Ever seen how the last site you visited suddenly appears while you scroll down your Facebook newsfeeds? This is no coincidence but another meticulous marketing tactic. We have to admit that we all have been targets to brands’ remarketing strategies on Facebook at some point of time.
What are Custom Audiences?
Custom Audiences are one of the most powerful and underestimated tools of Facebook marketing. With custom audiences, one can retarget the people who have interacted with their business like the existing customers or the website visitors. Custom audience gives a marketer the power to execute laser-targeted campaigns for an enhanced conversion rate and return on investment.
Types of Custom Audiences:
In the initial stages, you might find the targeting options of Facebook for advertisements rather complicated and the case is no different with the custom audience. I’ll take you through by breaking down the types of custom audience.
1. Customer Database:
Targeting an existing customer is one of the most effective ways of advertisement. All you need to do is upload the email list/ phone numbers of your existing customers and Facebook and if they are associated with a Facebook account you’ll be able to target them with ads. But always keep in mind that you need to have consent of your customers to use such data for the purpose of advertising.
Once a list has been generated, you have a set of audience who are already familiar with your brand. This process can be executed manually uploading the list or by integrating your CRM platform to Facebook.
2. Website Custom Audiences:
Well, you don’t have a large database of your customers but you still want to make use of custom audience? Facebook has another type of custom audience – Website Visitors.
All you need to do is integrate a Facebook pixel on the backend of your website to allow Facebook to track your website viewers over a specific period of time (maximum 180 days). Installing a pixel allows Facebook to recognize users visiting your site and automatically adds them to an audience, creating a group that you now have the ability to retarget.
And it is not just that, with a slightly modified pixel, Facebook can also give you the data of viewers who indulged in a variety of events like:
- People who have viewed a specific page.
- People who have added items to their cart.
- People who have added items to their wish list.
- People who have initiated the checkout process, but not completed.
- People who have completed registration.
3. App Activity Custom Audiences:
Facebook has left no stone unturned to make advertising easier for marketers. And the integration of apps with advertising is just another proof of it. If you are a business with an app, then Facebook is the platform for you! In the case of app activity audience, audiences are generated on the basis of actions and events similar to the case of website custom audiences.
4. Engagement Custom Audiences:
These are the people who watch your updates and sincerely engage with them on a regular basis. There is also further categorization in this. You can specifically target people on the following bases:
- People who have viewed specific videos posted on your page
- People who have engaged with your lead generation ads
- People who have interacted with your canvas ads
- People who have engaged with your page in general
5. Lookalike Audiences:
One of the most interesting things and incredibly innovative concepts of Facebook has undoubtedly been the Lookalike audiences. This option lets advertisers to find audiences that mirror or look similar to their existing audience. The basis of a lookalike audience is a source audience which can be a list of your customers, website visitors or any such audience. Facebook analyzes the characteristics of the source audience and finds new similar people in your chosen country based on a set percentile which can be specified by you. According to our experience with advertising on Facebook, lookalike audience is by far the best way to target the cold audience on the top of your sales funnel and let them become aware of you.
Step-by-step Process of Creating a Custom Audience:
New to the whole concept of Custom audience? I’ll walk you through it!
Step 1:
To create your first custom audience, log in to the Facebook ads manager (Link it to facebook.com/ads/manage). Once inside the dashboard, select Audiences.
On selecting the audience option, you will be driven to a page that looks like this. Click on ‘Create Audience’ and Choose ‘Custom audience’
Step 2:
Once you click custom audience, you see a pop up which prompts you on the kind of audience you would like to create.
Creating a Customer File Custom Audience:
Let’s begin with creating a customer list audience. There are two ways to create this one:
- Manually upload your audience in a .txt or .csv le. format
- Synchronization with your Email CRM to your Facebook Ads Account
a. Manual Upload:
As Facebook only offers integration only with mail chimp, it is suggested you manually upload the data that is not available on MailChimp. You’ll need to prepare a file containing the contacts you want to add to your Custom Audience. Use a CSV file & insert one value per line like this:
email1@gmail.com
email2@gmail.com
email3@yahoo.com
email4@outlook.com
The data can be email Ids of your customer, phone number, Facebook user ID, surnames etc., Also, you cannot mix different types of data in a single file.
Upload your .csv file, click next and the hit ‘Upload and Create’.
Tip: a. Make sure you give your custom audiences unique names for easy identification.
- Integration with MailChimp
You may use a Custom audience sync tool that will let you allow Facebook to create an audience from the leads received in your email list or through Facebook lead gen ads.
