If you are an eCommerce brand that uses Facebook ads to target an audience, you might be wondering about Facebook ads minimum audience size.

While it may be easy to simply pick a number, there will be issues if your audience size is too small or too large. 

• If your audience is too small, it will result in not many people knowing about your brand
• If your audience is too large, it means you might be wasting resources and aimlessly targeting more people than necessary.

Either way, it will not result in a good ROI.

Let’s take a look at what should be your Facebook ads minimum audience, why the audience size is important, and our audience size recommendations.

What Should be the Facebook Ads Minimum Audience Size?

When it comes to custom audiences on Facebook, the minimum requirement is 100 people.

But as soon as you understand your audience better, it is advised to increase the scale. 

Since each business is unique, there is no perfect answer for how big your audience size needs to be. Usually, businesses try to target between 100,000 and 1,000,000 people.

Your audience size will depend on your eCommerce business, and the success of your ads will depend on your ability to target the right audience.

Determining your audience size beforehand is imperative if you want to reach the right people with Facebook ads. Facebook recommends that you should target at least 1000 people. 

Why Audience Size Matters

Most people think that the larger your audience size, the better for your business. However, this is not true.

For example, if a business tries to target an audience of over 1,000,000 people, Facebook will not be able to show your message to all the people at once and the platform might pick people randomly.

Other than that, it is not possible to nurture a relationship with so many people if you have a limited budget. Therefore, it is important to narrow down your target audience and reach them with the right frequency.

In order to reach the right frequency, you should remember that a person will need to see your advertisement several times before they are motivated to take action.

Thus, you can only reach this frequency after you narrow down on your audiences. Once you narrow it down, you will be able to reach the right people at the right time.

Your audience should be relevant to your eCommerce brand and what you are advertising. For instance, if you design products that cater to young adults, there is no use in targeting a huge audience that has several other age groups included.

This will only result in your advertisement not resonating with them. Your message has to be aligned with your audience.

Types of Facebook Audiences

Facebook audiences can be divided into three types. These are listed below.

Saved Audience

A Saved Audience is one that you can define by choosing a person’s:

• Location
• Age
• Interest
• Gender
• Behavior
• Income level.

You can create a Saved Audience by heading to the Audience Manager or during campaign setup.

Custom Audience

A Custom Audience is one that you can set up using your existing customer information.

You can use email IDs, phone numbers, and other information.

This audience is great to retarget as they are the most promising.

Lookalike Audience

Using the Facebook Lookalike Audience you can target people who are quite similar to your existing customers.

For this, you will have to use your Custom Audience as a starting point. Facebook recommends that you have at least 1000 to 50,000 people on your list.

Facebook will identify common attributes with your existing customer audience and use that information to create a Lookalike Audience.

Factors That Affect Audience Size

Listed below are certain factors that will affect your audience size.

Whom you plan on targeting

Your target audience depends on the type of eCommerce business you have. Are you an international brand or a local and regional one?

The bigger your brand is, the more people you will need to target and vice versa.

Your total budget

Budget plays an important role as well. If you have a smaller budget, your audience size will be limited compared to if you had a bigger budget.

A limited budget will restrict you from targeting a larger audience, even if you want to.

Your final goal

When you first publish your Facebook ads, it may be worth targeting more people than you intend to.

This is because not everyone who sees your ad will convert. However, further down the road, your audience should automatically get smaller as you plan to retarget only potential customers. 

Keep in mind that for your Facebook ad strategy to work best, you should retarget your audience once you get a minimum number of people to convert.

Facebook’s Ads Minimum Audience Recommendations

Small-sized businesses start with 1000 people. When you start small, you get a good idea about how your ads are working, and you can always increase your target audience size. Slowly, you can increase this number to up to 50,000 people.

Medium-sized businesses usually have a target audience size that goes up to and beyond 100,000 people. 

Large businesses will target audience sizes between 500,000 to 1,000,000. Some businesses find that this is the ideal size. 

Anything over 1,000,000 people means that your audience is very large. At this point, a business spends plenty of money on advertising and Facebook may take more time to be able to locate the right people for your audience.

Very large audiences on Facebook can even go over 10 million.

To summarize:

• Small audiences do not work
• A too large audience means that Facebook will find it difficult to hit the right people
• For most businesses, a mid-sized range is the ideal option: between 100,000 and 1,000,000, depending on your budget.