Facebook Targeting Tool – How to Target Friends of People Who Like Your Page

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you a feature in the Facebook targeting tool called connections that a lot of people don’t know about, but that can be quite powerful when used correctly.

This is the ability to target friends of people who like your Facebook page.

We’re not targeting the people who like your Facebook page here, because unless you have hundreds of thousands of likes, your audience will probably burn out very quickly. Instead, I’m going to show you how to target all of these people’s Facebook friends.

What Kind of Business This Kind of Facebook Targeting Works For

This type of targeting can work for most businesses, but is particularly well suited for businesses that have a social element.

Things like:

• Apps
• Social Media
• Games

If someone’s friends using a product or service is likely to influence a new purchase in your business, then this is a good option to try.

Pro Tip: Using this type of targeting on Facebook is not just limited to those types of businesses, because advertising to this particular group of people leverages a concept called social proof. And that can be a powerful motivator in MANY types of businesses.

A Cool Feature of Advertising to the Friends of People Who Like Your Page

I mentioned social proof earlier. Here’s a quote about social proof from the man who coined the term – Robert Cialdini.

“Once again we can see that social proof is most powerful for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.”

Robert Cialdini – Influence

Basically, the idea is that people look to see what the people around them are doing in order to make decisions.

When you advertise to people who are friends of the people who like your Facebook page you get instant social proof.

That’s because Facebook SHOWS the people who like the page right on your ad! It will say something like “John Smith likes XYZ company.”

It acts like a mini-endorsement and in many situations can be quite powerful. This is a good option to keep in your ad toolbox for testing.

How to Use the Facebook Connections Targeting Tool to Set This Up

I’ve created an example campaign to show you how to do this. This type of targeting is done at the ad set level.

Important: If you are new to using the Facebook ad platform, it’s important that you understand HOW to set up ads and the different levels of a Facebook campaign. I have a Beginners Guide on Facebook Ads here. It’s a great place to start.

When you are in your ad set level you want to look for a section called connections under interest targeting.

Then you want to select “Friends of people who like your page.”

Then add in your page name here:

Then select your other targeting options, go ahead and click publish and you’re good to run that campaign.

More Free Facebook Ads Training

There is nothing I like better than to see business owners increase their ROI with Facebook Ads. In order to help business owners succeed with Facebook ads I’ve created a FREE webinar training that you can register for here.

When you attend this webinar you’ll learn:

• 3 different Facebook ad strategies that we use every day. These strategies have generated millions of dollars in revenue and are tried and proven to work.
• How to customize the Facebook ads strategy to your particular business. There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to Facebook ads.
• How Facebook and Instagram have changed and how to adjust your ad strategy to what works in 2021.

Video Training: How to Target the Friends of People Who Like Your Facebook Page

In this video I go over the details of how to do this connection based Facebook targeting.

Tip: Sometimes the audience size for a particular targeting looks much smaller than you expect it to be. This is often a glitch in the Facebook interface. I go over how this works and when you can ignore it at 2:56 in the video.

The Bottom Line on Targeting the Friends of People Who Like Your Facebook Page

When you use this type of targeting you leverage an advertising concept called social proof. Because humans do things in groups, we like to make sure our friends are doing the same things we’re doing.

Targeting the friends of people who like your Facebook page creates a notice in your ad that the friend of the person you are advertising to likes your page. This can be a powerful targeting option for many businesses.