Facebook ads custom audiences guide

The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Custom Audiences by 2016 Update! Table of contents What are Custom Audiences? How to Create a Customer List Custom Audience How to Create a Website Custom Audience How to Create an App Activity Audience How to Create a Lookalike Audience How to Target Your Facebook Ads to a Custom by Massimo Chieruzzi Audience 7 Ideas To Boost Your Campaigns with Custom CEO, AdEspresso Audiences Doing More With Custom Audiences and AdEspresso     Page There’s a reason why all of the top marketers are using Custom Audiences in their Facebook Ads - they actually work! If you’re not using them already, chances are you’re losing money, which clearly shouldn’t be in your marketing plan! If you’re in a niche where Facebook Ads tend to be a less-effective channel, such as B2B, Custom Audiences can make your ads work much better and reach hundreds of thousands of more customers in the process If you’re not up on Custom Audiences, here are some case studies that quickly prove their worth: Want proof? We experienced the power of Custom Audiences ourselves As a B2B startup, Facebook wasn't our most effective acquisition channel Now, thanks to Custom Audiences, it generates more signups than Google AdWords at just one-third of the cost! AA KingNet: +75% CTR, +46.6% Conversion Rate, 43.37% lower CPA AA OpenSky: +30% Conversion Rate AA JackThreads: 30% Lower CPA for member In this ebook, you’ll discover what Custom Audiences are, how to start using them, and some of the best ideas to grow your business with them! Let’s get started signups AA KIXEYE: 2x Higher conversion rate, 5.5X higher LifeTime Value If Facebook Ads are already working for you, Custom Audiences can make your ROI skyrocket to new heights     Page Chapter One WHAT ARE CUSTOM AUDIENCES? Custom Audiences are an extremely effective way for marketers to target their Facebook Ads Through Custom Audiences, you can target your Facebook Ads with a list of email addresses, phone numbers, website visitors, fan page members, Facebook user IDs, and even engagement! list of 10,000 customers who’ve bought your product You want to promote the launch of an updated product version to these customers By simply uploading your email list to Facebook, you'll create a new Custom Audience Facebook will then try to match those email addresses with its users The opportunities for precisely targeting potential customers are basically endless You’re no longer limited to hard-guessing your advertising targets by gender or vague interests Instead, you can target a very precise niche of highly-targeted users For the sake of our example, let’s say Facebook was able to match 70% of your list You can now target advertising for the new, improved version of your product to 7,000 customers who already loved the previous one - I bet the conversion rate will be pretty high! Let’s look at an example: Say you have an email This example is just the beginning Since Custom     Page Audiences launched in October 2013, Facebook has continually made significant updates, making it much more powerful and flexible than ever before all users that have visited a specific page on your website during a set time period of up to 180 days If this marketing technique sounds familiar, it’s because it's basically Retargeting on Facebook without the hassle and the costs of the FBX program Here are your options for custom audiences: Standard Custom Audience Upload a list of emails, phone numbers, or Facebook User IDs you want to target and Facebook will match them with it’s users Facebook will usually match between 60-80% of the contacts on your list App Activity Custom Audiences You can create audiences based on what actions people take when they use your app - either on Desktop or Mobile You can create audiences of people who recently opened your app, recently completed a purchase, completed large purchases, or achieved a certain level in your game or platform For example, you can create an audience of those who have used your app previously, but not used it in the last 30 days Website Custom Audiences Website Custom Audiences means you don’t need to have target users' email addresses or phone numbers Instead, simply insert the Facebook Pixel tracking code on your website and you’ll be able to target your Facebook Advertising for     Page Lookalike Audiences Once you’ve created a Custom Audience, you can ask Facebook to create a broader Lookalike Audience to target your ads towards similar users Facebook will look for patterns and characteristics your users have in common such as age, gender, or interests - and create a much bigger list of very similar users With the ability to immediately expand your list and target users who are likely to convert, you can see why Lookalike Audiences are so powerful Since launching, Facebook has expanded Lookalike Audiences, allowing you to create them based on your Facebook Page fans, website visitors, and customer lists     Page Getting Started with Custom Audiences To create your first Custom Audience, go to the ”Audience" section of the Facebook Power Editor or Ads Manager In the Ads Manager, it’s under the Tools section Select “Audiences.”     