Have you ever wondered how to create a custom audience for Facebook ads? Today I want to share with you one of the most important things that you can do to maximize your Facebook ads, and that is to create custom audiences.
First of all, what is a custom audience? Well, what a lot of you may or may not realize, is you can actually go into Facebook’s Ad Manager and create a custom audience. And the reason why this is so valuable, is that we have found the ads that are most effective, that generate the highest number of clicks and engagement and leads, typically are ads that are targeted to a really warm audience.
So one of the biggest mistakes I see agents and brokers making, and business owners in general making, is they’re running a Facebook ad and they’re targeting a really huge demographic, which is fine if you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars. But for a lot of us, we’re only spending five or $10 or $20 on an ad or a boosted post, so we really want to hone in on a warm audience. And the best way to do this is through custom audiences.
So if you’ve never done this before, you’re going to want to go over to facebook.com/ads, and that’s Facebook’s Ad Manager. There’s a little button that says Custom Audience, so you’re going to want to click Custom Audience. From here, you can create a number of custom audiences. Some of the custom audiences we’ve found to be most effective are people who’ve engaged with us on Facebook, which is different than people who’ve just liked you on Facebook. People who’ve engaged with you on Facebook, that’s a great custom audience. Or people who’ve engaged with you on Instagram.
Another custom audience you might create are website traffic, people who’ve been to your website within the last 30, 60 or 90 days. You can create that audience by dropping that Facebook pixel over onto your website. You can actually pick up that pixel over at Facebook.com/business, it’ll tell you how to do that if you’ve never done that on your website. But that’s another great custom audience.
Another great custom audience are people who’ve watched your videos. So if you’ve been creating video content like we’ve been creating video content, each and every week for really the last few years, you can actually create a custom audience of people who’ve watched at least three seconds of your video, or 10 seconds, or 25% of your videos. That’s also another great custom audience.
And then one of my favorite custom audiences to create is a custom audience with your database. So if you have your database in any CRM or any email marketing program, if you download that database into a .csv file, into a spreadsheet, you can then go into Facebook’s Ad Manager, click that Custom Audience button and then upload that list directly into Facebook.
Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to be friends with all the people on your database. But what will happen, is you’ll upload that list into Facebook, Facebook will look at that list, whether it’s 100 or 1000 people, and they’ll say, “Okay, great. Out of those 100 people on your list, 95 people are on Facebook.” And now you’ve created a custom audience just for that list. And the value of doing that, is when you can run a boosted post, or run a targeted ad, to that custom audience who already know, like and trust you, they’re more likely to click on your ad, like your ad, comment and engage with your ad. So it’s a small thing that can make a big difference. And here’s a bonus tip.
Once you’ve created these multiple custom audiences, when you go to boost a post, especially if you’re boosting a post from your desktop, you can pick multiple custom audiences. Now, you can’t do this from your phone, but if you go to your computer and you’re boosting a post, you can click multiple custom audiences. So when we boost a post, we’ll pick multiple custom audiences, maybe four, five of those custom audiences. And that way, we’re really setting our ad up for success, because we’re targeting the warmest audience possible.
So again, you’re going to want to go to facebook.com/ads. Set up your Ads account if you haven’t done that, and then click the little button that says Create Custom Audience. From those custom audiences, by the way, that’s where you can also create lookalike audiences and do all kinds of other fun stuff inside Facebook Ads. Now, if you’re wondering how to really leverage Facebook Ads and how to take that to the next level, we have a whole course all about Facebook Ads, you can check that out right here.
I would love to hear from you. Are you leveraging Facebook Ads, and do you have any questions for me when it comes to Facebook Ads? If you do, post those questions in the comments below, I would love to hear from you.
