With i.47 billion daily agile users, Facebook offers a huge potential audition for advertisers. Then huge, in fact, that it'southward of import to laser-target your ads to brand sure you attain the Facebook users who are most likely to be interested in your business organization. This allows you lot to minimize your ad spend and maximize ROI.

Facebook Custom Audiences offer some of the best targeting available. They are highly divers groups of people who already have a relationship with your concern, such as by customers, people who have visited your website, or people who have installed your app.

Fifty-fifty better, Custom Audiences tin can be used to create lookalike audiences—new potential fans, followers, and customers who share key characteristics with your existing customers and fans.

Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches y'all how to plow Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.

Types of Custom Audiences

Custom Audiences from customer lists

Customer lists offering a style for you to let Facebook know nearly existing relationships you have with customers that cannot be mapped through Facebook engagement or the Facebook pixel.

For example, you might take a listing of newsletter subscribers or past customers. These are people who take conspicuously expressed an interest in your business, just Facebook has no way to place them unless you upload a listing. When you upload the information, Facebook uses a process chosen "hashing" to keep specific customer information private while still allowing it to find matches with Facebook user profiles.

Keep in heed that you can but upload data from customers who have given you permission to market to them. You tin can't employ a purchased customer listing, for instance, or information yous've gathered from other websites—and if someone opts out of your email list, you need to remove them from your Custom Audition, too.

Yous should also know that customers tin see which companies have uploaded customer lists that include their data. If you want to check which advertisers accept uploaded lists that include you, log into your Facebook business relationship and click Settings. So click Ads in the left cavalcade, and select Advertisers you lot've interacted with.

advertisers you've interacted with screen

It'southward a good idea to check out Facebook'south Custom Audiences terms of service to brand sure you're post-obit the electric current rules.

Custom Audiences from your website

Once you lot install the Facebook pixel on your website, Facebook can lucifer your website visitors to their Facebook profiles.

You tin use this data to create Custom Audiences that target all website visitors, or to remarket to people who accept visited a specific product page or product category. Yous gear up the timeframe for how far back you want to go, so you can choose to target only your most contempo website visitors, or people who visited upward to six months ago.

If you haven't installed the Facebook pixel however, yous're missing out on this rich source of data. Check out our full guide to using the Facebook pixel to get it set up upwardly on your site.

Custom Audiences from your mobile app

After you register your app and gear up the SDK on the Facebook for Developers site, yous can create a Custom Audience of people who have interacted with your app.

(If this sounds similar Greek to you, talk to your developer and inquire them to help y'all with these preliminary steps.)

This type of Custom Audience can be a great ground for app engagement campaigns, since you can target people who accept downloaded your app only may not be using it still, people who have made in-app purchases, or people who have accomplished a certain level in your game.

Engagement Custom Audiences

An engagement Custom Audience allows yous to target people who have already interacted with your brand on Facebook or Instagram.

How to create Facebook Custom Audiences

For all Custom Audition types, you'll kickoff by opening your Facebook audiences folio in Ads Manager and clicking Create a Custom Audience.

Custom Audience creation screen

From here, the process depends on what kind of Custom Audience yous want to create.

How to create a customer list Custom Audience

1. Click Customer File and and so choose whether to add customer information or import a list from MailChimp.

Importing from MailChimp menu
Since non everyone uses MailChimp, we'll look here at how to import your own customer data. If y'all do employ MailChimp, you'll enter your MailChimp login credentials and follow a few simple steps. For anybody else…

2. Before moving on, you'll need to accept the Custom Audience terms of service. Essentially, you must acknowledge that you accept permission from the people on your list to apply and share their information. Once you've read and understood the terms, click I Accept.

three. Prepare your customer list. Be certain to follow Facebook'south information formatting best practices to become the most matches on your list. Yous should read the best practices in total to make sure you get the best matches, just here are three central tips:

  • Include separate columns for first and last names
  • Always include the land lawmaking on telephone numbers (even if all phone numbers are from the same country). Don't include a leading zero in the state code. For example, if your client are in the United States or Canada, the land code is 1.
  • Always include a state column (once again, fifty-fifty if all your customers are form the aforementioned country)

four. Upload your customer data file in .CSV or .TXT format, or re-create and paste it into the box provided. Requite your audience a name that clearly defines who appears on this list (for instance, email subscribers), and so click Side by side.

naming your audience screen

5. Await. Facebook will prepare your Custom Audience, which should be gear up in almost half an hr.

How to create a website visitors Custom Audition

Before you tin can utilise website visitors Custom Audiences, you need to install the Facebook Pixel. If you haven't already done so, cheque out our full guide to using the Facebook Pixel on your website.

1. Click Website Traffic, so cull the pixel you lot want to apply to build your audience.

Choose your pixel screen

2. Choose who to target: all website visitors, people who visited specific pages, or people who spent a specific corporeality of time on your site. Then set your desire timeframe, from xxx to 180 days. Yous can further define your audience using rules, which permit you to specify the number of times someone has visited your website and the specific device that they employ.

3. Give your audience a name you will retrieve and click Create Audience.

four. Wait. Facebook will set up your Custom Audience, which should exist gear up in about half an hour.

How to create a mobile app Custom Audience

i. Click App Activity and choose the events you want to target from the drop-down menu.

ii. Choose the timeframe you lot desire to target: from 30 to 180 days.

3. Farther define your audition using details similar in-app purchases and which device people utilize.

4. Give your audience a name you will remember and click Create Audition. You tin can use your audience right abroad, but information technology may take upwardly to an hour to be fully populated with past app users.

