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Facebook Ads Custom Audiences Guide 2017 PDF
Facebook Ads Custom Audiences Guide 2017 PDF
Facebook
Custom
Audiences
by
2017 Update!
Table of contents
1. What are Custom Audiences?
2. How to Create a Customer List Custom Audience
3. How to Create a Website Custom Audience
4. How to Create an App Activity Audience
5. How to Create an Engagement Audience
6. How to Create a Lookalike Audience
by Massimo Chieruzzi 7. How to Target Your Facebook Ads to a Custom
Audience
CEO, AdEspresso
8. 8 Ideas To Boost Your Campaigns with Custom
Audiences
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There’s a reason why all of the top marketers If you’re in a niche where Facebook Ads tend to
are using Custom Audiences in their Facebook be a less-effective channel, such as B2B, Custom
Ads - they actually work! If you’re not using them Audiences can make your ads work much better
already, chances are you’re losing money, which and reach hundreds of thousands of more
clearly shouldn’t be in your marketing plan! customers in the process.
If you’re not up on Custom Audiences, here are Want proof? We experienced the power of Custom
some case studies that quickly prove their worth: Audiences ourselves. As a B2B startup, Facebook
wasn't our most effective acquisition channel.
AA KingNet: +75% CTR, +46.6% Conversion Rate, Now, thanks to Custom Audiences, it generates
43.37% lower CPA more signups than Google AdWords at just one-third
of the cost!
AA OpenSky: +30% Conversion Rate
AA JackThreads: 30% Lower CPA for member In this ebook, you’ll discover what Custom
signups Audiences are, how to start using them, and some
AA KIXEYE: 2x Higher conversion rate, 5.5X higher of the best ideas to grow your business with them!
LifeTime Value Let’s get started.
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1 Chapter One
WHAT ARE CUSTOM AUDIENCES?
Custom Audiences are an extremely effective list of 10,000 customers who’ve bought your
way for marketers to target their Facebook product. You want to promote the launch of an
Ads. Through Custom Audiences, you can updated product version to these customers. By
target your Facebook Ads with a list of email simply uploading your email list to Facebook,
addresses, phone numbers, website visitors, fan you'll create a new Custom Audience. Facebook
page members, Facebook user IDs, and even will then try to match those email addresses with
engagement! its users.
The opportunities for precisely targeting potential For the sake of our example, let’s say Facebook
customers are basically endless. You’re no longer was able to match 70% of your list. You can now
limited to hard-guessing your advertising targets target advertising for the new, improved version
by gender or vague interests. Instead, you can of your product to 7,000 customers who already
target a very precise niche of highly-targeted loved the previous one - I bet the conversion rate
users. will be pretty high!
Let’s look at an example: Say you have an email This example is just the beginning. Since Custom
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Audiences launched in October 2013, Facebook If this marketing technique sounds familiar, it’s
has continually made significant updates, making because it's basically Retargeting on Facebook
it much more powerful and flexible than ever without the hassle and the costs of the FBX
before. program.
Here are your options for custom audiences: App Activity Custom Audiences
You can create audiences based on what actions
Standard Custom Audience people take when they use your app - either on
Upload a list of emails, phone numbers, or Desktop or Mobile. You can create audiences
Facebook User IDs you want to target and of people who recently opened your app,
Facebook will match them with it’s users. recently completed a purchase, completed large
Facebook will usually match between 60-80% of purchases, or achieved a certain level in your
the contacts on your list. game or platform. For example, you can create
an audience of those who have used your app
Website Custom Audiences previously, but not used it in the last 30 days.
Website Custom Audiences means you don’t need
to have target users' email addresses or phone Engagement Custom Audiences
numbers. Instead, simply insert the Facebook You can create audiences of those who engage
Pixel tracking code on your website and you’ll be with certain ad types or your page. The duration
able to target your Facebook Advertising for all of these ad types is up to 365 days, although the
users that have visited a specific page on your more recent is often better - it is engagement after
website during a set time period of up to 180 days. all.
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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.
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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.”
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In Power Editor, it has its own section, right under the the toolbar
right beneath your ad account number:
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2 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:
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A. Manual Upload
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.
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Give your Custom Audience a short, easy-to-remember name
that describes this specific audience. Some ideas include
"Former customers," "Email signups," or something similar.
AA Click "Create Audience". According to how big your file is, it may take some time for Facebook to match your
list content with Facebook users.
AA Once your audience has been created and it’s ready to go, you’ll receive a notification. You can go back on
the “Audience” page and see how many users have been matched.
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HOW TO MANUALLY UPLOAD WITH ADESPRESSO
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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
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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 feature, 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!
