Facebook paid 
reach has become more and more expensive as more and more companies want to reach people with their posts. However, since the beginning of this year, you can spend your money more efficiently by using a new tool implemented by Facebook: the audience optimisation tool.
You may have noticed in your Facebook page timeline a new icon, which looks like a target practice sign, right next to the posting scheduler. If you click on it you can enter the menu of the brand new way to select who gets to see your post and, more importantly, who will not get to see it.
More Freedom in Making Choices
What Facebook Audience Optimisation innovates in audience targeting is the audience restriction tab. This is where you can fine tune your boosted post audience, by filtering out people who do not fit your target customer profile.
Now let us address the potential detractors of this new tool. Why would you want to filter out people? Is it not your goal to reach as many potential customers as possible? That is true, but please remember the keywords “potential customers”. If you are running a car dealership in Queensland, your target customers are not teenagers from Perth or Adelaide. So, if you want to post a contest with a test drive as the main prize, you really wouldn’t want a 16-year old from Perth or Adelaide to win it, is that correct?
Now, let us get back on track and see how audience optimisation works in its nitty-gritty.
What Is the Preferred Audience?
The first tab you see once you click on the new audience optimisation tool is called Preferred Audience. In this tab you can fill in various interests for people who are most likely to want to read your posts.
Facebook recommends between 6 and 10 interest tags as best practice, but you can adapt this to your needs. For example, you can split a test in two interest groups and test it over a weekend to compare which type of interest performed better for your post.
How to Use Audience Restrictions
The audience restrictions tab, as we explained above, is intended to help you control viewership to the exact type of people who are most likely to engage with your business. But that is not all. You can also use it for A/B testing purposes.
Until now, you could only do that with ads. Now you can get a better grip of the type of content your target audience prefers to see, how they prefer to engage with what you post, what impact different type of stories in your content mix has on your followers.
It is simply a brand new way to make sure that your content reaches the people who like that specific type of content, presented in the specific form you chose. By splitting audiences and testing them by various metrics, you can get to know your Facebook fans better than ever before.
The Facebook Audience Optimisation tool is still rolling out to users all over the world. Some of you may not see it yet on your Facebook page. Do not worry, it will be implemented soon. In the meantime, you have had the opportunity to learn what it does so you can start using it efficiently right away after you get it.