With 1.47 billion daily active users, Facebook gives an enormous potential audience for advertisers. So big, in fact, that it’s necessary to laser-target your adverts to be sure you reach the Fb users who’re most likely to be excited by your business. This permits you to reduce your advert spend and maximize ROI.
Facebook Custom Audiences provide a few of the best targeting available. They’re highly defined groups of people that already have a relationship with your business, like past customers, people who have visited your site, or people who have installed your app.
Even better, Custom Audiences can be utilized to make lookalike audiences—new potential followers, fans, and customers who share key characteristics with your existing customers and followers.
Kinds of Custom Audiences
Custom Audiences from customer lists
Customer lists offer a method for you to let Fb know about existing relationships you have with customers that can’t be mapped through Fb engagement or the Fb pixel.
For instance, you may need a list of newsletter subscribers or past clients. These are people who have clearly expressed an interest in your business, however, Fb has no method to identify them unless you add a list. Once you add the information, Fb uses a process called “hashing” to maintain particular customer data private while still permitting it to find matches with Fb user profiles.
Remember that you could only add data from customers who’ve given you permission to market to them. You cannot use a bought customer list, for instance, or data you have gathered from other sites—and if somebody opts out of your email list, you should remove them from your Custom Audience, too.
You should also know that customers could see which firms have uploaded customer lists that embrace their data. If you wish to check which advertisers have uploaded lists that embrace you, log into your Fb account and click on Settings. Then click on Ads in the left column, and choose Advertisers you’ve interacted with.
It’s a great idea to check out Fb’s Custom Audiences terms of service to be sure you are following the current rules.
Custom Audiences from your site
Once you install the Fb pixel on your website, Fb could match your site visitors to their Fb profiles.
You could use this data to create Custom Audiences that target all site visitors or to remarket to people who have visited a particular product page or product category. You set the timeframe for how far back you want to go, so you could select to target only your most recent site visitors, or people who visited up to six months ago.
Custom Audiences from your mobile app
After you register your app and set up the SDK on the Facebook for Developers site, you could create a Custom Audience of people who have interacted with your app.
(If this sounds like Greek to you, talk to your developer and ask them to help you with these preliminary steps.)
This kind of Custom Audience could be a good basis for app engagement campaigns since you could target people who have downloaded your app, however, might not be utilizing it yet, people who have made in-app purchases, or people who have achieved a certain level in your game.
Engagement Custom Audiences
An engagement Custom Audience permits you to target people who have already interacted with your brand on Fb or Instagram.
How to create Facebook Custom Audiences
For all Custom Audience kinds, you will begin by opening your Facebook audiences page in Adverts Manager and clicking Create a Custom Audience.
From here, the process relies on what type of Custom Audience you want to make.
The way to create a customer list Custom Audience
1. Click on Customer File and then select whether to add customer info or import a list from MailChimp.
Since not everybody uses MailChimp, we will look here at how to import your own customer information. When you do use MailChimp, you will enter your MailChimp login credentials and follow a few easy steps. For everybody else…
2. Before moving on, you will want to accept the Custom Audience terms of service. Primarily, you have to acknowledge that you have permission from the people on your list to use and share their data. When you have read and understood the terms, click I Accept.
3. Prepare your customer list. Make sure to follow Facebook’s data formatting best practices to get the most matches on your list. You need to read the best practices in full to be sure you get the best matches, however, here are three key tips:
- Include separate columns for first and last names
- Always include the country code on phone numbers (even if all phone numbers are from the same nation). Don’t include a leading zero in the nation code. For instance, in case your customer is in the US or Canada, the nation code is 1.
- Always include a country column (again, even if all of your customers form the same country)
4. Add your customer data file in .CSV or .TXT format, or copy and paste it into the box provided. Give your audience a name that clearly defines who appears on this list (for instance, email subscribers), then click Next.
5. Wait. Fb will prepare your Custom Audience, which needs to be ready in about half an hour.
How to create a site visitors Custom Audience
Before you could use site visitors Custom Audiences, you should install the Fb Pixel.
1. Click on Website Traffic, then select the pixel you want to use to build your audience.
2. Select who to target: all site visitors, people who visited particular pages, or people who spent a particular amount of time on your website. Then set your desired timeframe, from 30 to 180 days. You could further refine your audience utilizing rules, which permit you to specify the number of times somebody has visited your site and the particular device that they use.
3. Give your audience a name you’ll keep in mind and click Create Audience.
4. Wait. Fb will prepare your Custom Audience, which needs to be ready in about half an hour.
How to create a mobile app Custom Audience
1. Click on App Activity and select the events you want to target from the drop-down menu.
2. Select the timeframe you need to target: from 30 to 180 days.
3. Further, define your audience utilizing details like in-app purchases and which device people use.
4. Give your audience a name you’ll keep in mind and click on Create Audience. You could use your audience right away, however it might take up to an hour to be fully populated with past app users.
