When I started to advertise on Facebook, it was the early days. Around 2010 (or maybe it was earlier.. Custom Audiences were less of a “thing” back then anyway). It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when because I couldn’t get it to work, and so I didn’t keep any records of failure!
There wasn’t much you could do besides type in a few words, select a picture to show with them words and tell Facebook what website to send people to, after they click on your ad.
But that was great! I loved it!
I didn’t get it to work right away, I “invested” thousands into it, trying to learn it and make some cash. And frankly, there isn’t a lot that has changed surrounding ‘what works‘ and what doesn’t.
What would any average person do who was earning $60,000 in his day job back then, and spending thousands on Facebook Ads, with no profit?
Stop throwing money down the drain?
Yeah, they probably would. But not me.
You see, I’m a little thicker than most. Or maybe a better word is determined?
Anyway, Facebook has since released many more features to better advertise your business on their platform.
And today I want to go over Custom Audiences.
Custom Audiences Reduced My Advertising Costs by 50%. (This is a DOUBLING of Profits)
If you’re serious, and if you want to move past “just ok” results, you have to know this.
More importantly, you should be soon using it and doing it.
Custom Audiences Overview
Anyone can go to Facebook, start an Ad and set it to:
Show My Ad To:
- Females Only.
- Aged 45-60.
- Who are working.
- And who are single.
(just for example)
That is s basic Audience targeting in Facebook.
But not everyone can target these same people, AND THEN lay over a level of your customers who have already purchased your product, or enquired about it.
Let’s call it “sniper like filtering” or a “concentrated customer quality”.
What I’m talking about here is POWERFUL, and it’s just one example of custom audience.
Why Would I Want to Use Custom Audiences
In short, once you create your custom audiences (how to do that is below), they will be some of the cheapest sales you get from Facebook.
The cheapest sales are usually the most profitable ones too.
That’s why the custom audiences are both important, and awesome.
Not using them, is literally wasting a chunk of your advertising budget. Even if it’s $50 a month. The more you spend, the more you’re losing.
Successful marketers, don’t just run with an Ad that’s doing ok. They (and I) squeeze every ounce of savings out of each Ad. It’s not difficult to do, you just need to know WHAT to do.
How Do I Set Up A Custom Audience?
Great question. I’ll get to that in just a minute. Keep reading this in order below, as I think that how I’m explaining this will help you to get the most out of it.
What Custom Audiences Should I Have?
I’ll tell you HOW to set them in just a minute, but these are the Custom Audiences you should set up in your Facebook Ads account and use soon. Also, I’ve included what they do:
(Note: You can tell Facebook to show an Ad JUST to any of these custom audiences below (or to all of them). Depending on what you’re advertising).
- Customer List: This is literally loading up an excel sheet of all your existing customers and/or enquiries. A list of previous paying customers would be a better custom audience than a bunch of people who ‘enquired’ but never purchased.)
- Website Custom Audience: Imagine if you had 1,000 people who visited your website. Or maybe you’ve had 10,000 – 100,000 visit your website. Imagine if you could tell Facebook “show my ad to everyone who has already been to my website rather than just 1,000 strangers who don’t know me”. That’s exactly what you can do with this type of custom audience. (how to do it, in the next section below).
- Engagement Custom Audiences: This is a specific, exact list of people who have ALL engaged with a post you made on your Facebook business page, or maybe it was a previous Ad you ran, or maybe they’ve already liked your page or watched a video you posted but never liked it, or commented. Imagine having a group of people who have ALREADY interacted (“engaged”) with your Facebook fan page / business page. If you were to run an Ad to THESE people, rather than a bunch of strangers, wow. Imagine the potential.
- Lookalike Audiences: This type of custom audience is better than a group of strangers (also known as a “cold audience”), however, it’s probably not as strong as the three mentioned above. BUT! Lookalike Audiences are still a must. As the name suggests, you can tell Facebook to: “have a look at my existing customers, or all the people who visited my website, OR all the people who have engaged with my Facebook page, or watched that video I posted on my page. Analyse them in great Facebook powerful detail, and then give me a group of 160,000 – 900,000 people, who ALL share similar characteristics as the original custom audience.
They are the four main custom audiences you must have set up if you are running Facebook Ads. I mean, only if you want great results.
Ok, now for the How To:
How to Set Up a Custom Audience
This page is always going to be here. So maybe bookmark it, save it, email it to yourself or just keep it open.
The following steps might take 1 hour. They won’t take 3 weeks, but they won’t take 3 minutes either.
So if you don’t have an hour now to do it all, save this page for later use.
Follow these steps:
- Set up your Facebook Business Manager profile. Go to https://business.facebook.com and follow the steps. (This is the best way to manage your business pages, your Ad Accounts, AWAY from your personal Facebook profile.
2. After Step 1 is complete, in the top left hand corner click on the three lines (the “Hamburger Menu”, for those of you playing along at home). And then you will see the “Pixels” option there or somewhere there (they redesign this every 6-12 months or so). Click on Pixels and either follow the steps, or COPY and PASTE your pixel code, and send it to a trusted Web Developer to install across all (100%) of your website.
3. If you need more help with Step 2, I walk through how to do that in more detail in my free book on Facebook Ads. Get a copy delivered to your door here.
4. Looking at the same screenshot above, click on “Audiences”. Then you should see this:
This is where you choose what type of custom audience you want to create.
You create one at a time, and as of the time I’m writing this post (27th March, 2018), you are unable to combine them or mix then. You create them individually.
NOTE: These change every so often, but the basics fundamentals stay the same. Do it one, learn the process and when Facebook makes an adjustment, you’ll still “get it”.
NOTE 2: “App Activity” is similar to Website Traffic. Instead of focusing on visitors on your website, it’s an app. And maybe they did certain things like added your product to the shopping cart BUT never completed the checked out, etc, etc.
That’s how to set up your customer audiences.
So, Now What?
Now when you go to launch a new Ad inside Facebook, you will see you can still choose Australia, female/male, etc, but now you can click on ” Custom Audiences ” and all custom audiences you have created, will be there ready for you to choose and to target!
Just choose the custom audience you want to show your new Ad to, and complete the other steps, the same.
Custom Audiences is just 1 out of 18 modules that I cover in my complete course on Facebook Marketing for small businesses, the course is called The Social Formula.
This is for serious people only. People who want to dive ALL IN with marketing their business on Facebook and getting customers from Facebook.
If you’re interested to learn what’s in this Facebook Ads course, just click the RED BUTTON below and read the info.
( Click Here to Learn More About It )
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