Facebook Custom Audience: How to Create a Personalized Audience for Advertising Campaigns

Any marketer in the world knows that the success of an online advertising campaign depends on correct audience targeting. In practice, to have successful ads, you need to know who you want your product or service to reach.

Facebook Custom Audiences are a powerful tool for optimizing Ads and maximizing ROI – Return on Investment.

Read the guide I’ve prepared for you, with many practical tips and suggestions for creating a custom audience that really makes a difference in your Facebook advertising campaigns!

But first, let me introduce you to Facebook Custom Audience with some simple concepts, necessary if you’re new to the industry, and useful even if you’re a marketer but want to refresh your knowledge.

Facebook Custom Audience: What It Is and What Benefits It Brings to Advertising Campaigns

The Custom Audience is the personalized audience that the advertiser creates using available data, such as phone number, email address, Facebook user IDs of those who have interacted with the brand in the past, or data derived from user interactions with the company’s website or mobile app.

There are many advantages to using a Custom Audience, but I’d like to focus on 3 in particular:

1. ads created based on behaviors that users have already had towards a brand have a higher relevance, and I’d say there can be no doubt about this. The real advantage for marketers is that this type of advertising message has a much higher probability of reaching its destination and, above all, of leading to a purchase, download or “sign-up by the” user.
2. We’ve already discussed this extensively in the article on Facebook ROI, which I invite you to read to understand how to maximize sponsored posts. Coming back to us, to succeed with online advertising, you need to target your audience meticulously. Only then will the cost per acquisition (CPA) decrease and the return on investment improve. Why? Obviously, if you’re talking to people who have shown some interest and already know your brand, or product/service you offer, it will be easier for them to complete an action.
3. Custom Audiences are an excellent tool for effective retargeting campaigns, because they reach users who have already visited your website or used the app, but haven’t completed any action. In marketing, dealing with a warm/hot audience is 1000 times better than dealing with a cold and sometimes frozen audience!

One point I want to be more than clear, crystal clear to you. Before wasting time and money, take the data you have about users who have gravitated to your website, app, or Facebook page and target them in an almost maniacal manner.

Personalize your ads based on audience segments and optimize your advertising campaigns. Now let’s proceed and look at the various options that Meta provides to marketers.

The Main Differences Between Custom Audience and Saved Audience

Custom Audiences, as we’ve seen, are personalized audiences that the advertiser creates based on precise data in their possession, because the users have come into contact with the brand.

Saved Audiences, on the other hand, are created by choosing from the demographic data, interests, behaviors, and connections that Facebook makes available.

The main difference is, of course, the different customization and the purpose for which to use them. While Custom Audiences are perfect for retargeting and loyalty, Saved Audiences allow you to reach new users and expand your audience.

Want to know more about how to use the two audiences in sponsored ads?

In a nutshell, use Custom Audiences to increase loyalty, convert already known users, or for upselling and cross-selling campaigns targeted at customers who have already shown interest.

Rely on Saved Audiences if you want to increase brand awareness and recognition, attract new customers, and target new market segments.

Types of Custom Audiences available on Facebook

Before proceeding with creating a Custom Audience, know that you can choose between:

Custom Audience from website traffic

You create this audience through the Facebook Pixel, or other tracking tools, which detect the behaviors of users who have visited your website. Using this information, your ads will return to them with a precise and targeted proposal, to encourage them to complete what they left unfinished, for example, a product in the cart or a contact form not filled in every field.

Custom Audience from app interactions

You can create Custom Audiences based on actions users have taken within your app, such as purchases and installations. You’ll use this for re-engagement campaigns and to encourage further interactions or conversions.

Custom Audience from a customer list

We talked about this in the very first paragraphs. This is the custom audience obtained from data already in possession of the company, such as email contacts, phone numbers, or other identifying information.

Custom Audience based on interactions

You can use this audience to target users who have already shown a certain degree of engagement with your content or your company. Leverage actions taken by users on Facebook, such as interaction with posts, videos, pages, or events and customize your ad campaigns.

What is the Lookalike Audience on Facebook?

The Similar Audience or Lookalike deserves a separate paragraph, which all seasoned marketers know well, as it allows you to reach new people who share similar characteristics and behaviors to those of their existing audience.

The potential of this audience is very high, obviously much more than an audience that has little or nothing in common with those who have already visited your website, or have shown some interest by approaching your brand.

When is a similar audience useful

Do you already have a good number of customers or users following you and want to acquire new relevant leads? Then the similar audience is for you!

Choose a Lookalike also if you need to launch new products or services, so you’ll have high chances of reaching potentially interested people, since their “similar ones” have shown interest.

Consider the similar audience also if you want to open up to new markets and geographical areas without risking navigating blindly in a truly vast ocean.

