How to Set Up Custom Audiences in Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is an incredibly popular PPC platform, and it is reported to have a 45% market share across all social media platforms. It’s popularity spans from the fantastic targeting option, ad customisation, and potential exposure from the platform itself.

Once you get into Facebook Ads you will also see it has a range of useful tools and features that allow for excellent targeting. These ultimately allow you to improve your ads so that they reflect your target customer and provide more conversions.

A highly useful tool is custom audiences and this is what I will introduce you to in the below article. To give you a brief intro, a Facebook custom audience allows you to import external customer data and use it for retargeting for your ads. However, the feature is more in-depth than that and I explain the different types, why they are beneficial, and how to set up custom audiences in Facebook ads in X simple steps.

What Are Custom Audiences for Facebook Ads?

First, we need to understand the definition and what this feature is. A Facebook custom audience is a pre-defined group of people who have an existing relationship with your company. This could be past customers, people who have visited your website, or people who have given you their email, for example.

It’s purpose is to allow you to retarget to those existing customers to give your Meta Ads a higher chance of converting. Not only that, but Facebook custom audiences can be used to create “lookalike audiences”. AI algorithms on the PPC platform essentially use your custom audiences to look for new customers who have similar traits/demographics.

As you can see, Facebook custom audiences have great potential and are a useful feature to implement once you have created a basic set of ads.

Types of Custom Audiences

We can split Facebook custom audiences into different types and it’s essential to understand these so you can see which ones are relevant for your business:

• Customer Lists: This custom audiences is created from external lists of people who have already shown an interest in your business. For example, you may have an exportable database with a list of customers and their email addresses. Facebook uses the info you provide such as their emails, matches this with their social media profile, and uses it to create the audience.
• Website: To create this custom audience, you first need to install Meta Pixel on your website which is analytical tracker. With this installed, the data it captures from your website can then be used to create customer audiences. For example, it could be simply anyone who has visited your website, or more specific such as people who have visited a product page.
• App Activity: If you have a mobile app, you can create Facebook customer audiences using data drawn from the program too.
• Engagement: The engagement custom audience is built from people who have interacted in some way with your Facebook and Instagram business pages. This could be likes, shares, following your page, views, or comments, for example. It can go further than this and target people who have viewed your videos or clicked on your social PPC ads.

Why Are Custom Audiences Beneficial for Your PPC Campaign?

So, we know that Facebook Ads custom audiences are a thing, but why should you care and what can they bring to your digital marketing campaigns?

• Improved Targeting: Oftentimes Facebook Ads fall short because you don’t have enough targeting. Your ads might get impressions, but if they are being shown to the wrong people, they won’t get consistent conversions. Custom audiences help with this and allow you to target people you know have an interest or existing relationship with your business.
• Better Engagement: Using the engagement audience option allows you to build on the success of your social media platform and create additional engagement. For example, you can target customers who have liked or shared your posts which could then result in more likes and shares in a snowball effect.
• Clear Ad Messaging: PPC ads can be fragmented as you try to appeal to a mass audience. This can reduce your online brand cohesion and result in your ads being ineffective as customers struggle to identify with your business. Custom audiences help with this as you create targeted ads aimed at specific customer bases.
• Better Personalisation: In todays digital world most customers expect a level of personalisation and custom audiences allow you to improve this for your ads. You can tailor them to suit specific traits or habits of your customers which should result in higher conversions.

How to Set Up Customer Audiences in Meta Ads

Before you create Facebook Ads custom audiences it’s vital to research the different types and think about what you want to achieve. For example, you need to know who you want to target, and the specific actions you want to target that you think will generate the best results.

This is because for each of the four different audience types, there are multiple rules and options to select that will greatly affect who is included in the audience and how it works. With your research and customer data in place, you can use the below steps to create the relevant audience.

If you need any help with obtaining customer data, or you do not have PPC experience for creating custom audiences, you can also contact us – we have in-depth knowledge of these processes and can help.

Creating a Custom Audience from Customer Lists

1. First you must have a dataset with identifiers that Facebook can use to create the audience and get great matches. This must be a TXT or CSV file. Facebook offers a guide on formatting customer lists too for your custom audiences.
2. On the custom audience option, there should be a list of “sources” including yours and sources from Meta. Select the “Customer List” option and click next.
3. The next page should give you the option to import your previously created customer list. Simply select the file location and upload it. There is an option to import customer lists directly from external sources like MailChimp too.
4. Once the data is uploaded you can review your submission. The platform will highlight any errors that you can fix before you hit the upload & create button.

Creating a Custom Audience from Website Data

1. First you must instal Meta Pixel on your website and it must be active. Installing this tracker varies depending on your web development platform but Meta provides a handy guide.
2. As before, on the custom audience creation feature, find the “your sources” section and click the “website” option and click the next button.
3. The next step is to define various parameters including source, retention period, and other important rules. Which you select depends on what data you want to use and how you want the custom audience to be created. For example, you can create an audience that targets customers who visited specific web pages.
4. You can then name the audience (I recommend using logical, descriptive names so you can easily manage them in the future) and hit the create button.

Creating a Custom Audience from Your Mobile App

1. To create Facebook Ads custom audiences from your mobile app, it must first be registered with the social media platform. This guide from Meta explains the process and how to do it for both Android and iOS apps.
2. Once you have configured the SDK and allowed tracking of specific app data you can open the custom audience option on Facebook Ads and select the “App activity” option on the sources page.
3. The next page is where you define which events you want to use to create the custom audience. This can be things like if a customer has made a purchase, opened the app, or setup a payment option. This targeting step can be incredibly detailed and you can create rules for people you want to exclude from the custom audience too.

Creating a Custom Audience from Engagement

1. To create a Facebook custom audience using engagement, there is no prior step as the data is pulled directly from the social media platform.
2. Choose the custom audience option and select one of the tick boxes from the “Meta sources” selection. This includes video, lead form, instant experience, AR experience, On-Facebook listings, Instagram account, events, Facebook page, and shopping. Please note that you can only select one option for each audience.
3. The next step depends on which engagement method you chose. However, you must now define the rules for the custom audiences. For example, if you selected “Facebook Page”, you can choose specific events to be including for the audience building like viewing your page, liking a post, or other interactions.
4. As with the other custom audiences, you can be in-depth with these rules including excluding specific people you don’t want to be included in the audience.
5. Once you have created the rules, name the custom audience, add a description, and click the “create audience” button.

Facebook Ads Custom Audiences Are Imperative for Your PPC Campaigns

If you want to take your social media marketing to the next level and get better returns on your Meta PPC campaigns, Facebook Ads custom audiences are an excellent tool.  They can be used to achieve a range of marketing goals such as increasing app and website engagement, gaining sales from repeat customers, and building your Facebook audience.

The first step is learning how to create Facebook Ads custom audiences which you should now have a clear understanding of. After that, you need to develop your PPC marketing strategies and consider how custom audiences would be best used.