Better Engagement with Facebook’s Custom Audience Ad Options

When creating Facebook ad campaigns, you want to reach the right people, and engage them to achieve your brand’s objective. Facebook is continuously fine-tuning its ad targeting to make it more effective – and one option that offers helpful customization is Custom Audiences.

What is a Custom Audience?

A Custom Audience allows you to target people who already have some connection or relationship to your company. For example, people who have:

• Signed up for your email mailing list
• Visited your website or took specific actions
• Used your app or played your game
• Interacted with your business offline
• Engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram

In short, when you create a Custom Audience, you’re not cold-calling people with your ad campaign. You’re targeting them because they’ve already expressed some interest in your business in the past.

How do you create a Custom Audience?

You can create a Custom Audience in Facebook Ads Manager through the following methods.

1. Customer File

Add customer information, either by copying and pasting it directly into Facebook, or uploading files or email lists.

2. Website Traffic

Create a custom Facebook pixel to place in your website’s code. Measure who takes certain actions on your site, then use that data to build a Custom Audience.

3. App Activity

Filter a list of people who used your app or game within a certain time period. Specify whether the list includes anyone who launched the app, or just those who meet certain criteria.

4. Offline Activity

Track offline conversions – such as sales in your physical business location or on the phone – to create a new Custom Audience.

5. Engagement

Build a Custom Audience based on people who have interacted with your brand on Facebook or Instagram through:

• Watching your videos
• Opening or filling out your forms in lead ads
• Opening your collection ads or Canvas
• Engaging with your business profiles
• Responding “going to” or “interested” for events

Though Facebook doesn’t have immediate plans to widely roll out these new features, The Next Web’s Matt Navarra noted that the platform was recently testing two more options within Custom Audiences:

6. Dwell Time      

Make a list of people who “have spent time viewing your display adverts on Facebook or Instagram.”

7. Link Sharing

Create a Custom Audience “based on people who have shared your content on Facebook.”

How can you use Custom Audiences to expand your reach?

Custom Audiences allow you to experiment with different ad campaigns targeted to specific groups of people who have shown interest in your brand. Test, track and analyze small campaigns to gather information on what resonates with your audience.

When you find an effective approach with a certain group of people, create a Lookalike Audience in Facebook Ads Manager to reach new users who resemble one of your Custom Audiences. You’ll need at least 100 people in your source customer group to create a Lookalike Audience. Then you can target ads to your new audience based on parameters such as location and age.

Learn more about how social media marketing can help you achieve your objectives.