Having trouble with international audience targeting (9)
I recently started doing ecommerce/
For initial targeting I was always taught to focus on the US, target the Online Shopping interest, and then flex on page interests like "I Love Dogs", and then flex again on actual brands or ecommerce sites like PetSmart.com etc. Whenever I follow those guidelines I never have trouble building an audience anywhere from 300k-1million.
The problem I'm facing is trying to use the same strategy in other countries. Disclaimer: I only just tested this for an hour and have not exhausted all options. I tried setting up targeting for a few different niches like dogs, cats, golf products, etc. and the audience numbers are just too low. I removed the brands/ecom sites like PetSmart.com because many of them don't cater to other countries. I tested the biggest ecommerce sites that do cater to some of those countries except for sites like Amazon. I also played around with the page interests by removing the english ones and trying to find pages in the native language. The only results I could get were audience sizes of less than 1000 to 50k which I don't think would generate enough traffic to even properly test. I tried every combo I could think of in terms of country, language, interests etc.
The only targeting I could get to 100k+ was really broad targeting like country, online shopping interest, and then a very broad interest that I would normally never target like "Dogs". Maybe I'm just missing something simple here and need to grab a VPN and create some accounts in other countries?
I've seen several people say now that you should always target US first, and then scale to other countries with lookalikes. Now I'm wondering if that's recommended because those other countries won't work with initial targeting and will only work letting facebook's lookalike algo's work their magic.
Like I said I only spent an hour on this but I was definitely surprised. I thought I was going to be able to easily create some audiences in those other countries. If anyone else has experience with this or any advice or ideas on how to make this work I'd love to hear any suggestions.
Thanks.
are you only targeting one country at a time? if so, try group them together to get a bigger audience size.
Originally Posted by cawovt
ya, i group them together, find the potentials, then optimize with translation - the thinking is this: if it works without the translation, then with translation it should work even better.
Why you move to other geo's? I can't imagine you milked the US fully right? Maybe cost in US are too high, but did the rest of your funnel showed enough potential already to move it to other geo's? It's hard if you don't master native language to sell a product, especially in countries as Germany, France and Belgium where native languages are really needed to convert well in general.
UK, Australia and NZ seem to be a better option IMHO, lower cost, same language and kinda similar behaviour.
What I try to say, perhaps it's best to optimize your funnel the "simple" way (english speaking countries) before touching other geo's.
Originally Posted by stickupkid
If you look at the posts in there many people are saying to not start with US targeting.
I don't have actual experience to confirm or deny anything said in that thread, but it was enough to get me interested in testing other geos right away.
Originally Posted by mitchell
If your journey in US doesn't look promising then yes, try another geo!
I 100% agree with @stickupkid. I am Greek and I cannot imagine having started anywhere with FB advertising. There are WAY too many variables to master on that traffic source, incl. funnel optimization. There is just no reason you should burden yourself with another headache of putting up ads in a language you do not understand.
Another strategy is to target worldwide, and exclude fraudulent countries. Let the pixel do the work for you. Need a broad appeal product and big budget. Have the currency converter app, they all get billed in USD anyway.
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