How to create an appointment Custom Audience

1. Click Date. A new pop-up volition open asking you lot to choose whether y'all desire to create your engagement audition based on interactions with your videos, pb forms, Facebook Folio, Instagram business profile, or upshot, or people who accept opened your collection or Canvas Facebook ad. Click on the option you prefer.

2. Choose the advisable options:

  • For video, choose how much of your video people have watched: from a minimum of 3 seconds to at least 95% of the video.
  • For lead forms, choose whether you desire people to have submitted the form, or just opened information technology.
  • For your Facebook Page or Instagram profile, choose which kinds of interactions you want to target: visits, messaging, clicks, and and so on.
  • For your effect, cull whether you desire to target people who have indicated interest, those who take actually purchased tickets, and and then on.

three. Choose the timeframe you want to target, up to 365 days.

4. Requite your audition a name y'all will think and click Create Audience.

Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you lot how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.

Get the free guide correct now!

How to utilize your Custom Audience

Once you lot've set up one of more Custom Audiences, they're very piece of cake to utilise.

ane. Open up Facebook Ads Manager and click Create Ad.

2. Follow the steps to set up your ad. If you're new to Facebook advertising, follow the steps in our complete guide to Facebook ads.

3. Ready the advertisement to target your selected Custom Audition.

four. Refine your targeting options. For example, if y'all're running a campaign to offer a discount to new customers, be sure to exclude existing customers from your Custom Audience targeting for that item ad.

v. Set your budget and timing as usual and y'all're ready to become.

But that's just the technical side of using Facebook Custom Audiences. You also demand to think about how to utilise Facebook Custom Audiences strategically. Here are some ideas:

Utilise Facebook Custom Audiences for remarketing

Remarketing is an constructive way to remind people about products they're interested ins—or have even abandoned in a shopping carts—encouraging them to have the final stride of making a purchase.

For example, Jolly, an art and writing supplies company from Austria, used Custom Audiences to target ads to people who had recently visited its website. Combined with lookalike audiences (more than on those beneath), this strategy allowed Jolly to increase website conversions past i.65 times, with a one.seven times return on Facebook ad spend.

Use Facebook Custom Audiences to achieve your most likely repeat customers

Existing customers already know and trust your brand—so marketing to them can produce much college conversion rates than trying to reach people who accept not bought from yous earlier. It's much easier to convince a satisfied customer to make a 2nd purchase than it is to acquire a new customer in the commencement place.

This doesn't only apply to online purchases. Using a Custom Audience from a customer list, you tin can invite past customers to return to your retail store, ship special offers for repeat clients, or let people know when yous release a new version of a product they already ain.

For instance, the tour operator TUI Belgium used a Custom Audition of people who had previously booked tours with the visitor every bit the target for a drove advertizing entrada promoting holiday packages.

Utilize Custom Audiences to increment app engagement

If you're running an ad to increase app date, there's no point showing the advertizement to people who have yet to download your app. With a Custom Audience of people who already have your app downloaded, you can target your ad effectively, helping you to get the maximum impact for your budget.

Use Custom Audiences to grow your Facebook following

People who are already interacting with your business would make great Facebook Page followers. Some of them are probable following your Folio already, just many of them might not know yous take a Facebook Page, or only might never have idea to seek y'all out on social media.

Use a Facebook ad with a Custom Audition based on website visitors or a client list to promote your Facebook Folio to this highly targeted group. But make sure to exclude people who have already liked your Page, so yous don't pay to reach existing Facebook fans.

Use lookalike audiences

You can employ lookalike audiences to target people who are like to people who already collaborate with your business organization—significant they are probable to exist interested in the products and services y'all offer.

Even if you don't accept a large enough list yet to create a Custom Audience from your customer list (y'all demand a minimum of 1,000 contacts), y'all can create lookalike audiences based on a Custom Audition of people who have visited your website or who already like your Facebook Page.

For example, Shopify used this strategy to achieve a ii times lower price per lead when they used a lookalike audience of people based on a Custom Audience of website visitors. Paessler IG used a lookalike audience based on a Custom Audition of people who had previously completed pb forms to accomplish relevant Information technology professionals who were not aware of its products and achieved a 63 percent decrease in CPM, 51 percentage decrease in cost per lead, and 64 per centum decrease in price per click.

How to expand your Custom Audience

There'southward value in trying to expand your Custom Audiences, since they put your ad in forepart of more than targeted potential fans, followers, and customers.

Hither are some ways to expand your list.

Use Facebook Advertising types effectively

When y'all're trying to build your Custom Audience, you lot desire to become your Facebook ads in front end of a large number of people, targeted appropriately. Utilize the Awareness entrada objectives to brand certain your ads reach a large number of people in your targeted group.

Increasing your advertisement bid slightly can help attain fifty-fifty more people and build your Custom Audience more quickly.

Test and tweak your ads for maximum conversion

In order to grow your Custom Audience, you need people to engage with your ads. The more effective your ad, the more than quickly you will build your Custom Audition.

We've got a whole blog postal service on how to test and refine social media ads, simply here are some key advertizement elements to test:

  • Headline
  • Advertizing text
  • Link preview text
  • Phone call to action
  • Epitome or video
  • Ad format

Use Facebook Audition Insights

Facebook Audition Insights tin can give y'all valuable information about the demographics of any of your Custom Audiences. You tin can then apply that information to target ads to new potential Facebook connections. If any of those new people engage with your ads or your Facebook Page, they will become function of your engagement Custom Audition.

Manage your Facebook presence aslope your other social media channels using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, y'all can schedule posts, share video, engage your audience, and measure the affect of your efforts. Try it free today.

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