Useful Guide on Why and How to Use Facebook Custom Audiences

Facebook Website Custom Audience is a powerful weapon for the retargeting audience.

Custom Audience helps you reach a group of significant customers with your particular ads.

It actually brings your marketing step further to display your ad to the potential audience. It also helps you in tracking customer behaviors and lets you know where you lack.

Facebook remarketing tools target those audiences, who have already visited your website.

By analyzing the visitors’ behavior you can create separate ads for different groups of the audience on Facebook. Ads are only shown to specific visitors, who previously visited the website.

Facebook custom audience tool has made Facebook retargeting more dynamic and fruitful. Facebook uses a small javascript called Pixel to recognize the activity of visitor on particular websites.

As a website owner, you have to put this little piece of JavaScript in the header of each and every page of your website.

When a visitor arrives at any of the website pages, Pixel informs Facebook about it. Facebook immediately reviews the category in which the user falls in.

You can determine which user to target and which one not. For example, you can target every visitor to your website who does not make a purchase.

[bctt tweet=”Custom Audience is a powerful dynamic retargeting tool that confirms to improve conversions.” username=”adstriangle”]

Through Website Custom Audience an advertiser can show ads to this chunk of visitors. Retargeting those people increases the chances of getting sales from them.

Interestingly, websites which receive near one million visitors every day keep targeting new customers to increase their product or service reach.

Why Retargeting is Important

Retargeting or remarketing is an important aspect of Facebook ads. To get the maximum conversion from your Facebook ads retargeting the existing customers is a must.

If you think from the customer’s point of view, a visitor generally does not make a purchase on the first visit. He always tries to compare all the aspects from different websites or brands.

Here retargeting becomes an essential tool. By displaying ad on his Facebook home page, you can create a space in visitor’s mind.

It also helps in creating a brand image of the product, service, blog or website.

Hence, the ads appear to those who have shown some interest in the brand. Pixel makes this customer filtering easy.

[bctt tweet=”You must use retargeting option to improve business and this effectively creates a brand image.” username=”adstriangle”]

Let’s get it clear why you need Website Custom Audience (WCA)

To reach out to those visitors who have visited your website and have not made any purchase or signed up to make the purchase in the future.

Extend your reach to the people who visited certain parts of your website or have visited contents similar/ related to your website. Encourage them to revisit again your website.

Show a thank you or welcome message in Facebook who never a purchase or simply signed up.

Show your ad those visitors who have made a purchase similar or related to your product or accessories to trigger some cross-sell.

Catch those visitors who have not made a visit in while. (To get hold of these visitors’ two WCA categories needs to be created.

First, for those who last visited 180 days before; Second, who came in between 150 and 180 days).

It is quite potent in targeting relevant audience organically.

Now, with WCA you can target two kinds of website visitors. It includes people who may not be part of your Facebook fan page or your offline customer.

Increased space for customization. Decide whom you want to show your ad and whom to not.

[bctt tweet=”FB Custom Audience helps you reach to the users, who visited certain parts of your website.” username=”adstriangle”]

 

Custom Audience Pixel

The first step of creating website custom audience is creating your own custom audience pixel.

A) Create custom audience pixel

Custom audience pixel is the powerful tool behind Facebook remarketing practices. It is a small piece of javascript that notifies Facebook about all the visitor activity in the concerning website.

You can also create it with power editor. If you have multiple accounts, then first decide in which account you want to use pixel. You will get only one pixel per ad account.

Pixel is set from Custom Audience Pixel under ‘Ad Manager’ option. ‘Ad Manager’ can also be accessed from your Facebook business page.

Click on the ‘Promote’ button and from the coming drop down menu ‘Go to Ads Manager’ option will come.

Now, select audience and then tools from the coming drop-down menus.

 

If you already have set a custom audience then it will be shown here, else click on ‘Create Audience’ and Custom Audience’.

Next, a pop-up will arise with three option where you have to choose website traffic.

If you did not have a pixel before then you will be prompted to create a pixel now.

A piece of code will show up; just copy the code and click on ‘create audience’.