Page In Power Editor, it has its own section, right under the the toolbar right beneath your ad account number: Since this is your first Custom Audience, you'll need to create a new one by clicking the green “Create Audience” button A popup window will open and ask you to pick which type of audience you’d like to create     Page Chapter Two HOW TO CREATE A “CUSTOMER LIST” CUSTOM AUDIENCE Let’s select the “Customer List” option These are also where you can put your leads - or potential customers You’ll have two options to sync “customer lists: A Manually upload your audience in a txt or csv file B Sync your Email CRM to your Facebook Ads Account     Page A Manual Upload To get started, you’ll need to prepare a file containing the contacts you want to add to your Custom Audience Use a CSV/Excel file or open a simple text editor and insert one value per line like this: AA email1@gmail.com AA email2@gmail.com AA email3@yahoo.com AA email4@outlook.com Remember, your file can contain either email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook User IDs, or mobile advertiser IDs Note that you cannot mix different data types This means your file should contain only emails, only phone numbers, and so on     Page 10 Since you have to use the complex Power Editor to make them, creating a Lookalike Audience is a bit trickier than creating a Custom Audience Here's how to it: AA Assuming you’ve already created your first Custom Audience, head to the “Audience” tab in Power Editor Simply click the green “Audience” button on the right For Ads Manager, click on “Tools” -> “Audience” -> “Create Lookalike” AA Insert a name for your new Lookalike Audience, then select the country you'd like your Lookalike Audience users to be in Unfortunately, you can only create a Lookalike Audience that targets users of a single country However, if you're using AdEspresso, you can quickly and easily generate multiple Lookalike Audiences to target users in multiple countries The last parameter, “Optimize for”, is very interesting It allows you to specify a smaller reach with better similarities to your original Custom Audience It also allows you to reach more people, though at the risk of lower similarities We always suggest optimizing for similarity even if it means having a lower overall reach This ensures your campaigns will perform better overall AA Click on the audience you want to use as a base for your new LookAlike Audience AA Below the list, you’ll get a name and description of your audience and three action buttons The first two are to add and remove users from your audience The last one is the one we’re looking for: “Create Lookalike Audience” Click It     Page 36 It takes Facebook longer to generate Lookalike Audiences than Custom Audiences Once you’ve completed your request for a new Lookalike Audience, it can take from several hours to a couple of days before your brand new audience is ready to be used for ad targeting The smallest lookalike audience, by default, is 1.9 million You can create a lookalike audience of: AA Page Fans AA Email Lists AA Current/Previous Customers AA Website Custom Audiences AA App Activity AA Engagement (Video, App, Posts, and more very soon)     Page 37 How to it in AdEspresso  Go to "Tools → Custom Audiences" and click the “Create Lookalike” button next to the Custom Audience you want to use as the base You can also use AdEspresso to create Lookalike Audiences for multiple countries at once  Just type the name of the countries you’re interested in  AdEspresso will create one Lookalike for each country It'll also append the target country's name after the base audience's name in your audience list, making it easy to keep track of your audiences     Page 38 Chapter Six HOW TO TARGET YOUR FACEBOOK ADS TO A CUSTOM AUDIENCE Targeting Audiences are extremely simple Start with opening the Facebook Ads Manager and create a new ad After you’ve created your ad’s creative, you’ll get to the “Audience” section Choose the first option, “Custom Audiences” By placing them as the first option, Facebook is making a big effort to get you to use Custom Audiences when setting your target demographic There’s a reason for this: Custom Audiences work great! Just start typing the name of the Custom Audience you want to target and select it from the autocomplete list     Page 39 If you want, you can select more than one Custom Audience to increase your reach Simple, right? But wait, there’s more! Once you’ve selected an audience, you’ll notice that hovering your mouse cursor over it will cause two icons to appear The X deletes your audience and clicking the down arrow gives you the option to exclude the audience This can be extremely powerful as we’ll see in Chapter     Page 40 How to it on AdEspresso Targeting Custom Audiences in AdEspresso is very similar to how it's done in Facebook When defining your campaign’s target at Step (in the "Interests" section), open the "Advanced options" box You’ll find two distinct fields: One to select the Custom Audiences you want to target, and one for those you want to exclude To help you get the most out of your advertising dollars, AdEspresso also allows you to perform a split test on your audiences This way, a set of ads will be created for each Custom Audience you’re targeting This will give you detailed statistics on the effectiveness and CPA of each one     Page 41 Chapter Seven IDEAS TO BOOST YOUR CAMPAIGNS WITH CUSTOM AUDIENCES Now that you know how to create and use Custom Audiences, it’s time to switch from theory to practice Custom Audiences are a powerful tool, and using them can make the difference between wasting your advertising dollars and building a money-making campaign that lasts 1) Reach users who are not reading your emails Though it's frustrating, a lot of the people receiving your emails aren't even opening them This doesn't necessarily mean they don’t like your product or service For some reason