Facebook Custom Audience for Beginners

Hello, everybody, this is Adam with ParaCore. And today I’m going to be talking to you about custom audiences. One of our most popular videos on our YouTube channel was four different targeting methods, and so, I’m going to be digging into some of the targeting methods more because that seemed to get a lot of attention, a lot of traction on one of our other videos. I’m in an AirBNB, so if you hear any background noise, I just want to apologize in advance. There’s some cars and doors and a dog is right here and he’s been barking a little bit.

All right, so when you’re in your Ads Manager, in the upper left corner here, typically people are in the Ads Manager part when you first click into it. But today we’re going to be talking about audiences. So, you can go ahead and click the audiences tab and this is the standard interface that you’re going to see. And I just have a couple audiences in here. This is our staging account. But we’re going to be talking today about custom audiences. So, when I hit this blue link, we have custom audiences, lookalike and then saved audiences. Lookalike allow you to take an audience that you have uploaded or used before and then create a similar audience to that audience, so that you can basically expand your reach by having similar characteristics. And then a saved audience is a totally different thing where you’re actually building out based on interests, other things like that. So, when you hit the custom audience, you have a lot of different options. And I’m warning you, this video is a little bit longer than some of our other ones because there are literally so many different options with custom audiences and I am going touch on all of them to some degree, but there are a lot. All right, so with the customer file, the idea of a customer file is that you will take a list of email addresses or phone numbers and upload them to Facebook and Facebook then takes those email address and/or phone numbers and matches them to profiles in Facebook. And that allows you to take a customer list that was acquired outside of Facebook, upload it to Facebook and then you can run ads to that exact customer list. So, this is really cool because if you have an audience already, like an email distribution list or people that have purchased things in the past, you can basically target those customers again, that was my dog, like I mentioned. You can basically target those customers again using the customer file option.

Alright, so when you click this link you have three different options. You have add customers for, that’s the neighbor’s dog. I think all the dogs are done barking. Great, alright, when you click that link you have create custom audience and you have three different options. You can add customers from your own file, you can import from MailChimp instead of integration and then you can do an include loan to value option that allows you to, excuse me, lifetime value, that allows you to add revenue amounts so that Facebook can optimize the account even better. So this is kind of a new thing that allows you to focus the campaigns based on revenue versus just everybody’s treated equally. When I hit the add customers from your file you then get this four step process where you’re adding a customer list, you’re mapping the data, it’ll then upload and create the audience.

And then this next step will ask you what you want to do with that audience, alright? And in this section here you’re gonna want to, I typically upload a CSV file, that seems to be the easiest. You can also do copy and paste. But if you’re gonna be uploading a CSV file you want to download their template and it’s called Example Audience one. If you download their template it will give you the CSV file, the exact format that they need to make sure that your data imports correctly. And then if I edit here I can add or remove customers to this list so I can grow it or reduce it based on what might be happening with my business or company, so this is really nice. So if I do add customers it takes me to the exact same process and allows me to, it allows me to basically ad more customers. So if I do remove customers, it’s also the exact same process but it will just remove them, so that’s cool. So you can create a list of like hey, these people are no longer clients, so these people opted out or these people whatever and you can do that. And then you decide where they’re coming from and then you’d save the audience name again. Alright, so that’s the custom audience list. Or excuse me, that’s the customer audience list. Now when we head back we’re gonna talk about website traffic. So website traffic is basically based off of ParaCore’s, your pixel for your business. And in this case it’s ParaCore obviously, so we have a staging pixel which is red because we don’t have a staging pixel installed on the website. But a pixel is a piece of code that you install on your website landing pages, basically anywhere that you want traffic tracked. You obviously need to own that asset, so if it’s a website you have to be able to install the pixel on it yourself, and that pixel then starts tracking Facebook customers. And so as it’s tracking those customers it puts them in an audience list. And you can then run remarketing ads to that audience list.