The advantages of the Lookalike audience

If you want to do retargeting, you should know that the similar audience leverages Facebook’s sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find and reach people with interests and behaviors similar to your target audience.

This is the best way to optimize ROI and avoid unnecessary expenses. The chances that users will turn into customers and complete the action you want are very high, also because the creativity of your ads can draw inspiration from images and copy that have already performed well. And believe me, this is a huge advantage!

All the steps you need to follow to create your Facebook Custom Audience

Now let’s see step by step what you need to do to create your custom audience on Facebook, so you won’t get lost in the meanders of theory and will learn to choose the best solution for your sponsored ads. Let’s begin!

Access your Meta Business Suite account. On the left, scroll down to the hamburger menu with the three lines and from All tools go to Ads Manager. If you have more than one advertising account, because you work in an agency, manage multiple businesses, or have different projects, choose the one for which you want to create your custom audience.

On the left, scroll down to “Audiences”, click and prepare to choose based on the objectives you want to achieve with your ad.

Select:

1. Create a Custom Audience
2. Create a Lookalike Audience
3. Create a Saved Audience

Did you click on Custom Audience? OK, now choose the source of your audience, which can be:

• Your sources: website, app activity, catalog, customer list, offline activity.

• Meta sources: video, lead form, interactive experience, purchases, augmented reality, Instagram account, events, Facebook page, Facebook ads.

Let’s say you choose to select a customer list as the data source. At this point, Meta gives you instructions on how to add the file with the information and how to format the file correctly. To understand it well, I’ll copy and paste the message you’ll find:

How to prepare your customer list: A customer list is a CSV or TXT file containing information about your customers. The information, such as names and email addresses, are called identifiers. We use the identifiers to find matches between your customers and Facebook and Instagram users. Before the list is sent to us to create your audience, your list of identifiers is hashed with a random code.

Once you’ve done everything Meta asks, you can upload the file and confirm.

I want to give you another example, this time with website data sources. In this case, you’ll need to have installed Facebook Pixel for tracking events on your website and flag by choosing between “All website visitors”, “People who visited specific pages”, “Visitors by time spent”.

You have other options to customize and, as you can see, Facebook is really thorough in collecting information because it wants to achieve real objectives, just as much as you do.

You’re definitely wondering how to create a Custom Audience with a Lookalike Audience, and I’ll satisfy your curiosity right away. First, Meta asks you to select a data source, or an existing audience, or a new source with a custom audience or a value-based custom audience.

After making the choice, you’ll also need to select the geographical areas, the country of your audience, and indicate how many lookalike audience groups with different levels of similarity you want to create.

Learn How to Choose the Audience for Your Facebook Ads

When it comes to advertising, the technicalities and best practices to follow can be intimidating, I know that well. You shouldn’t get discouraged though, but proceed in small steps and memorize the key points and essential activities.

Follow me and discover the actions you need to take to choose which audience is right for your ad campaign:

• Come hell or high water, the very first thing is to establish the objectives of the advertising campaign. Do you want to acquire new leads, increase sales, or raise awareness? Start here, by having clear ideas about the results you want to achieve.

• Observe and analyze your current customers, the users who have interacted with your brand, who they are, how old they are, where they live, what their interests are, and how they behave on the web and on Facebook.

• Leverage the targeting options provided by Meta/Facebook to define demographic, geographic, behavioral information and interests.

Once you’ve chosen your audience and launched the advertising campaign, never stop testing its performance and optimizing it. On the web, you can’t remain static; you must be dynamic, flexible, and ready to modify based on the data that analysis tools report in real-time.

How to modify and optimize the existing audience from a customer list

To modify a custom audience from a customer list on Facebook, follow these steps:

• Go to the “Audience” section in “Ads Manager”.

• Find the custom audience you want to modify in the list and click on Edit.

• Choose between “Include more people” to add new customers to the “existing list, or ‘Exclude people’ if you need to remove specific customers from the” list.

• Upload the file with the new data or directly paste the list in the required format. If you’re adding specific values for customers, make sure to include this information and clearly identify the customer value column.

• Click on Update audience to update your audience. You’ll receive a confirmation as soon as the list is uploaded.

• After making the changes, it may take a few hours for the update to complete. In the meantime, your ads will continue to be published. Visit the Audience section to monitor the status and confirm that the updates have been successfully made.

Tools and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the custom audience

A good marketer must also be a good analyst and strategist, and know how to read and use data and reports to their advantage. The key metrics you need to keep an eye on are:

• Conversion Rate which indicates the percentage of users who have taken an action after seeing your ad.

• Cost per Acquisition (CPA) which is how much it costs you to convert a user into a customer.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) one of the most important KPIs, because it establishes the percentage of clicks received on your ads compared to the total number of views. A high CTR is telling you that your audience is well-targeted and that you’re speaking to the right people.

• Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS, or better yet ROI) is the indicator you need to understand if you’re spending your advertising budget well and if the campaign is generating profit.

• Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) i.e., for views of your ad, another useful metric for maximizing ROI.

• Bounce Rate for campaigns that drive users to a website. If the bounce rate is high, take action, because visitors are arriving on the site and leaving quickly, perhaps because they don’t find what you promised in the ad, or because the site doesn’t offer an optimal user experience.

Adjust campaigns based on performance

On the web, and especially in “online advertising, dynamism and a” practical approach reign supreme. Follow me because I’m about to give you some suggestions for improvements:

Keep an Eye on Data and KPIs

Elsewhere you’ll read about checking data regularly, but I’m upping the ante and telling you to do it every day, from the moment you launch the ad. You should especially monitor the CTR (Click-Through Rate), the CPA (Cost per Acquisition), and the ROI (Return on Investment). Only this way will you know if the audience is interested in your offer. If not, change your strategy and revise the ad.

Conduct A/B Tests

The advantage of working in online advertising is that you can course-correct and make continuous modifications. You can also test different versions of your ads with your audience to see which performs better. Change images, texts, or call-to-action, and don’t be afraid to try and retry to understand what works best with your audience.

Segment the Audience and Refine Targeting

If some segments of your audience respond better than others, try to further refine the targeting to focus on these groups.

Optimize Bids and Allocate Budget to Best-Performing Ads

To increase conversions, you need to increase the budget for campaigns that are performing particularly well and reduce or eliminate it for those generating poor results.

Create and Adapt Content to Your Audience’s Preferred Formats

Each audience segment has its preferences, and the data tells you this clearly. That’s why you need to be a good analyst and strategist, and adapt the type of content for your campaigns. If the reports say, for example, that you’re addressing people who prefer videos, create video content! Logical and clear, right?

Pay Attention to Every User Action and Leverage Retargeting

The traces and information left by users who have somehow orbited, or are orbiting around your brand, even if they haven’t completed any action (purchase, download, subscription), are gold.

Use this information for retargeting and create ads that push to complete that unfinished action, perhaps with special offers or by reminding them of your unique value selling proposition.

Third-Party Tools that Facilitate the Creation and Management of Custom Audiences

I’ve chosen some tools that can help you optimize your advertising campaigns. I hope you’ll find them useful!

• Connectio, optimizes targeting and improves campaign ROI and is useful for synchronizing data between Facebook and other marketing platforms.

What I’m presenting to you now is a tool for analyzing and segmenting. It’s called AdEspresso which helps you in creating, managing, and optimizing advertising campaigns on Facebook. It also offers advanced audience analysis and segmentation features.

Excellent tools for managing data are:

• MailChimp, which can integrate with Facebook Ads to target or retarget customers based on their previous actions in email campaigns.

• HubSpot, like MailChimp, integrates with Facebook for lead generation management and creation of Custom Audiences based on user behavior recorded in the CRM.

Among the tools for automating workflows between apps, including Facebook, how can we not mention Zapier, which automatically updates your Custom Audiences whenever changes occur in your CRM data, or in other applications.

As a CRM software, you can integrate Salesforce with Facebook to create Custom Audiences based on many different criteria and precise information derived from customer data.

Frequently asked questions

What Happens if I Delete the Custom Audience While the Campaign is Active?

If you delete the audience, all campaigns linked to that custom audience will be deactivated.

How is the audience visiting the website counted?

Unique visitors with Facebook accounts are counted within the time frame you have selected, up to a maximum of 180 days. Users who disable ads for any reason are not counted.

Can I create Custom Audiences using data from different sources?

Certainly, you can create a Custom Audience using data from your website, mobile app, CRM information, or interactions with social media content.

How long does it take Meta/Facebook to process and update a Custom Audience?

It can take from a few hours up to 24 hours, depending on the size of the audience and the amount of data.

Conclusions

Facebook Custom Audiences are an excellent tool for optimizing advertising campaigns, because through precise and accurate targeting, you can segment your audience and create ads with dedicated texts, images, and offers that reach exactly who you want.

By using data such as email addresses, website interactions, and other user activities, you can create personalized audiences that significantly improve the effectiveness of your ads and, consequently, maximize return on investment.

In the article, I have provided practical guidance and suggestions for setting up and using Custom Audiences. I have also explained what types of custom audiences exist and what the differences are with Lookalike audiences and Saved Audiences.

Finally, remember to leverage analytics tools to monitor and optimize your campaigns, because dynamism, flexibility, and adaptability are three essential skills for being a good marketer!

If you want to delve deeper into the topic, follow our free Facebook Ads course, the most comprehensive and up-to-date available online.

Would you like our team to collaborate on your growth and optimal functioning of your advertising campaigns? We’re here, contact us today!