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HOW TO DATA SYNC WITH ADESPRESSO
You can do this with AdEspresso in 5 easy steps.
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Step 1: Choose your CRM or email marketing tool as your source.
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Step 2: You select which email list you’ll pull the contact information from.
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Step 3: You choose your target choice, which will be Facebook (for now).
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Step 4: You choose your associated ad account and which existing (or new) Custom Audience to add these
contacts too.
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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!
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3 Chapter Three
HOW TO CREATE A WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCE
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HOW TO INSTALL THE FACEBOOK PIXEL
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1. Click Create a Pixel
2. Enter a name for your pixel. There's only one pixel per
ad account, so choose a name that represents your
business.
3. Make sure you've checked the box to accept the terms
4. Click Create Pixel. If already have one, you won't see the
Create Pixel button.
5. Your Facebook Pixel tracks multiple events depending
on the page.
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If you want to check to make sure your Facebook
Pixel is working, download the free Google
Chrome Extension, Pixel Helper.
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CREATING YOUR FIRST WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCE (WCA)
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For example, you could target everyone who
visited your checkout page, expressing an
intention to buy, but didn’t see the "Thank
You" page (meaning they did not complete the
purchase). This gives you a "second chance" to get
them to complete their purchase.
Finally, you can select how many days to track
website visitors. This means that your audience
will only include people who match the specified
rules during the last X days. While Facebook’s
suggested value is 30, the maximum value is 180
days.
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Building an effective Website Custom Audience really depends on how much traffic you’re getting and how strict
your chosen rules are. If your website receives a lot of traffic, you can stick with 30 days or even less.
On the other hand, if your website doesn’t have a lot of traffic, or you’ve set very strict rules, it may be wise to
set this value to 180 days so you don't end up with an audience that's too small.
In either case, the sooner you reach out to 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.
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How to do it in AdEspresso
Creating Website Custom Audiences in AdEspresso is extremely simple:
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.
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ADVANCED WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCES
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AA Frequency: how many times a website visitor performs an action, i.e. visit a page. This is currently the most
robust, and has been rolled out to the most ad accounts.
AA Dynamic date: This allows you to target those visitors who have visited over a range of dates rather than a
set number of previous days.
AA Aggregated values: total amount of time a person has spent on a page or combination of pages
AA Devices: including Android, iOS devices, desktop and other mobile devices. You an exclude or include each
as their own separate value.
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And to get even more complex?
Combine these metrics with each
other! There’s an “include” function
and “exclude” function depending on
events or URLs. You can also keep it
simple though. For example, you can
target users who accessed your site on
mobile or desktop.
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4 Chapter Four
HOW TO CREATE AN APP ACTIVITY CUSTOM AUDIENCE
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You can create audiences based on actions a user
did or didn’t take within your app!
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How to do it in Adespresso (App Audience)
Go to "Tools → Custom Audiences".
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5 Chapter Five
HOW TO CREATE AN ENGAGEMENT AUDIENCE
One of Facebook’s newest custom audiences Once you click Engagement on Facebook, you’ll
is engagement. In other words, how people see that you have four options for Engagement
interacted with your ads or your Facebook page. Custom Audiences.
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Video Engagement Custom Audiences
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Lead Ads Engagement Custom Audiences
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Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences Facebook Page Engagement Audiences
Impressing a lot of people with your Canvas ads, You can now target those who interact with your ads
but aren’t getting the sign ups you hoped for? or your page. This means all those likes, comments,
Now you can re-target anyone who played around and shares are no longer vanity metrics! Rejoice!
or checked out your Canvas ad!
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Anyone who visited your Page: Anyone who
visited your Page, regardless of the actions they
took.
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6 Chapter Six
HOW TO CREATE A LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE
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Since you have to use the complex Power Editor to AA Insert a name for your new Lookalike
make them, creating a Lookalike Audience is a bit Audience, then select the country you'd
trickier than creating a Custom Audience. Here's like your Lookalike Audience users to be in.
how to do it: Unfortunately, you can only create a Lookalike
Audience that targets users of a single country.
AA Assuming you’ve already created your first However, if you're using AdEspresso, you can
Custom Audience, head to the “Audience” quickly and easily generate multiple Lookalike
tab in Power Editor. Simply click the green Audiences to target users in multiple
“Audience” button on the right. For Ads countries.
Manager, click on “Tools” -> “Audience” ->
“Create Lookalike”
The last parameter, “Optimize for”, is very
AA Click on the audience you want to use as a interesting. It allows you to specify a smaller reach
base for your new LookAlike Audience. with better similarities to your original Custom
Audience. It also allows you to reach more people,
AA Below the list, you’ll get a name and
though at the risk of lower similarities. We always
description of your audience and three action
suggest optimizing for similarity even if it means
buttons. The first two are to add and remove
having a lower overall reach. This ensures your
users from your audience. The last one is
campaigns will perform better overall.
the one we’re looking for: “Create Lookalike
Audience”. Click It.
