Creating a custom audience on Facebook is a great way to target your ads and retarget website visitors. By building custom audiences based on your existing customers and website traffic, you can ensure your ads are being shown to people who are already familiar with your business and more likely to convert.
In this article, we’ll provide step-by-step instructions on how to create custom audiences for retargeting in Facebook Ads Manager. We’ll cover:
- What is a custom audience and why it’s useful for retargeting
- The different types of custom audiences you can create
- How to set up custom audiences for website visitors, email lists, and existing customers
- Best practices for creating effective custom audiences
- How to use your newly created audiences to target your Facebook ad campaigns
Whether you’re new to Facebook ads or looking to improve your retargeting strategy, this guide will teach you how to properly configure custom audiences and use them to drive conversions. Let’s get started!
What is a Custom Audience?
A custom audience is a targeted group of Facebook users that you define based on criteria such as email addresses, phone numbers, demographic info, interests, and web traffic. These audiences can be created right within Facebook Ads Manager.
When you create a custom audience, you’re telling Facebook to show your ads to specific people who match the characteristics of that audience. This gives you much more control and precision for your ad targeting compared to broader targeting methods like age, location, interests, etc.
Some key facts about custom audiences:
- They’re comprised of existing Facebook users who have provided info matching your audience criteria.
- You can retarget people who have already interacted with your website, store, or app.
- Audiences can contain any number of people, from a few hundred to millions.
- Ads targeted to custom audiences generally have higher relevance, lower costs, and better conversions.
For retargeting specifically, custom audiences are invaluable. Retargeting involves serving ads to people who have already shown interest in your business by visiting your website, viewing product pages, abandoning carts, and more. By creating custom audiences around these actions, you can keep your brand top of mind and pull valuable customers back in to complete conversions.
Now let’s look at the different types of custom audiences that are available.
Types of Custom Audiences
Facebook allows you to create custom audiences from a variety of sources, including:
Website Traffic
You can build audiences of people who have visited specific pages or performed certain actions on your website:
- All website visitors
- Visited product category pages
- Searched for keywords
- Viewed blog posts
- Watched videos
- Clicked ads
- Added payment info
- Abandoned carts
To track website traffic, you’ll need to add the Facebook pixel to your site. More on that later.
Customer Data
Create audiences from your own customer data including:
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- App user IDs
- Loyalty program members
- Purchased product SKUs
This allows you to directly target your existing customers and user base with ads promoting repeat sales, new arrivals, etc.
Engagement
Build audiences around how people have engaged with your Facebook content:
- Liked your Page
- Engaged with posts
- Clicked on ads
- Shared content
- Checked into locations
- Watched videos
Then market to these warm leads who already know your brand.
Lookalike Audiences
Have Facebook find new potential customers who are similar to your best existing buyers. Lookalike audiences can be based on:
- Customer lists
- Engaged Facebook users
- Website visitors
- App installers
Combinations
You can also combine multiple audiences together to narrow your targeting even further. For example, target people who visited your checkout page AND liked your Facebook page. The possibilities are endless!
Now that we’ve covered the different audience sources available, let’s walk through exactly how to set them up in Facebook.
Creating Custom Audiences
Here are step-by-step instructions for creating the most popular types of custom audiences in Facebook Ads Manager:
Audience from Website Traffic
To create an audience from your website traffic, you’ll first need to implement the Facebook pixel:
- In Ads Manager, click the Tools tab, select Pixels, and click Create a Pixel.
- Name your pixel and click Create.
- Copy your pixel ID provided.
- Add the Facebook pixel code before the closing
</head>tag on every page of your website.
Once your pixel is added, Facebook will begin collecting visitor data:
- In Ads Manager, click Audiences in the left sidebar and select Create Audience.
- Choose Custom Audience > Website Traffic.
- Select the website pixel you want to base this audience on.
- Choose your desired audience criteria: All Visitors, Page Visits, Purchases, etc.
- Give your audience a name and click Create.
It may take a few days for your website audience list to populate as the pixel gathers data.
Audience from Email List
To create a custom audience from your email subscriber list:
- In Ads Manager, click Audiences in the left sidebar and select Create Audience.
- Choose Custom Audience > Customer File.
- Select your customer data source. You can upload a .csv file or connect directly to a CRM.
- Map the appropriate fields from your data source to Facebook.
- Review the data mapping and click Create.
Facebook will match the email addresses against registered users. You now have an audience ready for ads!
Audience from Existing Customers
If you want to target ads specifically to people who have already made purchases, you can create a customer audience:
- In Ads Manager, click Audiences in the left sidebar and select Create Audience.
- Choose Custom Audience > Customer File.
- Upload a .csv file with customer purchase data or connect your ecommerce platform.
- Map the fields for emails, names, and other identifiers.
- Select the PURCHASED field to identify customers.
- Review and click Create.
You now have an audience of qualified buyers ready for retargeting campaigns!
Custom Audience Best Practices
Here are some tips to ensure you build effective custom audiences that drive results:
- Provide accurate, high-quality data. Your source data needs to have valid info like proper email formatting in order to match users.
- Reuse and update audiences. You can add new data to existing audiences as it comes in to keep them fresh.
- Test lookalike audiences. Expand your reach with lookalikes based on your best performing audiences.
- Fix leaks in your funnel. Create audiences around drop-off points like abandoned carts to win back lost customers.
- Get specific. Narrowly defined audiences based on site engagement allow more relevance.
- Combine for power. Create intersections and unions between audiences to laser-target groups.
Analyze performance data regularly and tweak your audiences to optimize results. The right custom audience can greatly amplify your Facebook ad performance.
Using Custom Audiences for Retargeting
Once you’ve built custom audiences, it’s easy to put them to work for retargeting campaigns.
Here are some examples of effective retargeting strategies with custom audiences:
Abandoned Cart Retargeting
Create an audience of people who added items to cart but didn’t complete checkout. Show ads reminding them to complete their purchase.
Back-in-Stock Retargeting
Build an audience of those who tried to purchase an out-of-stock item. Retarget them with ads when it’s back in stock.
Browse Retargeting
Offer discounts to visitors who browsed certain categories but didn’t buy. Keep your brand top of mind.
New Customer Retargeting
Target recent first-time buyers again to promote repeat purchases and build loyalty.
Win-Back Retargeting
Reach out to lapsed customers or email subscribers who haven’t engaged recently to re-activate them.
The key is aligning your audience to each stage of the customer journey. Use retargeting to turn cold traffic into warm leads, and warm leads into delighted customers.
Test retargeting campaigns with different custom audiences, offers, and creatives. Measure results and optimize your ad spend for the highest converting audiences and assets.
Conclusion
Creating targeted custom audiences is crucial to running effective Facebook ad campaigns. By following the steps above, you can build customized audiences tailored to your business and customer base.
Use website traffic, customer data, Facebook engagement, and lookalikes to laser-target your ads. Combine audiences for even more precision. Work these groups into your ad strategy through thoughtful retargeting funnels designed to convert.
Custom audiences give you the power to turn strangers into brand loyalists who just can’t get enough of what you have to offer. Achieve unmatched relevancy and results for your ad spend.