they've just stopped noticing your messages If you have something really important to announce, export (or Data Sync) your list of email subscribers who didn't open your latest emails and try to reach them through Facebook Advertising instead Most email services allow you to segment and export lists based on who's opened your recent emails To begin experimenting with Custom Audiences, here’s a list of the seven top strategies used directly by the AdEspresso team or our customers to get amazing results from Facebook Ads     Page 42 and friendly message Use your brand in the picture or in the title These users will recognize and trust your brand Here’s a nice example from a great marketer, Neil Patel He knows I already visited his blog and subscribed to his email list, so he boldly uses his name and picture in the ad to get my attention and boost my trust 2) Regain lost customers How many times have you discovered a great site only to forget about it later? This clearly happens often, even if you’ve bought a great product This may be the case for your old customers, as well To solve this, create a Custom Audience with a list of all the people who have bought something from you in the past, but haven’t bought anything recently, and target them with ads about your new products They already know and trust you since they've purchased from you in the past Leverage this! Remind them that they’ve done business with you in the past, and maybe offer them a sweet deal since they are long time customers For these kinds of campaigns, craft a very direct  3) Target people very similar to your customers This tactic is perfect to get new customers without going crazy figuring out how old are they, where they live or what interests they have Let Facebook figure it out! Create a Custom Audience with the emails or Facebook User IDs of your customers Then create a Lookalike Audience from that list, optimizing for similarity You don’t need 10,000,000 users Anything between 100,000 and 500,000 will be    Page 43 more than enough The important thing is that they are as similar as possible to our customers Once the Lookalike Audience is ready, target these new prospects with a presentation of your service or product BONUS TIP #1 4) Grow your Facebook page likes In your product is a long-term asset that every serious business should seek Custom Audiences can be a cheap way to have your contacts like your page Simply create a Facebook Ads campaign targeted to a Custom Audience containing all your contacts To avoid wasting money, exclude all of your existing Page fans from your targeting options They've already liked your Page and typically won’t add value If you’re advertising on Facebook to generate new leads or grow your mailing list, always remember to create an updated Custom Audience with all the contacts you already have Then, exclude this audience from your advertising You don’t want to waste money by targeting ads at people you’re already in contact with 5) Get personal targeting by name If you have a big contact list complete with the contact’s first names, you could create an audience for each of the most popular names such as John, James, Richard, etc.Once you’ve made an audience for each of the most popular names, create an ad containing their name     Page 44 The ads should read something like this: “Hey James, a special offer just for you." This tactic usually has a big impact and drives high Click Through Rates However, it may be a bit too creepy for your more privacy-concerned customers If you try it out, be sure to monitor comments on your News Feed Ads and pull the plug if there are too many complaints BONUS TIP #2 Looking for new sources to feed your Custom Audiences? There’s a place where you have lots of email addresses of people highly related to your industry: LinkedIn! 6) Upsell products or upgrades As this guide has already mentioned, it’s easier to sell to someone who has already bought from you than to a total stranger Custom Audiences make it extremely simple to get your customer to buy more Create Custom Audiences of people who have bought from you, segmented by product category or kind  It’s also super simple to export all your contacts' emails in a csv file Just go into your contacts settings page and click on “Export LinkedIn Connections” in the right column or try accessing it directly here    Page 45 7) From Web to Mobile & vice-versa Nowadays, many businesses rely both on a website and a mobile app Facebook Custom Audiences can be a great way to move users from one platform to the other, making sure you can reach your customers everywhere WARNING! Many Facebook advertising guides about Custom Audiences note ad-hoc software that crawls Facebook’s Pages and Groups, saving the Facebook User IDs of fans and group members for targeting purposes This technique is extremely effective So, why are we not discussing it here? Simply create two audiences one with just your website users and one with the mobile advertiser IDs of the mobile users Then create two campaigns: one mobile app install campaign to have your website users install your mobile application, the other allowing your mobile users to access your website where it may be easier to close a sale  Because it violates Facebook’s Terms & Conditions No matter how effective it is, it may get you in trouble and your account may be banned Use it at your own risk!    