Using custom audiences on Facebook can be a great way to target your ads and increase engagement. Custom audiences allow you to create specific groups of people to market to based on information you already have, like email addresses or phone numbers. This allows you to reach people who are already familiar with your business or who match your ideal customer profile.
What is a custom audience?
A custom audience on Facebook is a group of specific people you want to target with your ads or posts. When you create a custom audience, you provide Facebook with some identifying information about the people you want to include, such as emails, phone numbers, IDs, or other data. Facebook then tries to match this data to user accounts and builds an audience containing the matching users.
For example, you could create a custom audience containing all of your current email subscribers. Or you could create an audience of people who have visited your website in the last 30 days.
Benefits of using custom audiences
Some key benefits of using custom audiences include:
- Targeting relevancy – You can reach people who are already familiar with your business and may be more likely to engage.
- Improved performance – Ads targeted to custom audiences generally see better results than more general targeting.
- Retargeting – You can create audiences to retarget people who have already shown interest.
- Expanded reach – You can use customer contact info to find new potential customers with similar attributes.
- Testing – You can A/B test different audiences to see what works best.
How to create a custom audience
Here are the basic steps to create a custom audience on Facebook:
- Navigate to the “Audiences” section in Facebook Ads Manager.
- Click the “+ Create Audience” button.
- Select “Custom Audience” as the audience type.
- Choose the source for your audience data: website traffic, customer list, app activity, etc.
- Give your audience a name and review the audience details.
- Upload your list or connect the pixel/SDK to gather website/app activity.
- Wait for Facebook to match and build the audience.
- Use the audience to target ads or posts.
Let’s go through some of these steps in more detail:
Choose your audience source
The first big decision is choosing what customer data you want to use as the source for your audience. Facebook allows you to create custom audiences from:
- Customer information – Upload contacts like emails, phone numbers, names, etc.
- Website traffic – Use the Facebook pixel to target site visitors.
- App activity – Connect your app to gather info on users.
- Engagement – Target people who engaged with your Facebook content.
- Video – Target viewers of your Facebook videos.
Think about what sources you have access to and which might help you reach your marketing goals. Do you have an email list you can leverage? Install the Facebook pixel on your website to target visitors. Connect your app to reach current users.
Upload your contact information
If you choose to create an audience from a customer file, you will need to upload a .csv list of the customer information you want to target. This could include any combination of:
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Facebook IDs
- First/last names
- Dates of birth
- Genders
- Addresses
Facebook will hash and match this data to user accounts while keeping the information private. Make sure your data is properly formatted and does not contain any sensitive information like financial data.
Use website visitors with the Facebook pixel
The Facebook pixel is a small tracking code you place on your website to gather data on visitors. This allows you to create audiences of people who have been to your site. For example:
- Target people who visited specific pages
- Reach people who spent time on site or took key actions
- Retarget people who visited but didn’t convert
The Facebook pixel will need to be implemented on all pages you want to track. Data gathered by the pixel may take a few days to populate into available audiences.
Connect your app
If you have a mobile or desktop app, you can integrate the Facebook SDK to access data on current users. This lets you identify and target segments like:
- Active monthly/weekly/daily app users
- Users who have completed key actions
- Users with specific attributes or labels
- Lookalike audiences modeled off current users
Work with your developers to properly implement the Facebook SDKs into your iOS, Android, Unity, or other apps. This will provide the event data needed for creating detailed app audiences.
Review audience details
Once you upload your data or connect your apps/pixel, Facebook will show you details on the potential audience size and how it breaks down by gender, age, location, and more.
Review this info to ensure your audience matches what you expect and falls in line with your target market. Look for any holes or opportunities to expand your audience by uploading additional data sources.
Wait for audience matching
It takes some time for Facebook to actually match the data you provide to real user accounts. Audience matching and creation can take from 24-72 hours. New audiences will show as “in progress” until the matching is complete.
Don’t try to use an audience for targeting until it reaches “Ready” status. The reached audience size may also increase over the first few days as more matches occur.
Using custom audiences for targeting
Once your audience is built, it’s time to use it! Custom audiences can be leveraged to target both Facebook and Instagram ads. Here are some ways to target your audience:
- Target all custom audience members broadly
- Narrow by combining with additional targeting like interests or behaviors
- Create A/B test ads targeting different custom audiences
- Target website custom audiences with dynamic retargeting ads
- Use lookalike audiences to expand your reach
Monitor the performance of your custom audience targeted ads. Assess which audiences are providing the best results in terms of engagement rate, conversions, ROI, and more. You may find certain subsets of your audience are outperforming others.
Lookalike audiences
Once you’ve built a high-quality custom audience, you can have Facebook create a “lookalike” audience to reach new potential customers.
Lookalike audiences use your custom audience as a source. Facebook analyzes their demographics, interests, behaviors and more. It then finds new people on Facebook who share similar attributes and adds them to a new audience.
The benefit is you can expand your reach beyond just the core custom audience. And the lookalikes will more closely match your ideal target market.
Creating lookalikes
In Ads Manager, click the dropdown next to your custom audience and select “Create Lookalike”. You can choose to make 1%, 2% or 10% lookalike audiences.
1% lookalikes are the most similar to your source audience. 10% lookalikes reach more new people but may be less precise in their targeting. Test different audience sizes to see what works.
Tips for using lookalikes
Here are some tips to use lookalikes effectively:
- Base them on high-quality, relevant custom audiences
- Try different lookalike percentages to balance similarity vs reach
- Refresh lookalikes regularly with updated source data
- Layer on additional targeting to refine them
- Test against your original custom audience
Basing lookalikes on larger custom audiences generally produces better results. Don’t make lookalikes larger than necessary to reach your campaign goals.
Audience insights and reporting
As you manage your audiences, Facebook provides insights on their composition and performance. Check the “Details” tab for an audience to see overview stats and demographics.
You can also dig into custom audience reports to analyze results. Compare audience performance to guide future targeting decisions.
Some key metrics to track include:
- Audience size – How many users are in the audience?
- Reach – How many people saw your ads?
- Frequency – How often people saw ads on average.
- Engagement – Clicks, conversions, etc.
- CPM/CPC – What’s the average cost per impression/click?
- ROI – What’s the return on ad spend for sales driven?
Check audience performance regularly. Remove ones that aren’t working. Build on ones driving strong results.
You can also save successful audiences and upload new data to expand them over time.
Best practices
Here are some top best practices for getting the most out of your custom audiences:
- Keep audiences specific and relevant to campaign goals
- Test multiple audiences to see what resonates
- Refresh stale audiences with new data
- Combine audiences using AND/OR to target subsets
- Use exclusions to eliminate unwanted segments
- Leverage additional Facebook targeting to focus audiences
- Monitor performance regularly and optimize accordingly
Well-built custom audiences matched to specific campaign objectives will deliver the best results. Custom audiences give you the precision to zone in on the people most likely to engage.
Conclusion
Creating and managing custom audiences may take some initial work, but the payoff in targeting efficiency is immense. Custom audiences allow you to market to known high-value segments who will offer better conversion rates and ROI.
Use website traffic data, existing customer information, app activity, and more to build laser-focused audience segments. Combine this with Facebook’s powerful ad targeting, and you have a recipe for success. Test and refine your approach over time using performance reports. Facebook custom audiences are one of the most valuable tools for boosting marketing results.