Your job does not end here. In the next step, you have to put the code right on your website.

B) Install the Pixel on Your Website

To make the pixel work at best it should be visible on every page. The best place to put pixel code is between <head></head> section in the index page.

Put this code between the head tags of every website’s template. If you can’t do this yourself, simply click on “Send the code to your website developer” link and it will be sent to your developer.

A pixel can be shared in WordPress sites. It can be installed in different WordPress themes if the theme settings allow.

A pixel can be installed through WordPress plugins like Header and Footer scripts, Tracking Code Manager.

Once the code is installed go to ‘Facebook Pixel Helper’ in chrome to see whether the Pixel is working properly or not.

After setting pixels all you need to do is set your Website Custom Audience. You have to tell Facebook which visitors fall in which audience.

 

Create Website Custom Audiences

To set custom audience Ad manager needs to be open where pixel code was posted. Now click on the custom audience. Here following options will appear on the screen-

• Anyone who visits your website
• People who visit specific web pages
• Users visiting specific web pages but not others
• People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time
• Custom Combination

Let’s understand each category-

• Anyone who visits your website-

This option is very much needed for every ad campaign. Put the domain name in the specified area. Also mention number of days for which you want your visitors to track. It always better when used for longer times.

• People who visit specific web pages-

Many visitors come to the specific website and landing pages. You can track down them through this option. Just put the URL or URLs of those websites. Again mention the time frame.

Next two more options will appear; “URL contains” and “URL equals”.

‘URL contains’ has amazing possibilities. If ‘website custom audience’ is selected in the place of URLs, it will track all the visitors, who visited any page, with the same string of URL.

Still, you have been little cautious about it. You can add all the pages containing the same string.

For example, your URL is xyzdomain.com/product and ‘product’ is your string. Now the audience of xyzdomain.com/product/thankyou will also get included in the list.

If that is not your need then simply select ‘URL Equals’ and get desired traffic.

• Users visiting specific web pages but not others

 

This option enables you to catch the visitor of a specific page or landing page.

Often people who visited thank you page are considered to have made the purchase. Here you can exclude them. In this section, you can specify what to have and what to not have.

• People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time

Bring back those who have not paid a visit in last 180 days. This option allows to bring them back again to your website.

[bctt tweet=”Creating Custom Audiences is easy and you can determine which group of visitors to target. ” username=”adstriangle”]

Process of Targeting or Excluding Website Custom Audiences

This process becomes simple once you have set Website Custom Audience. Here, you need to set ‘Who do you want your ads to reach?’

Here put the name of the audience you set in the custom audience. Once you start typing the name will appear and select.

Here you will put both the page URL which you want to include and exclude. You should include pages from where you expect conversions may occur.

Always exclude the thank you page that appears after completing the purchase.

In this section geographic area targeting can be used or removed. Your ads may appear to a specific geographical location or to any country in the world if it is removed.

You must use power editor while creating ads. It should be done within the ad set. Here again set page name, the name of excluding sites and age limit of viewers.

Now click ‘edit audience ‘button at the bottom. Again enter the site name of which audience you want to include and exclude.

[bctt tweet=”Geo-targeting helps your ad to appear before the users living in a certain location. ” username=”adstriangle”]

Ways to Explore Website Custom Audiences

Website Custom Audience is very much effective in driving traffic to your website. For a blog post exclude who have read it already.

Include members of your fan page and people who paid a visit to your site.

Customers who left their email address through subscribing or logging in to your website should be targeted.

An effective email list is created from a relevant traffic on the website.

Creating a fan base becomes quite effective again in terms of getting more relevant traffic.

At the end point the sale or conversion matters. Target the audience of the blogs or contents that are related to your product.

Never miss cross-sell or upsell opportunities.

Always exclude who already made a purchase. Visitors, who bounced back without purchasing, approach them in a different way.

Use Website Custom Audience in an effective way and see how opportunities galore.

Custom Audience is a strong strategy to boost traffic to your business website that ultimately confirms maximizing ROI’.

