefox, same thing….
But, now I’ve got the number and probably a workaround. !!
Awesome to hear about the workaround, Lasse! Nice find 🙂
This really was an excellent post! I’ve read many posts on using facebook ads, and this one is up there with the very post, if not the best. Thanks Dave
I’m stoked to hear that Mikael! Glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful 🙂
Excellent post. When I searched for the ID number as you said, I could only find the ID number of the pages liked by the page I aimed.
The alternative method that I found was going to Photos and then to Albums (to look for the photos the page owner had uploaded). Clicking on any picture you get a long link with lots of numbers. The last set of numbers is the page ID! Hope this information is useful.
Beautiful find Patricia, nice workaround, thanks for sharing 🙂
Any easy way to find the Facebook ID is to use this free online site: http://findfacebookid.com
Awesome! Thanks for the resource Mark 🙂
the link seems dead, although https://findmyfbid.in did the job – thanks!
Thanks Todd!
My first language is Spanish and i understand better than videos training. It so simple, thanks a lot.
Awesome to hear Damaris! Glad you found it simple and helpful 🙂
PHENOMENAL Advice. Thanks so much for getting granular and giving a realistic hack. I have a 1,500 email list, but still not enough for retargeting. This will seriously help! Thanks!!
No problem Alexi! Glad you found it helpful 🙂
Great article but what is a lookalike audience?
Glad you enjoyed the article Atif 🙂
Lookalike Audiences are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to customers you care about.
You can read more about them here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531
Thank you for putting so much time and energy into this post! I love your examples and the details you gave. Such a cool, creative strategy, can’t wait to try it out!
Thanks Betty, I’m glad you found it helpful and I hope you have some great results 🙂
It was a great read. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Do you have any experience of having setting up a campaign for a company that developes website?
Glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful Aisha 🙂
I haven’t had any experience setting up a campaign in that specific niche, sorry 🙁
Fantastic post and a great great facebook tip/cheat. Thank you Dave
Amazing article with interesting case study. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Great Article. analysis . I learned a lot from the information . Does anyone know if my assistant would be able to access a template a form copy to edit ?
Dave, Truly great article on focusing your ad dollars for the best possible return. This is where Facebook has a real leg up over Google when it comes to micro-targeting. I’ve used Facebook ads for some time now, but never considered some of the unique and useful techniques you deploy with this method. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it John!
Great explanation for what targeting is when it comes to facebook ads. That’s a good way to reach your audience and not waste money along the way on people who won’t care to see it.
Dave, thanks for your great post. Just what I needed.
hi im afraid i got held up near the beginning when i put in… profile_id= cannot search ? i keep hitting the enter button and do not get a number come up so cant conitune?????
Hmmm, I’m not exactly sure what could be the problem without seeing your screen 🙁
Search using ” page_id: ” instead. That should work!
Totally Awesome, and thanks a lot. I’m definitely on it right now.
Thanks, Nicholas!
Love this hack – thanks Dave! Just wondering though – when I inspect the Page Source – I’ve had up to 5 different Profile_id ‘s listed on the page and when I put each one of these in, it is actually a different page than the one I entered, so when I put the ID number in the url, it gives me a different page – not the one i was inspecting the source for. Any insite on this and how I can get the page I’m viewing the source for? cheers
Hi Jody, I’m not sure what could be causing this. My guess is that you’re finding the wrong page IDs, so try to use a took like https://findmyfbid.com or some of the other resources mentioned in the comments of this post. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help on this!
Search the source code using ” page_id: “. That should do the trick. Hope that helps!
Have you found that fb CHANGED the Audience Insights tool, so that we are not able to view the page likes anymore? It could be a funky glitch on my end, but definitely check it out for yourself and see if all is well…. or if we have to adjust how we do this. Thanks for the transparency and GREAT insight!
