Targeting only behaviors isn’t the end of the world. Guessing what will work best for your customers might take a few tries, but the choices are seemingly unlimited. And, presumably, you understand your customers, at least to an extent.
Facebook’s demographic-behavior options are now all combined into one main section: Detailed Targeting, where you can select groups of users to include, as well as groups to exclude. And after you enter an item to target, you can narrow your audience, too. This lets you target people who like certain things, but not others. If you exclude something, such as “pineapples,” anyone who likes “pineapples” won’t be targeted. If you narrow “pineapples,” then anyone you target must like pineapples. It’s very powerful.
Including all of the options in one main section is helpful, but it can get confusing when it comes to searching for specific characteristics. For example, when I searched for “small business,” I received a lot of different results, with two columns of text. The left column is the actual target — “Small Business Owners” in this case. The right column is the type of target — such as “Interests.” These work the same as in the past; the results are just formatted differently.
Not having lookalike data can be positive, because using the above options, you can narrow to a specific group of people. Even if you do have a lookalike audience, you can still use this targeting to better select, although, in my experience, you should be careful as you could over-target and reach no one.
The red-to-yellow gauge in the upper right corner of the ad set creation page will tell you how targeted your audience is. You should always strive for “defined,” which is in the middle of the green area. Otherwise, you are set to waste money (too broad), or you won’t spend any money at all (too narrow).