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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.
AA Page Fans
AA Email Lists
AA Current/Previous Customers
AA App Activity
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How to do 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.
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7 Chapter Seven
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.
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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 8.
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How to do 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 3 (in the "Interests" section), open the "Advanced options" box.
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8 Chapter Eight
8 IDEAS TO BOOST YOUR CAMPAIGNS WITH CUSTOM AUDIENCES
Now that you know how to create and use Custom 1) Reach users who are not reading your
Audiences, it’s time to switch from theory to emails
practice. Custom Audiences are a powerful tool, Though it's frustrating, a lot of the people
and using them can make the difference between receiving your emails aren't even opening them.
wasting your advertising dollars and building a This doesn't necessarily mean they don’t like your
money-making campaign that lasts. product or service. For some reason they've just
stopped noticing your messages.
To begin experimenting with Custom Audiences,
here’s a list of the seven top strategies used If you have something really important to
directly by the AdEspresso team or our customers announce, export (or Data Sync) your list of
to get amazing results from Facebook Ads. 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.
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2) Regain lost customers and friendly message. Use your brand in the
How many times have you discovered a great site picture or in the title. These users will recognize
only to forget about it later? This clearly happens and trust your brand.
often, even if you’ve bought a great product. This Here’s a nice example from a great marketer, Neil
may be the case for your old customers, as well. Patel. He knows I already visited his blog and
subscribed to his email list, so he boldly uses his
To solve this, create a Custom Audience with a name and picture in the ad to get my attention
list of all the people who have bought something and boost my trust.
from you in the past, but haven’t bought anything
recently, and target them with ads about your new 3) Target people very similar to your
products. They already customers
know and trust you since This tactic is perfect to get new customers without
they've purchased from going crazy figuring out how old are they, where
you in the past. Leverage they live or what interests they have. Let Facebook
this! Remind them that figure it out!
they’ve done business Create a Custom Audience with the emails or
with you in the past, and maybe offer them a Facebook User IDs of your customers. Then create
sweet deal since they are long time customers. a Lookalike Audience from that list, optimizing
For these kinds of campaigns, craft a very direct for similarity. You don’t need 10,000,000 users.
Anything between 100,000 and 500,000 will be
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more than enough. The important thing is that 4) Grow your Facebook page likes
they are as similar as possible to our customers. In your product is a long-term asset that every
Once the Lookalike Audience is ready, target these serious business should seek. Custom Audiences
new prospects with a presentation of your service can be a cheap way to have your contacts like your
or product. 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
BONUS TIP #1 won’t add value.
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The ads should read something like this: “Hey
James, a special offer just for you."
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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
WARNING!
one platform to the other, making sure you can
reach your customers everywhere. Many Facebook advertising guides about Custom
Audiences note ad-hoc software that crawls
Simply create two audiences -- one with just your Facebook’s Pages and Groups, saving the Facebook
website users and one with the mobile User IDs of fans and group members for targeting
advertiser IDs of the mobile users. Then create purposes. This technique is extremely effective. So,
two campaigns: one mobile app install campaign why are we not discussing it here?
to have your website users install your mobile
Because it violates Facebook’s Terms &
application, the other allowing your mobile users
Conditions. No matter how effective it is, it may get
to access your website where it may be easier to
you in trouble and your account may be banned. Use
close a sale.
it at your own risk!
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8) Target your Page Engagement Fans with
a Lead Magnet
You know these people are liking, commenting,
and sharing your page posts with their Facebook
accounts...but why not get even more personal
by asking for an email? This is one big advantage
of this new custom audience option. By targeting
your highly engaged page fans with a lead magnet
(like an eBook or PDF checklist) you can open up a
new channel for them: your email marketing. Just
don’t forget to exclude your current customers or
leads from the ads!
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9 Chapter Nine
DOING MORE WITH
CUSTOM AUDIENCES AND
ADESPRESSO
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Custom Audience Search with Rapid Lookalike AdEspresso’s Asset Manager
Creation With our asset manager, you can now create and
organize audiences in ways not previously possible.
With our custom audiences filters, you’ll easily be able You can create hundreds of unique audiences by
to instantly create lookalikes from all your existing combining the power of interest targeting (non custom
audiences. Just pull them with our simple and easy audiences) with custom audiences. Give it a go!
to use search function! You can also search by custom
audience name in addition to the source.
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Thank you for reading!
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