So for example, just to give you an idea, this says we want to create an audience of people that meet any of the following criteria. So that’s an or statement. If you click this you’ll see that this talks about an or statement being like if they do this or they do this we want them to see our ads. Or if they meet all of the following criteria, this is an and statement, so they have to do this and meet this condition, so it’s more of a narrowing statement. And that will then narrow the audience to a smaller group. If you narrow the audience then you add a little bit more control over who is seeing what and when and how. Alright, so I’m gonna choose any and then I’m gonna choose the ParaCore staging pixel because that’s what we’re using here in the sample. So I’m gonna say I want website visitors that have visited in the past 30 days, and may include more, I want website visitors that have, or excuse me, people who have spent the top 25% of time spenders in the past 30 days. So basically I’m saying or, and so this probably makes more sense if this is like 15 days and this is like 90 days. So we’re saying alright, I want people that have been here very recently in the last 15 days or I want people that have spent the most time here, so these people are kind of highly engaged active audiences, right?

And so you can see how you’ll start building out different conditions and different options. And your options on this drop down are website visitors, so people who have visited a site. People who have visited specific pages or people who have spent a certain amount of time on it. So if I go to this pages deal, then I can say well if I want people that have visited the blog, then I want the URL to contain blog in the past 15 days, and so only people that have seen blog will see the ads. Or I want it to be like, let’s say we have articles right, or like downloads or something. So these two words have to appear in the URL in the last 15 days or they are the top 25% of time visitors spent in the last 90 days. So you can see I also drill this down by selecting specific web pages. You have the option of contains, doesn’t contain, or equals, so it can be more inclusive, it can be exclusive or it can be an exact match and then you can do and also and the URL must also match this.

So let’s say blogs about AdWords or something. So you can get very very very complicated. So this is the any option, you can also do the all option, so that just changed down there to and, so it has to be this and this and you can further narrow it, there are different options here. You can also do an exclusionary audience, so you’re gonna say alright, well I wanna exclude anybody that has, I don’t know, let’s say they’ve visited the page in the last two days or something, they’re too recent. Alright, so you can build up these really interesting conditions with your pixel. And then when you’re done with that you’ll name it, this is our crazy YouTube audience, and then you would do create audience. Let’s see here. It says my audience might be too small, that’s okay, I’m gonna create it because hopefully it will build over time. These audiences typically build moving forward. I think there’s an option in Facebook to when you install the pixel to grab previous traffic. However, usually it’s moving forward and usually that’s kind of how you think about it. Same sort of deal with the last when we did the customer list. You can now do a lookalike audience or you can create an ad using this audience, so we’re not gonna do either one of those, but Facebook is very helpful in taking it to the next step.

Alright, so that is website, that’s the website traffic custom audience. Alright, now we’re gonna touch on app activity. Alright, so app activity allows you to do the same sort of thing as website activity. You can see the interface is very similar, but it basically just says alright, what have people done in the app and then I want to target them with ads. So instead of using your website as an asset you’re basically using your app. And it’s kind of like the same conversation just a few different options. You have anyone who opened the app, you have the most active users, right? So top 25% in the past 30 days, that’s like the time most spent. Users by purchased amount, top 25% so I’m hitting these to show you five, 10, 25, those are the options. And then users by segment. So you can browse different segments. And we actually don’t use the app installs very often because we only have a few clients that are running app installs on Facebook. But the pixel basically has to be integrated into the app so that these events are taking place and then you will be able to run ads based on that. So I mean, if someone is using an app a lot like Clash of Clans or something and they’re spending a ton of time on it and you want to be hitting them in Facebook and you’re sending app engagement and user activity back to these audiences, then this is a really great option if someone is really using the app on a regular basis, right? So most active users, anyone who opened it, that’s good, if you downloaded it and actually opened it, alright? So that’s the app option, it’s very similar to the website one so I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on the app activity.