Log in to MailChimp and integrate it with your email.
Customer Lifetime value Custom audience:
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, it is the audience created by the value associated with the customer database on how strong their relationship is with your brand. Few customers have made one single transaction and few come back for repurchases. This feature draw on the capabilities from the high valued customers and create an audience similar to them, available on Facebook.
How to create a Value-based lookalike audience with LTV
It is a two-step process:
- Create Custom Audience with LTV.
- Create Lookalike of the custom audience created with LTV calling it, Value-based lookalike audience.
Creating a website Custom audience:
The people who have visited your website are one of the best targets for you to remarket. Facebook lets you target people who have visited your website or specific web-pages on your site by letting you create an audience for the same.
Choose the website traffic option from the list.
You will be directed to a page that will let you define the specifications of the audience that you want to capture. You can either choose visitors of the entire website or of a specific webpage, the duration and it is not just that, with a slightly modified pixel, Facebook can also give you the data of viewers who indulged in a variety of events like:
- People who have viewed a specific page.
- People who have added items to their cart.
- People who have added items to their wish list.
- People who have initiated the checkout process, but not completed.
- People who have completed registration.
The latest addition to this type of custom audience also lets you include or exclude visitors of a particular webpage while creating an audience.
Fill in all the required details and click on ‘Create Audience’.
After doing so, go to the audience dashboard and choose the audience you have created and then click on ‘Actions’. Choose the option ‘View Pixel’.
On choosing the ‘View Pixel’ option, a dialog box with codes will prompt. This code is a basic code with ‘Page View’ event. Choose Email instructions and send the code to your email ID.
It is suggested to add the Pixel to all pages you want to track, so ask a developer to help, or use a plugin that automatically does this for you. The Pixel will also slightly change if you want to track things outside of just “website visitors” (like leads, purchases, etc.).
Creating an “App Activity” Custom Audience:
In the era of mobile applications, it is a brilliant idea to target your app users on Facebook in the form of a custom audience.
Choose the “App activity” option.
By creating a custom audience using your app activity, you can make a list of people that perform certain activities on your App. For example, reaching a particular level or visiting a certain tab.
For example, you can target people who have downloaded your app, but have not come back to your app within the last 30 days. Or you can target people who have added an item to their cart on your app, but never actually purchased it.
This feature lets you create an audience on almost every action a user has or has not taken while using your app.
Creating an ‘Engaged on Facebook’ Custom audience:
This is one of the latest additions to the custom audiences tab that lets you target people who have engaged with any, video, ad, canvas or posts published on your page.
This engagement custom audience is then sub categorized in to 4 types:
Video Engagement Custom Audience:
This lets you create an audience of everyone who has watched your video or just a percentage of the video.
Steps Involved:
- Choose the lead adverts option.
- Select the parameter.
- Choose your videos.
- Fix a period over which your viewers have viewed the video.
- Give a name to your audience!
Lead Ads Engagement Custom Audiences:
So, people have engaged with your lead generation campaign on Facebook but haven’t bought your product. There is not much you can do about this, right? Wrong!
This new feature lets you target those who have filled your lead forms. So, if your objective is to follow your potential customers everywhere or roll out an offer for your existing clients, you know what to do!
Steps Involved:
- Choose the lead forms from the existing forms.
- Choose the required action.
- Fix a period over which your viewers have engaged with the form.
- Give a name to your audience!
Canvas Engagement Custom Audiences
Your canvas ad got a lot of clicks but didn’t get the desired results? Apparently, Facebook has a solution for that too! You can now target people who have clicked on your canvas and checked it out. Cool, isn’t it?
Steps Involved:
- Choose the canvas from the existing canvas.
- Choose the required action.
- Fix a period over which your viewers have engaged with the form.
- Give a name to your audience!
Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audiences
This is a new type of Engagement on Facebook Custom Audience that allows advertisers to create audiences of people based on engagement with their Facebook content for targeting in ads.
You can create audiences based on the following types of engagement:
- Everyone who engaged with your Page
- Anyone who watched your videos
- People who opened or completed filling your lead forms
- People who opened your collection or canvas ads
- People who have interacted with your Instagram Business Profile
- People who have interacted with your events on Facebook
Steps Involved:
- Choose the Facebook page.
- Choose the required action.
- Fix a period of 30-180 days.
- Give a name to your audience!
You have successfully created your first ever custom audience!
Now that you know all about the various types of custom audiences you can target on Facebook, put it to good use in your Facebook campaigns and witness your conversion rate phenomenally increase.