Hi Vlad, FB is constantly changing things, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this has been updated. I’ll have to look into it though
Thank you so much! Very informative and very useful. I’m just starting out on FB marketing but don’t know where to begin. Your article is very timely. You are the Bruce Lee of Marketing…
Haha thanks Vincent! Glad you found it helpful 🙂
Does anyone know if you can do this in Australia yet?
You should be able to, yes 🙂
Very helpful tips on my side since it’s my first time to create a page. However, I got confused on the (1)rinse and repeat and (2)create lookalike page. I really didnt get the idea of these 2. Would you consider conducting fb tutorial on this one? Coz if you do, I would definitely sign up :))
It can get a bit confusing, for sure. If I create a tutorial on it I’ll let you know!
Great article
I’m on a mac and don’t know how to find
View page source. When I right click nothing happens?
Suggestions?
You need to “open apple” click to “right click” to bring up the options
Hi Dave, I’ve used this technique before when I read your article earlier this year but now when I use https://www.facebook.com/pages/?frompageid=ID it has Pages Similar To “xxxxx” but now similar pages show. I have even copied and pasted some of the suggestion that you have put in the comments previously but with the same result. Has something chaged with Facebook or am I now missing something.
Thank You
Hmm, it’s possible things have changed, but I’m not sure I understand what’s going wrong on your end…Pages Similar to “xxxxx” is what you want
I had the same problem. Facebook’s code must have changed. Try searching the page source for ” page_id: ” instead of “profile_id=”
Hi Dave how can i reverse engineer things if i am having the pixel id of my competitor.
Not sure what you mean here Mozz, once you have the pixel id you’d plug it into the website I linked to in the article and follow the steps.
Love this! However, I got lost in step #2 – finding similar pages. After I plug in the target page ID, I can’t replicate your experience, instead, I’m only landing on my own pages homepage. Tried a few different examples with no luck. Did I do anything wrong or has the FB experience changed?
I’d guess you’re switching up numbers somehow, but I can’t be sure unless I was there to see what you’re doing 🙁
Hi Min, I was having the same trouble. I discover Facebook’s code must have changed. It’s not long “profile_ID=” now use “page_ID:” instead. Hope that helps!
Is this guide still current? I cant get insight on other pages
Hi Julian, I’m not 100% if the screenshots are up to date as Facebook likes to move things around quite a bit, but you should still be able to see what other pages people are interested in based on your targeting
Awesome article. Thank you for taking the time to break it down step by step – really useful Dave – you’re a star!
Thanks Yasmin! Glad you found it helpful 🙂
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for. Thank you so much. Stupid question: Thrive Themes landing page is useable on FB right? I’m so new. Thanks.
Hi Ashanda,
No, Thrive Landing Pages is usable on WordPress, not on Facebook.
great article! I wish there was a way for me to bookmark it and have all my bookmarked/saved articles appear on my member dashboard. Sometimes I find a lovely gem like this article and then later can’t find it again….was it in blogs?? Was it in the knowledge base…? LOL.
I use multiple computers/devices, so browser bookmarks are less effective than a site-centric bookmarking system.
maybe it’ll be a future addition for members!? 😉
Hahaha yes, I know your pain! I use Evernote to save everything so I never have to try and remember where I saved anything because it just ALWAYS goes to Evernote.
My niche (Abstract Painting) seems to be rather small on FB only found a couple of pages with over 25k Likes, and neither were in the additional interest list.
I do have a list over 900 subscribers that have gotten my free lead magnet, and about 220 of them have become paid customers, with about 50 becoming avid fans.
Can’t wait till I have 1000 Fans I’d love to have a look-a-like Audience from that list.
In the meantime, I plan to create a look-a-like audience from the list I have, and target what I’ve observed my most engaged audience to be.
Do you have any recommendations for smaller niches like mine?
Hey William! Sounds like you’re on the right path. You actually only need 100 people to create a lookalike audience from, so your plan to create a lookalike audience from your 900 subscribers is a great one!
If you’ve set up your Facebook pixel and tracking correctly you can also create some awesome lookalike audiences. Check out this post: https://thrivethemes.com/your-first-facebook-ad/ for more!