How to create an engagement Custom Audience
1. Click on Engagement. A new pop-up will open asking you to select whether you want to create your engagement audience based on interactions with your videos, lead forms, Fb Page, Instagram business profile, or event, or people who have opened your collection or Canvas Fb advert. Click on the option you like.
2. Select the appropriate options:
- For video, select how much of your video people have watched: from a minimum of three seconds to at least 95% of the video.
- For lead forms, select whether you need people to have submitted the form, or just opened it.
- For your Fb Page or Instagram profile, select which types of interactions you want to target: visits, messaging, clicks, and so on.
- For your event, select whether you want to target individuals who have indicated interest, those that have truly bought tickets, and so on.
3. Select the timeframe you want to target, up to 365 days.
4. Give your audience a name you’ll keep in mind and click on Create Audience.
How to use your Custom Audience
When you have set up one or more Custom Audiences, they are very simple to use.
1. Open Fb Ads Manager and click on Create Advert.
2. Follow the steps to set up your advert. When you are new to Fb advertising, follow the steps in our complete guide to Facebook ads.
3. Set the advert to focus on your chosen Custom Audience.
4. Refine your targeting options. For instance, when you are running a campaign to offer a discount to new customers, make sure to exclude existing customers from your Custom Viewers targeting for that specific advert.
5. Set your budget and timing as usual and you are ready to go.
However, that’s just the technical side of utilizing Facebook Custom Audiences. You also want to consider how to use Facebook Custom Audiences strategically. Here are some ideas:
Use Facebook Custom Audiences for remarketing
Remarketing is an effective method to remind people about products they are ins—or have even abandoned in shopping carts—encouraging them to take the final step of creating a purchase.
For instance, Jolly, art and writing supplies firm from Austria, used Custom Audiences to focus on adverts to people who had recently visited its website. Mixed with lookalike audiences (extra on these beneath), this strategy allowed Jolly to extend site conversions by 1.65 times, with a 1.7 times return on Fb advert spend.
Use Facebook Custom Audiences to reach your most likely repeat customers
Existing customers already know and trust your brand—so marketing to them could produce much higher conversion rates than attempting to reach people who haven’t bought from you before. It’s much simpler to convince a satisfied customer to make a second buy than it’s to acquire a new customer in the first place.
This does not only apply to online purchases. Utilizing a Custom Audience from a customer list, you could invite past customers to return to your retail store, send particular offers for repeat clients, or let people know once you launch a new version of a product they already own.
For instance, the tour operator TUI Belgium used a Custom Audience of people that had previously booked tours with the firm because of the target for a collection advert campaign promoting holiday packages.
Use Custom Audiences to increase app engagement
When you’re running an advert to extend app engagement, there is no point showing the advert to people who have yet to download your app. With a Custom Audience of people that already have your app downloaded, you could target your advert effectively, helping you to get the maximum impact for your finances.
Use Custom Audiences to develop your Facebook following
People who are already interacting with your business would make good Fb Page followers. Some of them are likely following your Page already, however, lots of them may not know you have a Fb Page, or just may never have thought to seek you out on social media.
Use a Fb advert with a Custom Audience based on site visitors or a customer list to promote your Fb Page to this highly targeted group. Just ensure to exclude people who have already liked your Page, so you do not pay to reach existing Fb fans.
Use lookalike audiences
You could use lookalike audiences to focus on people who are similar to people who already work together with your business—which means they’re likely to be interested in the services and products you supply.
Even when you do not have a big enough list yet to make a Custom Audience from your customer list (you need a minimum of 1,000 contacts), you could make lookalike audiences based on a Custom Audience of people that have visited your site or who already like your Fb Page.
For instance, Shopify used this strategy to achieve a two times lower cost per lead once they used a lookalike audience of people based on Custom Viewers of site visitors. Paessler IG used a lookalike audience based on a Custom Audience of people that had previously completed lead forms to reach relevant IT professionals who weren’t aware of its products and achieved a 63 percent decrease in CPM, 51 % decrease in cost per lead, and 64 % decrease in cost per click on.
How to expand your Custom Audience
There’s value in attempting to increase your Custom Audiences since they put your advert in front of more targeted potential fans, followers, and clients.
Listed below are some methods to increase your list.
Use Facebook Advert types effectively
If you are attempting to build your Customized Audience, you want to get your Facebook ads in front of a large number of people, targeted appropriately. Use the Awareness campaign objectives to ensure your adverts reach a large number of people in your targeted group.
Growing your advertising bid barely could help reach even more people and build your Custom Audience more rapidly.
Test and tweak your adverts for maximum conversion
In order to develop your Custom Audience, you need people to engage with your adverts. The simpler your advert, the more rapidly you’ll build your Custom Audience.
We have got a whole blog post on how to test and refine social media ads, however, listed here are some key advert elements to test:
- Headline
- Advert text
- Link preview text
- Call to action
- Picture or video
- Advert format
Use Facebook Audience Insights
Facebook Audience Insights could give you valuable details about the demographics of any of your Custom Audiences. You could then use that info to target adverts to new potential Facebook connections. If any of those new people engage with your adverts or your Fb Page, they will become part of your engagement Custom Audience.