The Art of Online Business

Does Open Targeting Really Work for Online Course Creators?

• Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie • Episode 977

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A lot of course creators are being told to just “go broad” with Facebook and Instagram ads right now… but that advice could easily waste your budget if your business isn’t ready. 

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I break down what open targeting really is, when it actually works, and the clear signals you should avoid it. 

I also share smarter targeting options I start with inside client accounts so you can bring in better leads without gambling your money away.



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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:

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Should you be using open targeting for your Facebook and Instagram ads? Good question, online course creator. You've probably heard that right now in 2025, open targeting is working and Meta's algorithm is developed enough, advanced enough, for you not to really put any targeting guidelines on your ads and just to show them to a big old wide open audience. There are some very clear signals that you should not use open targeting, that that would just waste your ad budget. And so, really, it depends on the stage of your business. I'm going to outline who should use it and who should not use it and what open targeting really is with Facebook and Instagram ads right now. So open targeting is when you choose inside of Meta Ad Manager to only target a broad age range or maybe a narrow age range of folks in a specific country. Do not confuse open targeting with worldwide targeting where you target anyone in the world. Actually, never do that. Ever, ever do that. Like maybe some business like Coca-Cola could do that. But you're an online course creator, most likely with clients who come from one to two countries. Don't do worldwide targeting, please, because like Meta will show your ads to the places, the countries where it can get the cheapest conversions for you. So your ads are being shown to Bangladesh. I don't know why that came into my mind. I'm sure you could serve someone from Bangladesh, but if their salary is on average, because ChatGPT is telling me right here on my other monitor,$2,945 a year, and all your offers are like$1,000. Is somebody really going to spend half a yearly salary on your offer? And that's where it makes sense to choose specific countries. Now you would do age range and gender and specific country, i.e. location, and not do any detailed targeting with that, and not do any look-alike targeting with that. The only catch is really that this is not for smaller course creator businesses, and it's also not for businesses that have just recently installed the meta pixel. Why is that? Well, it's quite simple. Open targeting relies heavily on the algorithm. The algorithm relies on the data that it has on your business. So if your pixel is not seasoned, i.e. mature, i.e. has a lot of data from ads and from just people in general who have been opting into your lead magnets, following you on Instagram, or watching your videos from Instagram and Facebook, then you what data is it really going to optimize off of? I have seen bigger, more established online course creator businesses, I've seen their ads do better with open audiences. Of course, like anything, you have to test it. Never just randomly trust a random Facebook and Instagram ads manager from the internets or a podcast, no matter how handsome he looks. Just kidding. Because the only thing that can be guaranteed is that at one point or another you will lose money with Facebook and Instagram ads. That's how it is, because you have to test. And not all tests go well. This is not a get rich quick type of method. I always say Jesus saves Facebook and Instagram ads do not. More eyeballs on a bad offer does not a healthy business make your messaging and the better quality of messaging messaging that you have is what will help your business sales. Now, yes, there are definitely some best practices, and here's another one. If open targeting isn't really for your business, then probably start off with look-alike audiences. These are cold audiences that you can create based off of some of the more healthy or more valuable warm audiences that your business already has. For example, do you have an email list? And is that email list over 600 to 1,000 people? If so, upload that thing to Meta and build a cold look-alike audience off of it. Meta will look at your email list of a thousand people and give you a big old audience of say 2,600 people that you can target with your ads. This is good. Maybe you don't have the email list quite yet built up, but you do have a super solid large social media following on Instagram, you could build a look-alike audience off of your Instagram followers or even off of your website visitors. And then these audiences, while they should work well, you know that you need to do some testing. Speaking of testing, if you really want to get better results from your ad because you have a reliable testing method for new Facebook and Instagram ads, I have a course for that called the ad testing cheat code. It is my framework that I use to test new ads on behalf of my Facebook and Instagram clients each time I launch new ads in their account. And by doing that, in like two to three weeks, you will know or end up with, say, two or three ads that you can trust are getting you the highest quality lead at the lowest cost possible. And that course is super valuable. And you can get it in the show notes below. I was asked a question: how much budget do I actually need for open targeting to work? Like, can I test it with$20 to$30 a day, or do I need way more? You know, I would say$20 to$30 a day is like the minimum daily ad spin that you should be using if you're running a lead magnet. And at that point, there's easier ways to target, mainly using lookalike audiences. If you're going like$40 a day or above, and you already have a seasoned pixel with plenty of data about your business and opt-ins and leads and thus sales inside of it. Yeah, sure, go ahead and try open targeting. But remember, it's just one of many audiences you can test. If you have a low budget, like$15, like really low budget, open targeting might flop. And the last thing you want is to throw spaghetti at the wall because this would be quite expensive spaghetti. Another question I've been asked, by the way, you can ask me a question too. Just go to my Instagram, Q-U-A-Y-J-O, that's me on Instagram. DM me. I like to get questions and I like to make videos to respond to questions. So if I do open targeting, won't meta just show my ad to a bunch of random people? Well, no, because remember it depends on your meta pixel having lots of data. Did you know that Meta collects around 52,000 data points on every user? Therefore, it really knows you better than you know you, better than your mama knows you. And so if you have a bunch of traffic, leads, sales, or even a big old Instagram account, Meta really knows a lot about who you are trying to reach. And you can try open targeting and it won't show your ads to random people. If you're worried, then just use a look-alike audience based off of the most valuable, warm audience that you have and get on with targeting. It's really that straightforward. Pick one audience, test. If it doesn't meet you the goals that you feel your business needs to have in order to profitably run lead magnet ads and make money on the back end of those email nurture sequences that are attached to the lead magnet, well then switch audiences and try something else. Oh, here's another question. When should I know it's time to switch from interest-based targeting to look alike or open targeting? And I guess actually, hold on, another question that's quite related to that is if I had good success organically, does that mean I should jump straight into open targeting or should I start with interest targeting first? Look, interest-based targeting would be last. You could try open targeting if your business has enough leads and sales volume and lots of data on that pixel. I almost always, I do always start with lookalike-based targeting. And if you want to learn more about the best way to do targeting as an online course creator, you know, with a lead magnet, a repeatable launch that's done two to three times a year, then look down in the show notes of this episode and you will see another episode linked. That episode is called Facebook Ads Best Targeting Strategy for Leads, Online Course Creator Edition. Until the next time you see me or hear from me, take care, be blessed, and we'll see each other in the next episode. Bye.

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Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie

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