How to Use Your Audience’s IP Addresses for Precise Facebook Ad Targeting

As an e-commerce merchant or marketer, you can use the IP address information of your website visitors to boost and catalyze your Facebook ad targeting. When reading about it for the first time, the process may seem a little strange, but it can be very effective and does not contain any unethical steps.

You can find the general region of your visitors via their IP addresses and then target those particular locations in your Facebook ad campaign. This can help you make the ads more effective.

In the post below, we will be looking at this concept and process in detail.

The Main Concept of Using IP Addresses for Better Facebook Ad Targeting

Here is the main concept of how you can use the IP addresses of your website audience to boost the outcomes of your Facebook ad targeting.

1. When people visit your website, their public IP addresses are stored in the server logs
2. You can check the location of those IP addresses to see where the viewers are from
3. After determining the location of most of your users, you can specify that location for your ads in the Facebook Ad Manager

This is the main idea behind using IP addresses for better ad targeting. Moving on in this post, we will elaborate on all of these steps one by one.

The reason for using the information of your website visitors for your Facebook ads is that the website information can show you the demographic that finds interest in your brand and its offerings.

1. Checking the IP addresses of your visitors using the server logs

The first thing that you need to do is check the IP addresses of your visitors via the site’s server logs. You can access the server logs by logging into the web server of your website or the hosting platform. The steps for this process are different depending on which service you’re using. 

However, some general guidelines are given below:

• In the server logs, you have to find the file with the Access Logs. This file is typically present with the name “access.log” (without the quote marks).
• In the access logs, you will be able to find the log entries for the different website visitors. At the start of each entry, you will be able to find the public IP address of each user.
• Collect the IP addresses either manually or by exporting them as a text file.

2. Check the location of the IP addresses using an IP location tool

The next thing that you need to do is find the location of the IP addresses by using an online tool. We will guide you through the process of how you can find and use an online tool for this purpose.

The tools used to find the location of an IP address are known as IP location finders. When using these tools, you can simply enter the IP address of a device or a domain and find the location in which it is based.

• First of all, open an online IP address location finder. You can click on the one that we have linked here.
• Enter the IP address that you have collected from the access logs.
• Make a note of all the locations of the IP addresses one by one

3. Specify the locations in the Facebook Ad Manager

Once you have a list of all the major locations that your visitors are coming from, you can specify those locations in your Facebook Ad Manager.

This way, you will be able to channel your ads to the location where people are already exposed to your brand and will be more likely to become qualified leads.

Here is how you can edit the location settings in your Facebook Ad Manager.

• First of all, log in to the Facebook Ad Manager.
• Edit an existing campaign or create a new one.
• Go to the Ad Set menu.
• Scroll down until you get to the “Audience controls” section.
• Below the “Audience controls,” you will see a “Locations” tab. Click on “Edit” next to it.
• Next, you can select locations by entering the names of cities, countries, and towns and then picking from the suggestions in the dropdown menu
• Once you select the location, you can choose to either include it in your ad campaign or exclude it. You can also select a radius of a specific distance to target around that location, such as 10 or 25 miles.

After you are done, save the changes.

And that’s it. These are the steps in which you can use the IP addresses of your website visitors to better execute your Facebook ad campaigns.

What are the benefits of targeting your ads to an audience in a specific region?

If you target your ads to locations where your website traffic is mostly coming from, there are many benefits that you can reap. For example,

• You get more qualified leads: A qualified lead is someone who fits into the buyer profile created by your sales team. In other words, they fit the criteria of the lead, who will be most likely to make a purchase from the company. An ad targeted towards a qualified lead has more chances of getting a click.
• You can get better conversions: By targeting the location where people show interest in your brand and offerings, you can get better conversions.
• You can (if you choose your own area) grow your popularity locally: If you conclude that your local area is where most visitors to your website come from, you can simply specify your own city or country in the ad settings. This will help improve your brand popularity both online and offline, and you will be able to make more sales from your physical premises as a side benefit of your ads.

Other ways to find audience location

Using IP addresses to find your audience’s location is one method. There are others as well, and some of them are easier and require fewer steps.

The main benefit of using the IP address method is that you are able to get an exact idea of the location and not just the country. The other methods can be easier, but they cannot pinpoint specific regions of your audience.

Nevertheless, here they are:

• Using Google Search Console: You can view your website’s Google Search Console statistics to find out which countries are drawing in the most clicks and impressions. You can navigate to “Performance” from the right sidebar and then click on the “Countries” tab to find which countries are on the top in driving clicks and impressions.
• Using Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a service similar to Google Search Console. When you load Google Analytics for your website, you can scroll down where you can find a section titled “Users by Country ID.” You can click on the button that says “View Countries.” In this menu, you will be able to see the top countries from which your website is getting clicks and impressions.

Conclusion

Using the location targeting settings in your Facebook ads can be very helpful. You can target people from specific areas and make your ads more effective.

You can use the information about your website visitors to understand the demographic that is interested in your brand. Then, you can use that information in your ad campaign.

In the post above, we have provided a detailed guide on how you can do this all easily. You can simply take the IP address location of your site visitors and then enter the most popular locations into the ad settings.