Alright, the next one is offline activity. Alright, now with offline activity, you basically create offline event sets outside of this interface. So if you haven’t created an offline event set and you’re not familiar with what it is, this probably isn’t incredibly relevant to you. It’s a little bit more of an advanced feature where you’re basically pulling data that is taking place and happening outside of Facebook and you’re importing it so that you can use that data to target people. And when you target those people they can then see your ads on Facebook based on, again, a similar sort of interface, but you might add these events to your offline event set. So for ParaCore, we use an offline event set from CallRail which is our call tracking system and when CallRail integrates with Facebook, basically what happens is someone sees a Facebook ad, they click it, they go to a landing page, the call number is swapped with CallRail, they then call the phone number and we want Facebook to know that a conversion took place from a Facebook click on the landing page and then send that data back to Facebook for optimization. So if you’re not doing an offline event set, you can’t really do that because you don’t have the same sort of pixel firing like you would have with a purchase or e-commerce or something like that. When you’re doing e-commerce purchases, someone can basically install these events on the checkout in the checkout process. So add payment info, add to cart, add to wishlist, complete registration and then those events are firing and they’re firing back to Facebook and Facebook is getting that data. When you do something like an offline purchase or a phone call purchase or CallRail which is phone call tracking, you don’t have those same types of events firing which is a total bummer. So CallRail then creates an offline events set that integrates into Facebook and then pushes that conversion data back to Facebook and allows you to then use those as conversions. So, that’s kind of the background for offline event sets. And you again do the same sort of thing here.

So let’s say that a lead in the past 30 days, we have any, all, we can refine this by different options, value or custom data, so this value contains, it’s greater than equal, so there are all these different parameters that you can use when you’re importing the data. So you can say hey, someone that’s made purchases in excess of 25 dollars, we want them to see these ads. Or this custom value, if they bought these shoes or something we want them to see these ads, right? Or if they’re a certain gender or something like that. Okay, so you can refine, you can include more, you can exclude, the exact same sort of interface that we saw before. So that’s the offline event set data.

Alright, now the reason this video is kind of long is because we had this entire engagement section. Which when you click into that then you have all this other stuff. And so I am going to touch on a lot of these things quickly, but I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on them because you can see I filmed this video once last week because, and then it got long and I wanted to film it again. And these three things were not updated last week. So this just changes like every week, so by the time you watch this, if it’s like six months later, there’s probably a bunch of different options but we’re gonna go through them anyway. The entire purpose of this is you want to create an audience of people that are engaging with your brand, so if someone is watching a video or they’re engaging with your Facebook page or they’re engaging with your Instagram profile or whatever that you can then create a list, an audience of those people and then run advertisements to them.

Alright, so let’s hit video. So if I hit video I want people that have viewed at least 10 seconds of a certain video, and then I have all the videos that are run for that page, right? So here I see retargeting. This is someone watching a retargeting video so I might click this and these are all actually a retargeting video, so we have four different ones. And I’m gonna choose these, hit confirm. Now it’s anyone that’s watched 10 seconds of any of these retargeting videos, I want them to be the 10 second retargeting watchers and I’m actually in the process of building this funnel out right now. I’m actually going to, anyone that watches a retargeting video for more than a certain period of time I’m gonna show them another ad that takes them to a landing page with an offer, right? So that’s how this custom audience worked. This is the video engagement. And this is really cool because this allows you to create a Facebook sequence. So if someone is watching a video, then you can say how they watched three seconds, 25 seconds, 50, 75, 95% of the video, these are the only options you have, but you can segment people based on how engaged they are. So if you have a longer video and they’re watching 25%, it means that they’re pretty interested in what you’re doing and you’ll want to send them ads and make sure that you’re hitting them the right way, okay? So that’s the video engagement which is awesome, I love the video engagement.

Alright, so lead forms. Lead forms again have this similar interface. But the options that are most important for you to be thinking about are anyone who has opened the form, people who open the form but didn’t submit the form, and then people who opened and submitted the form. So now you have this audience of hey, people are opening the form. They opened it but they didn’t do anything. And so they then opened the form and they engaged with it a little bit more but they didn’t submit it. And then there’s people who actually open it and submit it, so those are your converters. So you have these three different options when you’re doing lead forms, which is great. So you can capture people that have shown some interest, but maybe just weren’t ready to convert right away.

