Facebook regularly launches new advertising options. Some of them disappear after a few months, others you use once and never again, and still others you fall in love with as a marketer right away. The Custom Audiences targeting option is one such feature, which I was immediately crazy about. In this post I will show you why.
Custom Audiences Targeting
First, some background. By the end of November, it will be possible for any Facebook advertiser to take advantage of the Custom Audiences targeting option. This will allow you to create your own target audience by uploading a list of email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook IDs. The feature was previously only available from within Facebook’s Power Editor tool, but soon you will be able to create a custom audience from within any Facebook ad interface.
This relatively new feature in Facebook's advertising portfolio gives you many opportunities to set up creative, smart and especially effective campaigns. In addition, this feature allows you to use your advertising budget much more effectively, because you only pay for clicks or impressions within a very specific target group. A target group that you can even make as small as one person. To inspire you, I will give you 7 ways in which you can make creative use of the Custom Audiences target option.
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1. Retailers can easily target their customer base
One of the most obvious but also most effective ways to use the Custom Audiences function is to target your own customer base. Especially online retailers often have files with thousands of email addresses. Create a Custom Audience from this and then show your ads to people who you know for sure are interested in your products. Or use these ads to persuade your customers who are not yet fans of your page to like your page.
2. B2B entrepreneurs can reach customers, leads and decision makers
The Custom Audiences function can also be used smartly in B2B. Do you have an appointment with a lead next week? Let him or her know a few days in advance that you are looking forward to the appointment with an advertisement that is only aimed at this person. Furthermore, B2B companies often have large e-mail lists that can be used as a Custom Audience.
The only disadvantage is that Facebook requires an email address that is linked to a Facebook account. This makes email lists with many business email addresses less useful. Fortunately, there is a solution for this that I will discuss below.
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Did you know that you can easily download the personal data of your LinkedIn connections ? The advantage of this data is that it often contains personal email addresses that are also linked to the Facebook profile of these people. Ideal to use as a Custom Audience. Then target your connections with an advertisement that promotes your new website, for example.
4. You can exclude specific groups of people
The Custom Audiences function is ideal for targeting people pakistan mobile phone number list you want to reach, but it can also be used for people you don't want to reach. For example, you may only want to reach people with a certain advertisement who do not yet receive your newsletter. Use a Custom Audience 'Newsletter subscribers' as an Excluded Audience. Then all people will see your advertisement in which you promote your newsletter, except for the people who have already subscribed to it.
5. Target your ad to journalists, bloggers or other authorities
In some cases, you may want to show your ad to people whose email address or phone number you do not know. Fortunately, you have a backup in such cases. You can also use Facebook user IDs. You can find these by replacing 'www' in the profile URL with 'graph'.
For example , if you change https://www.facebook.com/robbertvooijen to https://graph.facebook.com/robbertvooijen in your address bar, you will see that my ID is '100001146811008'. Enter that number and you can reach me with your ad too. Imagine the great possibilities this offers for artists, designers or bands who want to approach a specific authority. Find the profile page of the person you want to reach, copy their user ID and create a special ad for them.
6. Job seekers can introduce themselves to the company where they want to work
In the past, you may have heard of job seekers using AdWords ads to secure their dream job. The recipe: create an ad that is displayed when someone googles the name of the person who should hire you. As soon as this person googles themselves (this works best with vain people), he or she sees your ad: 'Hey Peter de Vries, we should go for a cup of coffee'.
Married-on-Facebook
This recipe also works for Facebook Custom Audiences. Again, find the profile page of the person you want to reach, copy their user ID and create an appealing and creative ad for them.
7. Proposing to your partner
If you are a true, genuine marketer at heart and your partner is too, you might consider targeting your partner with an ad proposing to them. For most people, this might not be the most romantic way to propose, but hey, people do propose in World of Warcraft, so why not do it on Facebook?
As you can see, there are many ways to creatively use Facebook's Custom Audiences feature. How would you like to use the Custom Audience feature?