How To Use Facebook Custom Audiences And Why You Should

Learning how to use Facebook custom audiences features in Facebook advertising is invaluable for so many reasons. The main reason is that it seriously helps to make ads far more targeted and therefore more effective and more cost effective. Reaching your target audience as cheaply as possible is the key to success with any form of advertising. Facebook already offers a superb range of targeting tools, which are always evolving – great news for marketers and savvy business owners alike.

When you know how to use Facebook custom audiences you can really start to laser target your ad spend. You can take a lot of the guess work and expensive testing out of the equation when you can target an already interested audience.

You’ll find working out how to use Facebook custom audiences very easy. You’ll find it in the audiences’ section of the ads manager and there are just a few straight forward steps to take. Facebook guides you through this process. They want advertising to be simple.

How To Use Facebook Custom Audiences With An Email List

Here is how to use Facebook custom audiences with an email list you already own – ideally your existing subscribers. They have expressed interest in whatever you promote and have shown this by subscribing to your list after all.

I use Aweber for my own list building and it’s very simple to download a list of emails from there. Other autoresponders vary but most will allow you to download a spreadsheet of all the data you have gathered there. With Aweber it’s just a couple of clicks. You then have a document that you can edit.

Facebook custom audiences lets you upload a list in a few formats. For the purpose of this post I’m concentrating on email only. What you need to do is to get rid of all the data in the spreadsheet except the email addresses. Save or export the single column of emails as a plain text or CSV file – basically just a list of emails.

In the audiences section of your Facebook ads manager you can then create a new audience by uploading that list, naming and saving it. You don’t need a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to use facebook custom audiences – it really is simple.

How To Use Facebook Custom Audiences Next

Once you upload your list Facebook will take 15-30 minutes to search through you list. Bear in mind that they will only find email addresses that are used for Facebook accounts. Your subscribers may use a different email for Facebook so expect around a 40% match.

Once you’ve learned how to use Facebook custom audiences you’ll want to look at further ways to use them. I’m not going to cover those in detail here but briefly – here’s one known as look alike audiences. With the information gathered by Facebook about it’s members – information that hey volunteer by the way – a lot can be done.

Look alike audiences for example means that they can provide information on people with similar interests to those of your custom audiences…

As the mobile revolution continues to gather speed this is mega-powerful stuff for marketers. When you post on Facebook that your in such or such a restaurant or have just bought a new (insert whatever) You’ve just given Facebook and therefore advertisers with some useful info. Use your imagination.

I learned how to use Facebook custom audiences through my SFM membership and mentors. If you’d like to find out more about the fascinating, profitable and potentially life-changing world of digital marketing you can grab a series of free videos by clicking the button below.