Page 46 Chapter Eight DOING MORE WITH ADESPRESSO If you’re an AdEspresso user click here to sign up for a 14 day free trial you’ll have access to some tasty additional features so you can play with Custom Audiences and get the most out of them AdEspresso also has exclusive features to make your advertising even smarter When creating an Audience from "Tools → Custom Audiences", we have additional options not available in Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor Let’s check it out!   Æ   Page 47 Video Engagement Custom Audiences When you create an ad with a video, you’ll be able to create custom audiences of everyone who viewed the video or just a percentage of the video! You can video advertising, just to engage users to get them to know your brand This can now be it’s own custom audience, that you can send to your sales page, an e-book, or a more traditional ad! As of this writing (May 2016), this engagement targeting is exclusive to AdEspresso!     Page 48 Lead Ads Engagement Custom Audiences As a marketer, we’re sure you know of Facebook’s Lead Ads - we even introduced it in Chapter But did you know that AdEspresso has the ability to target those people who opened your Lead Ad, but didn’t convert? They almost gave you their phone or email but something stopped them With our highly niche retargeting, you can target them again with another Lead Ad, or even a more traditional ad that takes them to a submission form on a landing page!     Page 49 Thank you for reading! If you liked this ebook please share it:     .and if you want to make the most out of Custom Audiences Sign Up for AdEspresso! [...]... ADESPRESSO     Page 12 Creating a Customer List Custom Audience on AdEspresso is simple and in-line with what you’ve already learned for Facebook s Ads Manager and Power Editor 1 Login into AdEspresso 2 Go to "Tools → Custom Audiences" 3 Click “Create Audience” 4 Select the first option, Data File - Custom Audience 5 Now create your audience exactly as you’d do it on Facebook: Pick a title, a description,... potential customers through ads, the more likely they are to be effective Targeting Website Custom Audiences works exactly like any other audience you’ve created so far: start typing the name and select it when the autocomplete shows up It's as simple as that     Page 27 How to do it in AdEspresso Creating Website Custom Audiences in AdEspresso is extremely simple:  Go to "Tools → Custom Audiences" ... YOUR FIRST WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCE (WCA) With the Facebook Pixel installed, you can now create your first website custom audience In Facebook Ads Manager, click on the “Audience” button in the menu, and then click the “Create Audience” button at the top-right of the page A popup will ask you what kind of audience you want to create 1 Select Custom Audience From Your Website” 2 Facebook will ask you... CUSTOM AUDIENCE Custom Audiences created from customers - or leads allow you to target your advertising at the right people and achieve awesome ROI’s for your ad spend However, what do you do if you don’t have a big enough database of emails, Facebook User IDs, or phone numbers to create your own Custom Audiences? This is where the power of Website Custom Audiences comes in This feature doesn’t require... of your file, and the data file to upload     Page 13 B Syncing with Your Email CRM Facebook currently only supports MailChimp integration to sync custom audiences For every other CRM, you’ll have to use third party tools to add new leads that you acquire to your email lists, or add your email lists to custom audiences Lucky for you, we have this feature in AdEspresso! With AdEspresso’s Data Sync... who accessed your site on mobile or desktop     Page 31 4 Chapter Four HOW TO CREATE AN APP ACTIVITY CUSTOM AUDIENCE With mobile being the dominant platform for Facebook ads, it only makes sense that creating audiences based on app activity is quickly becoming one of the leading forms of custom audiences For example, you can target people who previously used your app, but have not come back to your... will be Facebook (for now)     Page 18 Step 4: You choose your associated ad account and which existing (or new) Custom Audience to add these contacts too     Page 19 Step 5: You’ll set up your mapping fields to make sure all the information is transferred correctly And then just review, and you’re done!     Page 20 3 Chapter Three HOW TO CREATE A WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCE Custom Audiences. .. it’s easier than ever for businesses and marketers to sync up all the necessary contacts and leads! New leads will be added to your email list, which can be used to create new custom audiences, both of which are tools that can and should be used to increase conversion rates and build rapport with your new leads!     Page 14 HOW TO DATA SYNC WITH ADESPRESSO You can do this with AdEspresso in 5 easy... Click on "Create Audience", and then select Custom Audience from your Website”  You’ll then need to give your new audience a name and select the rules for inclusion The options are the same as Facebook s: Just hit the "+" icon to add a new rule     Page 28 ADVANCED WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCES For those that really want to dive into their website visitors, Facebook released upgrades in May 2016 that... on your website Simply put: some visitors are more valuable than others And Facebook will now help you figure out which ones are most likely to convert to leads or customers Under Website Traffic, choose the Custom Combination” parameter to get started You’ll need to switch over to “Advanced Mode” to see these features, and Facebook may or may not have rolled out all of them to your particular ad account