Audience Targeting on Meta: How to Digitise Your Customer Personas

Mike Lim • 2025-11-26 PERFORMANCE MARKETING

Learn how to reach the right audiences on Meta by identifying your target market, turning customer personas digital, and testing and refining audience segments and ad creatives for the best result.

Why Personas Matter: A Personal Lesson from Years of Marketing

Over the years, I’ve worked with many businesses and marketers who’ve made the same mistake: broad-based targeting. They select a few random demographics—age, location, maybe an interest like "travel"—and hope for the best. It’s quick and easy, but rarely effective. The result? Engagement is there, but quality leads aren’t. I’ve seen businesses get tons of clicks, but the conversions? Not from their ideal customers. Instead, they’re from people who aren’t really interested in what they’re selling. Here’s the truth: When you ignore the human element behind the numbers, you can’t expect to effectively engage with your ideal customer. Without a clear understanding of who you're truly speaking to, you're essentially just guessing. That’s why audience personas are what make the difference. When I started focusing on personas, everything changed. It’s not enough to just pick a broad interest or age group. You need to understand your audience’s motivations, challenges, and what truly speaks to them. So, why does this matter? Because personas give you the clarity to target the right people with the right message. In this piece, I’ll show you how to create personas and how they can transform your targeting for better results.

Reaching Your Target Audience with the Right Message - A Strategic Process

1. Identify Your Target Market: Creating Personas and Targeting Them Digitally

Start by understanding the broader market for your product or service. This involves high-level categories such as demographics (age, gender, income level), geographics (location, regional preferences), and psychographics (interests, values, behaviours). Ask yourself questions like:

Who

benefits from my product?

What

problems does my product solve?

How

can I segment this audience into groups that share similar needs or characteristics?

2. Create Hypotheses on Audience-Content Fit:

Once you have the broader categories, hypothesise what kind of content or messaging will resonate with each segment. This involves testing different audience segments against different types of content to see which combinations perform best.

3. Data Collection & Insights:

Collect data from previous campaigns, social media interactions, website behaviour, or market research. This will help refine your target personas, showing you what is actually driving engagement and conversions. From there, you can begin to narrow your focus on the most promising sub-segments.

1a. Creating Personas: Why It’s More Than Just Demographics

When a business or marketer is setting up their audience targeting, they need to start with a clear understanding of who their ideal customers are. This includes recognising the broad audience categories and narrowing them down to a specific set of characteristics that define a customer persona. A persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. This involves going deeper into the psychographics and behavioural patterns of your target audience. To create a useful persona, think beyond basic demographics. Here are some key characteristics to focus on:

Key Characteristics of a Persona:

• Demographics:

◦ Age: What age range are they in? This will help define what kind of content and language they are likely to engage with.

◦ Gender: Are there gender-specific preferences in product usage or engagement?

◦ Location: Geographic location often influences purchasing behaviours, especially for businesses with physical products or location-specific services.

◦ Income & Occupation: These factors influence the persona's purchasing power and decision-making process.

• Psychographics:

◦ Interests and Hobbies: What activities or passions do they pursue in their personal time? These help create more targeted content and messaging.

◦ Values and Lifestyle: What motivates them? Are they driven by convenience, luxury, affordability, or sustainability?

◦ Buying Behaviour: How do they approach buying decisions? Are they price-sensitive, brand-loyal, or convenience-driven?

• Digital Behaviour & Media Consumption:

◦ Preferred Platforms: What digital platforms do they spend most of their time on? (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube)

◦ Content Type: Do they prefer video, blog articles, podcasts, or interactive content like quizzes or polls?

◦ Purchase Triggers: What makes them decide to buy? Is it a limited-time offer, a strong brand reputation, a review, or a personal recommendation?

• Challenges & Pain Points:

◦ What problems do they need to solve? This is critical to ensure that your messaging and content align with their needs.