Do not forget to target visitors, who have left their emails through signing up. Therefore you must create email list also to increase relevant remarketing target

 

Email List Custom Audience

You have heard about email marketing. But for traditional email marketing, you can never know whether a user will open your mail or not.

You also have to consider the cost of this email marketing. Facebook email custom audience marketing is different from this.

You have to upload a list of customer email addresses. Facebook will match your list with Facebook users. Your ad will appear before the users, who are on your email list and are logged on Facebook.

However, you need to gather numbers of email addresses to make the list. You can exclude or include customers from your list.

To make the email targeting more effective you can segment the email addresses based on their activities such as their purchased history, their activities on your website and their onsite behaviors.

Creating Email Custom Audience in Facebook

Targeting Facebook audience through the email list is very easy. There are two options to upload your email list-

If your list is comparatively shorter, you can simply copy and paste the email addresses.

But for longer list copy paste is time-consuming. So, you need to make the list as “.csv“ file and upload it to facebook. The list must only contain email ids, not other information.

 

MailChimp users are privileged with the possibility to connect MailChimp account with FB directly. In this case, one does not have to upload or copy the email list.

 

Why use Email Custom Audience

• Reach people, who have never opened your mail:

In conventional email marketing, it is not possible that all of the users will open your mail. Through FB email custom audience you can display your ad even before them.

• Reach your old customers:

You can come up with new offers or additional products to the customers, who have once purchased from you.

• Reach people, who have abandoned:

You can simply reach out your ad to the people who have provided their information but did not complete purchasing.

• Exclude Customers:

You can easily include or exclude people from your list in order to make your targeting more effective.

• Increase Customer Base:

Through your email custom audience, you can increase your customer base. If you have lists of people, who have not ever been to your website before you can show your ad to them.

 

Mobile Apps Custom Audience

The Facebook apps custom audience lets you analyze user behaviors on your business apps and unlock the chances of a future purchase.

In Facebook retargeting, this option has been appearing to be an effective tool for the marketers to retarget audiences.

You can extend your reach with your custom message to the mobile device users for encouraging them to take an action.

For remarketing in Facebook platform user behaviors are more important and now this platform enables marketers to pair their mobile apps with FB Custom Audience.

You can simply retarget people, who have shown activities on your app in recent 180 days.

You can make a list of customers to target on the basis of following behaviors who:

• Opened your app
• Abandoned purchase
• Purchased
• Finished registration
• Played or went to a certain level of games

On the basis of above behaviors, you can group target audience to reach people with the most relevant ads. For an example, who have abandoned cart, you can display your ad to them with a discount offer.

You need to register your mobile app with Facebook and you would also have to set a call to action option.

 

Why website custom audience should be created

It is a must have for your website or blog if you want to bring more definite traffic to your website.

First, include All Website Visitors to your site. This option is a must have for every advertiser. Try 30-180 days duration to make it effective.

People who viewed your blog posts, that page must be taken under ‘Viewed Popular Blog Posts’.

It will make that page appear on their Facebook page. Every popular blog post page should fall under this category.

For e-commerce sites ‘Viewed Category’ is the most suitable. Here the website is structured in categories and subcategories.

The advertiser can easily mention the page URLs he wants to include or exclude.

By examining customer behavior the pages can also be selected. 180 days duration is most suitable for this category.

Focus on specific opt-in landing pages or active product pages for ‘Viewed Landing Pages’. Various durations should be set for each page to reap the fullest benefit.

A separate custom audience should be there for visitors who made a purchase.

They should be included under ‘Viewed Thank You Page’ category. 180 days is the almost fixed duration for this.

 

Wrapping Up

Website Custom Audience is a very much popular tool for retargeting or remarketing. Here customers who pay a visit to the website are tracked through a javascript called Pixel.

With new improved Pixel, opportunities have increased manifold. With this option, advertisers can retarget visitors who paid a visit to their website or viewed any page. By tracking them Facebook displays ads of that company’s website.

It allows advertisers to show their ad to relevant customers who in turn will bring on conversion.