Creating an audience from the Customer File
Before we get started with audience creation, it is good for you to know what a custom audience is. When you log into your Facebook ad manager account and start creating ads, you’ll notice that you’ll be able to customize the audience to create a group to whom you want to show your ads.
Simply put, Custom audiences are those audiences that have been created by you. They can be set up according to who you want to target according to age,
gender, location and many other criteria. These audiences are then targeted on Facebook to have your ads served to them.
Let’s start by showing you how to create a custom audience from a “customer file”.
To go straight to the Audience Creation interface, go to facebook.com/ads/manager/audiences
Click on “create a custom audience”.
There, you’ll be asked how you want to create your custom audience, and you’ll be presented with four options. Choose “customer file” to proceed with customization.
A “customer file” is a document created by you of information about your existing customers, and Facebook can use it to find people on its network that match the data of your customers.
This is great, because it will allow you to reach other people based on information that you have gathered from your customers, creating an audience more likely to engage with your offer!
If you manage a mailing list or subscription, it is likely that you already have a batch of customer data. If you don’t have a customer file, it is quite easy to create one.
Creating an audience from Website Traffic
Creating custom audiences for your website traffic is a strategy that will allow you to remarket on Facebook to people who have visited your website. You can do this by creating an ad and inserting the “Facebook pixel” on your page.
The “Facebook pixel” is a code generated by Facebook that you can insert on your website to track the actions of your visitors. It can help you optimize ad delivery to people likely to take action on your page and access audience insights.
Once inside facebook.com/ads/manager/audiences, you’ll see listed any Custom Audience you have created.
Click on “create audience”. Then, click on “Custom Audience”
A new “create audience” box will load. Click “website traffic”.
As you’ll notice, you can add anyone who visits your website, people who visit specific pages, people visiting specific pages and not others, people who have not visited in a certain amount of time or simply choose a custom combination.
Below, you have a field where you can enter the number of days you want people to remain in your audience after they have visited your site. This means that your pixel will track and serve ads to these people in this time frame.
It is set at 30 days by default.
Lastly, write a name to identify your audience in the “audience name” field, and click on “create audience”.
Now, your audience from website traffic has been created.
Notice that the pixel is not installed, yet. You’ll need to get the pixel code.
Creating an audience from App Activity
Facebook apps are applications created to be used by the millions and millions of people that use Facebook on a daily basis.
These apps can be games, calendars, productivity suites and, so on!
In fact, it is estimated that revenue brought in by apps to developers has been growing with each passing year, and it is said that it is getting bigger as we speak!
Can you imagine what the size of the app consuming audience is?
Well…we do! If it is as big as we imagine it to be, it means that everybody out there does not use and spend on apps in the same way.
Audiences created from app activity will allow you to reach the proper audience for your app based on the type of specific actions that your current users take when using your application.
Whether it’s a game or a birthday reminding app, you want to reach people more likely to use it!
Before you can start using custom audiences from your mobile app, make sure that you have followed these steps:
- Register your app
- Set up app events for iOS or Android. This is done to reach users that take specific actions within your app. You can add those from your software development kit, which includes predefined actions such as “add to cart” or “level achieved”, or you can add custom actions
Once you have registered your app and set up your app events, head over to the Audiences section.
Creating an audience from Engagement on Facebook
In past chapters you have learned how to create audiences by capturing people from external sources like your website, the customer data base of your business and even from your mobile app to engage them and serve them ads on Facebook.
Now that you can easily reach a lot of those people on the biggest social network to date it is time to up the ante and start remarketing to them directly from their Facebook main feed. You can do this because by now there are lots of those website visitors, existing customers and app users that are following you and your business on Facebook, so let’s show how it is done.
Engagement custom audiences are audiences that you create to target people that are connecting with you on Facebook. The word engagement in online platforms specifically refers to interaction and content consumption.
For example, you can say that you engage your fans when they interact with your posts, when they comment on your publications, when they watch your videos and when they post something on your page, and even when they contact you.
So in that sense, “engagement custom audiences” can be used to target those people that have already interacted with you, and you can go as far as to target ads to a certain segment of your audience based on how they interact with you.
To create “engagement custom audiences” head to the “assets” tab in your ads manager dashboard and click on “audiences”, click on the “create audience” dropdown menu and then on “custom audience”.
When you are asked about how do you want to create your audience, choose “engagement custom audiences”. A new dialog box will load asking you what kind of engagement do you want to use to create this audience. You will have three options: engagement by video, lead ad engagement and by canvas.
Creating Lookalike Audiences
Facebook remarketing has another trick up its sleeve that we are proud to introduce you to: lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences work in a similar fashion to custom audiences created from customer files in that they are created by finding people that match certain type of data.
This data is also gathered from your existing customers, but this time it adds the benefit of lifting said data not only from your customers’ database but also from sources like people that like your page, people that have visited your website and people who have purchased products or services from you.
Saved Audiences
Knowing where your resources are can save you a lot of time, and having a dashboard like the Facebook ads manager is all about ease of use. So that is why in this video you will learn how to create “saved audiences” to save time and become more efficient!
“Saved audiences” are audiences that, as their name implies, had been previously saved for later use. This is great news for you because if you have an audience or two that have worked well for you before, the wisest thing to do is to use them again for a similar ad campaign.