Here’s a Persona Example Based on a Fictional Business

Business Name

EcoNomad Adventures

Industry

Eco-Tourism & Adventure Travel

Target Market

Young, adventurous, eco-conscious travellers

Location

Malaysia

1b. Translating Personas into Digital Targeting Parameters

Once you've created your personas, you need to translate these characteristics into targeting parameters for digital platforms like Facebook, Google Ads, or YouTube. Here’s how to approach it:

Targeting Parameters to Consider:

1. Location Targeting

• Geo-targeting: Target users in specific locations, such as cities, regions, or even countries. For example, if your persona is located in major urban centers, use geographic data to reach them.

• Local Targeting: For businesses with a physical location, you can also target users within a specific radius of your store.

2. Demographic Targeting

• Age & Gender: Use age and gender data to ensure your ads are reaching the right demographic. For example, if you’re selling fitness apparel targeted at women aged 18-30, make sure your platform allows for this filtering.

• Income & Occupation: Some platforms, like Facebook and Google, allow you to target users based on income brackets or job titles. This is particularly useful for high-end products or services.

3. Interest & Behavioural Targeting:

• Interests: Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to target users based on their likes, interests, or online activities. For example, if your persona is interested in "vegan cooking," you can use this interest to target them with related content.

• Behaviour: Behavioural targeting involves tracking how people behave online. For instance, if your persona frequently watches travel videos or engages with content about eco-tourism, you can target ads related to eco-friendly products or travel experiences.

4. Device & Placement Targeting:

• Device Targeting: Depending on whether your target audience is more likely to engage on mobile or desktop, you can target your ads specifically for certain devices.

• Placement Targeting: You can also decide where your ads will appear, whether on mobile apps, websites, or social media feeds.

Relating back to our example of Adventurous Amelia:

1. Location Targeting:

• Where to Target: Focus on major cities in Malaysia, especially Kuala Lumpur (Amelia's home base), Penang, and Johor Bahru. These cities are home to a high concentration of young professionals who are likely to fit Amelia's persona.

2. Demographics & Interests

• Age Range: Target people aged 25-35, who are likely to have the disposable income and interest in travel and adventure tourism. Amelia is 28, so this age range is ideal for reaching similar young professionals

• Interests: Target users who have expressed interest in:

◦ Eco-tourism/travel

◦ Hiking and outdoor adventure activities

◦ Volunteering and community-based travel programs

◦ Travel blogs

Engagement Data & Custom Audiences:

1. Retargeting:

Use retargeting ads to reach people who have already interacted with your brand—whether through website visits, social media engagements, or email sign-ups. (I’ve written in detail how to do retargeting especially for cart abandonment. You should check that out if you’re an eCommerce business.)

2. Lookalike Audiences

Once you've established your core audience, create Lookalike Audiences based on users who share similar traits to your existing customers. This helps expand your reach to people most likely to be interested in your product. If you need more guidance, check out my step-by-step guide on lookalikes.

2. Testing & Refining Audience-Content Fit for Optimal Performance

Once you've defined your personas and set up targeted campaigns, it’s time to test and refine. Testing different audience segments, ad creatives, and messaging is essential to ensure you're engaging the right people with the right content (Audience-content fit). This is where A/B testing comes in.

For more in-depth strategies on how to test your creatives effectively, check out my detailed playbook on Meta Ads Creative Testing here. In that article, I dive into the process of testing different creatives, measuring the results, and refining your approach to find what resonates most with your audience. Testing is not just about testing for the sake of it—it’s about optimising your content to speak to your persona and increase conversions.

3. Continuous Refinement of Personas Based on Data Insights

The process of audience targeting isn’t static. As you gather more data on how your campaigns perform, refine your personas by incorporating new insights and behavioural patterns. Update your customer personas over time to ensure that they remain aligned with evolving market trends and consumer preferences.

By following this framework, you can ensure that your targeting strategy is customer-centric, data-driven, and optimised for conversion. The process begins with understanding your target audience’s characteristics and personas, followed by translating those traits into specific digital targeting parameters across multiple platforms. As you continue testing and refining your approach, you'll be able to create personalised, high-performing campaigns that drive tangible results.

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