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The Facebook Ads Hit List: Who to Target, Who to Ignore, and How to Stop Wasting Money

  • Lukas Holschuh
  • July 16, 2025
  • 09:56 pm

Inside this article, you’ll discover:

  • My prioritized “hit list” for Facebook audiences, from stone-cold prospects to red-hot buyers.
  • The raw truth about why your interest targeting is probably failing (and how to fix it).
  • When to use Lookalikes, when to retarget, and when to go broad without burning your budget.
  • The simple rule for knowing exactly when to kill a failing ad audience.

Tired of gambling on audiences? Book a free strategy session. I'll audit your targeting and show you how to build a "hit list" that actually finds customers.

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Let’s be honest. You’re boosting posts. You’re targeting people who “like” entrepreneurship or marketing. You're throwing darts in a dark room and wondering why you're not hitting the bullseye.

Let's stop the madness. Facebook Ads isn't about finding one magic interest group. It's a system.

When I audit client accounts, I see the same mistake over and over: they're testing random audiences that have no chance of working.

There’s a pecking order. The closer your audience is to the money, the better it will perform. Your job is to master this system, not fight it.

Here is the exact priority I use.

But before we get to the list, burn this into your brain: an audience of people who abandoned their cart is infinitely more valuable than an audience of people who "like" your competitor's page.

Your entire strategy should be about getting data from the highest-intent people possible, then telling Facebook, "Go find me more people exactly like these ones."


THE OFFICIAL AUDIENCE HIT LIST

This is the exact order of priority I use. The audiences at the top of each list are the most powerful.


Prospecting Audiences (ToFu - Top of Funnel)

You're reaching out to cold strangers. The goal is to find new customers efficiently.


High-Value Lookalikes (The A-List): This is your most powerful tool. You are creating a new audience of people who statistically look just like your best customers. Test them in this order:

  1. Lookalike of Highest Value Customers
  2. Lookalike of All Past Customers
  3. Lookalike of Purchased 180 days
  4. Lookalike of Added Payment Info / Initiated Checkout
  5. Lookalike of Added to Cart


Detailed Targeting (The Starting Point): If you're new with no data, start here. The key is to be hyper-specific. Don't target "Amazon" to find e-commerce owners. Target "Shopify," "WooCommerce," or admins of a "Facebook Retail Page."


Broad Targeting (The Endgame): Only for mature accounts with thousands of pixel conversions. You target only by age/gender/location and trust Facebook's AI to find your buyers.


Warm Audiences (MoFu - Middle of Funnel)

These people know who you are but aren't sold yet. Your job is to remind and educate. Exclude all purchasers.

  1. Visited Landing or Product Page
  2. Product Catalog Visitors
  3. All Website Visitors (last 30-60 days)
  4. Watched 50% of a video ad
  5. Watched 10 seconds of a video ad


Hot Audiences (BoFu - Bottom of Funnel)

This is your "money on the table" list. These people were seconds from buying. Your ads should handle objections, build trust, and make it easy to complete the purchase.


  1. Added Payment Method (but didn't buy)
  2. Initiated Checkout (but didn't buy)
  3. Visited Checkout Page (but didn't buy)
  4. Viewed Cart / Added to Cart (but didn't buy)

Past Customers (Retention & Upsell)

The easiest and cheapest sale is to an existing happy customer. Target them with new products or special offers.


  1. Highest Value Previous Customers
  2. All Previous Customers (Purchased 180 days, etc.)


This is for eCommerce accounts but you can use a very similar structure for pretty much any niche. If you have a small budget, then combine MOFU and BOFU into one ad set. And you might even want to combine multiple retargeting audiences into one ad set.

Think this is just a list?

We used this exact priority system to help a company achieve massive volume. We ignored the vanity audiences and focused on the ones that drove conversions. See how audience testing drove higher volume in this case study.

Now, sharing a few words of advice on how to pick the right audiences:

#1 For new accounts, start by testing detailed targeting, interests and behaviours. Then dive into retargeting and lookalikes as soon as you have enough data. You need at least 100 people in a custom audience for this. But you really want more than that and you can combine multiple retargeting audiences in the beginning if you're running on a small ad spend. So start with detailed targeting first to get enough data.


#2 For detailed targeting, you gotta make sure to pick the right interests that are specific to your target audience. I usually group them into themes of related interests. But really, you want to think about what stuff people in your target audience like, what pages they follow, what interests they might list on their profile. The key here is to ensure that the interests you're targeting contain a significant number of people that fit your buyer persona. If your interest is too broad, you'll end up reaching more people outside your target audience than those within it.

For instance, if you're targeting owners of eCommerce stores, targeting "Amazon" as an interest might not be the best strategy. Why? Because this interest will include a lot of consumers and business people, but the majority of them won't be owners of eCommerce stores. You could try audience layering, say, people who like "Amazon" and are also "small business owners". But again, you might not get a lot of eCommerce store owners, but just regular business owners that happen to like Amazon. Instead, aim for targeting options that contain your target audience: retail page owners, pages of Amazon agencies, eCommerce software like Shopify and WooCommerce, retail-related interests, etc. These are more likely to be liked by people in your target audience than by those who are not.


#3 Once you have enough data from interest targeting, it's time to try retargeting and lookalike audiences. I often see clients not testing all available retargeting audiences, and testing lookalikes that are too broad and not specific to the conversions they want to drive. Refer to the list above, test them in order of priority. Start with the events that are most meaningful to you (as close as possible to your conversion event). So if your objective is to drive sales, then make a lookalikes of purchasers, checkouts, adds to cart, etc. in that order, as soon as you have enough conversions for that event (at least 100 but you usually need a lot more for it to work well).


#4 Test, test, test, and test again. And you really want to use a similar account structure as I've outlined above. Have different long-term campaigns for each stage of the funnel, then split test audiences inside it. Turn off audiences that don't perform well after a few days. How long you should wait depends on how much a conversion is worth to you and how much the average cost per conversion is. So e.g. if an audience has spent 3x as much as your average cost per conversion, then it's probably not going to beat your other audiences.

Stop Guessing, Start Strategising.

Your ad account shouldn't be a lottery. It should be a systematic machine. The rules are simple:

  1. Earn Your Audiences. You don't start with the best lookalikes. You start with specific interests to get the sales, which then lets you build the powerful lookalike audiences.
  2. Specificity is Everything. Vague interests get vague results. Go deeper. Find the podcasts, tools, or influencers that only your ideal customer would know.
  3. Test Cleanly. Don't lump ten audiences into one ad set. Isolate your prospecting and retargeting campaigns. Test one audience against another so you know what truly works.
  4. Know When to Cut. My rule: If an audience has spent 2x-3x your target Cost Per Acquisition with zero conversions, cut it. It’s not going to magically start working. Be disciplined.

This is the loop. This is how you build a strategy that isn't based on luck.

If your audience targeting is a mess and you're tired of setting your money on fire, let's talk.

Book a free consultation at holschuh.co.uk. I’ll show you who to target, who to cut, and how to build a targeting strategy that actually works.