If you’re confused about whether broad or detailed targeting is the smarter move for Facebook and Instagram ads in 2026, I break down what’s actually working inside my real client accounts.
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I explain when broad targeting is the clear winner, when lookalike audiences still outperform everything else, and the few situations where detailed targeting still makes sense for course creators.
I also walk through how to choose the right audience setup depending on the stage of your business so you don’t waste ad spend. I share exactly which targeting approach gives you the best shot at high-quality leads at the lowest cost.
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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
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SPEAKER_00:
Broad targeting versus detailed targeting for Facebook and Instagram ads in 2026. As an online course creator, which one should you choose to grow your business revenue so that you can provide for your family? Well, I’m gonna show you what I’m seeing in my client accounts, or actually, I’m gonna tell you what I’m seeing in my client accounts and show you what I mean by broad targeting and what I mean by detailed targeting in an actual account so that you can apply the same to your own. If we don’t know each other yet, hi, my name’s Quayjo, and I’ve been managing Facebook and Instagram ads for online course creators for the past about six years. So, broad targeting wins, hands down, almost always. How’s that for a very direct, semi-not clear answer? Here’s what I mean. If you already have an online course business that’s been doing well organically and has a decently large email list, then broad targeting all the way. But there are two types of broad targeting, and you need to understand what both of those options are for you and how you can best leverage those. And then detailed targeting, probably not a good option. There are a couple cases where it would be a good option. So let’s look in this account. First kind of broad targeting that I want you to understand I’m talking about would be the old way of broad targeting, meaning that we are going to target a cold look-alike audience of high value. And I’ll explain value in a moment, but ideally, if we can target an audience between, let’s say, 1.5 million and 2 million people, that is perfect. Now, using lookalike audiences is not an outdated method, it’s just a method that’s been around for many years. And especially if you have heard about Meta’s new Andromeda update, then you might understand broad targeting as a different way. I’ll cover that in a moment, but I will say right now that look-alike audiences are still working, so do not abandon those. Especially if you have some of the following audiences that are custom audiences, i.e. core audiences, and you’ll build look-alike audiences off of those. If you have some of these next three audiences, definitely try look-alike targeting, right? So if you have a ton of purchasers in your business, like over 600, build a look-alike audience off of that. If you have a big ol’ email list, like 5,000 more people or more, build a look-alike audience off of that inside of Meta and test that audience. And if you have a huge Instagram account, more importantly, if you’re already getting leads from hosts that are Instagram reels connected to mini chat, and you’re getting lots of those, then definitely your Instagram audience is engaging. You should build a look-alike audience off of that and test, test, test. None of this is guaranteed to work, even though it does work for my clients. I’m not your ad manager, maybe not yet. Anything I say, take that with a grain of salt for your own business and test it. And none of this will guarantee you income. This is the disclaimer that I have to say, right? In fact, you’re probably going to lose income at some point when you try Facebook and Instagram ads because it requires diligence in perfecting your messaging and testing your ads. And sometimes tests don’t work and sometimes you lose a bit of money. But if you keep testing 20 different times, you’ll probably find one time that works better. Well, guaranteed you will find one time that works better than the other 19 times, and that’s the mindset you want to have. So test those types of look-alike audiences. And you’re like, Quayjo, what about this other kind of broad audience targeting? Well, that just means if you get your customers from the United States of America, where I’m from, Seattle, by the way, represent, and you know the approximate age of those customers, then yes, Meta is doing better and better, especially if you already have a business that has lots of data, then a data as in you’ve gotten lots of leads, you’ve launched plenty of times, your offers are selling, your Instagram account is quite large, your email is quite large, and you’ve already had the MetaPixel installed on your website for you know over six months. Meta has a good amount of data on your business, and they can pretty much target your audience well. Test this type of broad targeting where you would target one or two countries where your customers or your best leads usually come from, and only limit the age range and then let those ads rip. See what happens. Do not just target every country in the world, not just yet. Okay, don’t do that. And also, well, I have had a couple clients who have just left targeting completely wide open and only chosen a country and let Meta decide among all the age ranges the best people to show the ads to. You can test that if you want. I don’t like it when I would throw all my budget towards a new test. Nah, test with a portion of your budget. That’s wise. If the test works better than your control, i.e. what has already been working well for your ads, then go ahead and run with that and scale up what’s working and scale down or turn off what is not working. Before I talk about detailed targeting and the only the several situations where I would still use it, let me just say that if ads feels like a lot for you, but your ads already are on and were working for your business, but not so well recently, or you need to scale up ad spend seriously, then go down to the show notes below. You can get me to audit your ads, and in two business days, you will know steps one, two, and three of what you can do to get ads working better in your ad account. That is my 48-day Facebook and Instagram ad audit. Find more about that below. So now we’re talking about detailed targeting. When do you need to do detailed targeting? I find honestly, in accounts that need detailed targeting, it’s because the email list isn’t already over, say, 600 people. Okay, and if your email list isn’t there yet, that’s fine. Just go collab. Do email like free lead magnet swaps with people that serve your same audience, but in a complimentary, non-competitive way, and grow your email list that way. Grow your email list from great content on Instagram, like reels that are connected to mini chat. Grow your email list organically, but once it gets over, say 600 minimum, over a thousand people, like you can build a lookalike audience off of that. If you’re not there yet, but you have a solid course business that’s running and you want to run ads to a lead magnet, then inside of ad manager under audience targeting, limit the reach of your ads. There is a big scary message, switch your setup, and then it will open up some of the targeting options that you are used to targeting. Note, you know, from the past, right? So we can choose custom audiences, include, exclude, and right down here is detailed targeting based on demographics and interests. You can search for the interests that have to do with what you know, great leads for your business to be interested in, and you can type those in here, and that does still work. Just meta is very good. If you have already lots of data, like I said, in your business, meta is great at finding the right people for you. But if you must do interest-based targeting, do some research on the person who you are working with and figure out what their interests would be. This is not the time to target everyone who is interested in Taylor Swift, okay? This is not just the time to target people who are interested in Amy Porterfield. This is time to do that research on the person who you work with and be strategic when choosing the right interests. For example, I coached with a client who had a product for homeschool moms. So for some businesses, it makes a lot of sense just to target certain interests. And if your business is one of those, great. You know, we can target homeschooling, primary and secondary education right here. It could just be that you have a product for parents, right, of kids in elementary school. Well, guess what? You can target parents with early school age children, zero to eight years, and you can target parents with preteens, you know, nine to twelve years old. It depends on your business. But again, I would only use or rely on detailed targeting in the early stages of my online course business. Of course, there are exceptions, and if you feel like your ads have been running, however, you might be one of these exceptions and you need some help on fixing your targeting, then again, the ad audit would be for you. That is in the show notes below. Until the next time that you see from me or hear from me. Take care, be blessed, and I’ll see you in the next one.
