Prospecting
Also known as: Cold Prospecting, Acquisition Campaign
Prospecting is advertising to new, cold audiences to find people who have never engaged with your business.
What it actually means
Prospecting is the top-of-funnel work of putting your offer in front of strangers to generate the first spark of interest. It is the opposite of retargeting and is essential for growth — without a steady flow of new prospects, your warm audiences and retargeting pools dry up. Prospecting campaigns typically use broad targeting or lookalike audiences and carry higher costs per result, which is normal and expected because you are paying to introduce yourself. The job of prospecting is not always to close the sale immediately but to fill the funnel with people you can then nurture and retarget into customers at a lower cost.
Local prospecting means reaching nearby people who've never heard of you. Judge it on funnel growth and assisted conversions, not just the immediate cost per lead.
Related terms
A cold audience is people who have never interacted with your business and are encountering your brand for the first time.
A lookalike audience is a group Meta builds to resemble an existing source audience, finding new people who share traits with your best customers.
Broad targeting gives Meta minimal audience constraints — often just location, age, and gender — and relies on the algorithm to find buyers.
Retargeting is showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business — visited your site, watched a video, or engaged with your page.
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