Alright, full screen experience this is canvas ads. And canvas ads again, same sort of deal, you have, the canvas ad is like the full screen immersion experience that’s in Facebook that’s really cool, so when you have people who open this canvas, or when you look at your options you have people who open this canvas and then people who clicked any links in the canvas. So again, people that are engaging with a certain type of ad format. So canvas ads is very similar. Facebook page. So Facebook page is the same sort of deal, but you can engage people that have anyone who’s engaged with the page which is cool, so basically you’re creating audiences of people that are your most highly engaged fans, anyone who visited the page, anyone who engaged with a poster and ad, people who clicked any call to action button, people who sent a message to your page and people who saved your page or any post. So those people who sent a message to your page is really interesting because we’re currently using ManyChat and we’re doing a, we’re running an ad campaign that allows people to subscribe to a newsletter that we send out once a week that gives people updates in the PPC world, right?

So in order to get the newsletter they have to message our Facebook page. And we’re growing this audience list, okay? And so as this audience list grows and people are engaging with ParaCore through Messenger, now I can create an audience of people who sent messages to your page because in order to subscribe they had to send a message and now I can actually target that entire group of people that is interested in receiving those updates through ads. So that’s really cool, and this is one of the areas that ParaCore is actually spending a lot of time in, is this messenger engagement. Not only through the automated chat bots and things like that but also through this type of ad retargeting.

But these other options are also excellent, people that are visiting the page, clicking calls to action, or are saving a page or post, that means that people are pretty interested in your business. And again, you can do, in the past X number of days, include exclude any, blah blah blah blah blah, same interface that we talked about, alright?

Now we also have the same sort of deal with Instagram. So for Instagram it’s the same as basically the Facebook page, we have people that are engaging, visiting the business profile, engage with a poster ad, people sent a message to your business profile. I don’t think there’s a growth tool for that yet but I’m sure if there is ManyChat will jump on that once it becomes available. And then people have saved a post or an ad. So basically what you are doing with all these options is you are looking for people that are engaging with your business and then you’re building an audience out of them so you can reengage them later to show them product services, brand awareness, retargeting, whatever. Alright, and last but not least is the event type of engagement.

Alright, so events are not events like custom events, or conversions like we were talking about before, these are actually events that you’re creating for your Facebook page. So if you are, if you’re running a workshop or you have a bunch of people attending an event or you’re just doing like a wine tasting or whatever, you can advertise to people that have engaged with your event in the past. So you can say, people who have responded going or are interested, you have all these different options. Visited the page, engaged with tickets, purchased tickets, have the intention of purchasing tickets, which means that they probably clicked the link and didn’t actually engage. And so you do this and you select the event. So like we had an open house, so I can basically run an ad to the people that went to our open house and I want to say, I want to, going or interested, and there was 33 going and 20 interested, that’s 61 responses, and I could run them all an ad that says hey guys, thank for coming. 61 might be too small of an audience, but if you’re doing a larger event or you have a bunch of people or you’re doing an annual event or something like that, then this is a really great way to reengage that entire audience. And again, you have all these different options, purchasing ticket, engaging, visited the event page, responded interested or whatever. Alright, so we are getting close, we are getting to the end of this video because there are just a lot of different options for custom audiences.

So I feel like I went through that really quickly, and I think it’s been like 20 minutes, I don’t know how long, much longer video than our normal ones. But that is an overview of all the custom audiences in Facebook. And I’ll probably be going into some of these a little bit deeper, but there’s the high level view. If you watch this in three or six months, there’s probably gonna be features in Facebook that aren’t even in here, but this will still give you a pretty good baseline.

Alright, as usual, if you like the video please like it and subscribe to our channel. If you have any questions or comments obviously put those below, and I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for watching and have a great day.

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