10 Ways You’re Not Using Custom Audiences

10 Ways You’re Not Using Custom Audiences

written by Houston Golden
Founder & CEO, BAMF Media
July 30th, 2019
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Do you use Facebook Custom Audiences? If yes, then how many types do you use?

One of the biggest mistakes Facebook marketers make is not using the many types of Facebook audiences to zero in on their targeting. Many Facebook marketers sync their entire email list to Facebook, then never create more granular custom audiences. Big mistake.
If you’re new to implementing custom audiences, then check out AdEspresso’s guide to getting started with them. When you’re ready for liftoff, it’s time to get hyper-targeted with the remarkable possibilities of Facebook Custom Audiences.
Here are ten of them:

1. Create a Lookalike of Your Customers with the Highest CLV

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the most important metrics for understanding your customers. CLV gives you the data to understand how much money you should spend on acquiring customers, how to offer products and services tailored to your best customers, and how much you should invest to retain a customer. The best part is that the number of Internet users is growing rapidly year-over-year and that just means more customers.
Do you have a list of your customers with the highest lifetime value? If not, here’s the foundation for calculating lifetime value:
(Average Value of a Sale) X (Number of Repeat Transactions) X (Average Retention Time in Months or Years for a Typical Customer) farne un grafico
For example, the value of an Autopilot customer who spend $40 every months for three years would be: $40 X 12 X 3 = $1,440 (or $480/year)
The first step to creating this custom audience is to apply the Pareto Principle, 20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue. In turn, take your top 20% of customers with the highest  CLV and upload their emails into Facebook to create a new custom audience. Now, create a Lookalike Audience from this custom audience.
This Lookalike Audience should convert far better than taking the easy route by uploading all your customers’ emails to create it.
After all, who doesn’t want more of their best customers?

2. Facebook Live Video

Did you know you can create a retargeting audience from people who view your Facebook live video? As someone who makes several live videos a week, I couldn’t wait to take advantage of this feature. I don’t have a huge email list, but the Facebook live video gives me a huge remarketing audience because people love my videos.

Here’s how you do it:
Go into your Ads Manager, then click on the section, Audiences. Next, click on Custom Audience, then select Engagement on Facebook.
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Now, select Video.
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You’ll have an option to select people to target based on how many seconds or percentage of the video they watched. From here, you’ll have a list of videos to choose.
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In only a minute, you’re targeting people who’ve engaged with your live content. Talk about low-hanging fruit.

3. Target Your LinkedIn Connections

Have a big social media presence, but a small email list? You’re in luck.
You can export your LinkedIn connections’ email addresses and import them into Facebook as a custom audience. Go to your LinkedIn homepage, then click on My Network and select Connections.
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From here, click on the gear icon on the right-hand side. You’ll now have the option to Export LinkedIn Connections.
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If you have the new LinkedIn UI, you can still download your connections by going to Settings & Privacy. Next click on Account, then select “Getting an archive of your data” to export the emails of your connections.
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I suggest this tactic if you’re active on LinkedIn – engaging with others, publishing status updates, and posts – and have connections comprised of prospects. This tactic will help lower your CPA only if your LinkedIn connections already have several touchpoints with you whether in-person to online. Their emotional rapport will make them more likely to convert into leads and customers.

4. Warm-Up Outbound Email

If you’re sending cold emails with low response rates, then try warming them up first with a custom audience of their emails. I suggest optimizing your ads for impressions and using ads with humor and a sense of awe to develop a more friend-level emotional rapport with them.
Don’t be surprised if you see a significant increase in reply rates. You can even get crafty with your personalized messaging including a call-to-action to reply to your emails.

5. Target Prospects who Withdrew from Your Onboarding Process

A prospect withdraws from your onboarding process. They made it through the first several steps of investing their time in required tutorials, but then stopped halfway through.
It’s time to trigger a Facebook ad. Tools including Driftrock and Autopilot can help you do this using automation. Two types of ads you can target at them include a video containing the last tutorial they left off on or a video hyping up their next onboarding step.
Here’s an example:
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6. Create Custom Audiences Based on Locality

Did you know using hyper-local copy when targeting hyper-local prospects can double your opt-in rates? It’s that effective.
Most people have a strong affinity for the city they live in, so if you reference their city in an ad, landing page, or offer page, you’ll often see a noticeable upright swing in conversions.
If you can find the top cities where your customers reside, then you can create custom audiences specific to the cities. This hyper-local ad I created targeted at hyper-local prospects went viral and was featured in Inc. Magazine because of its high engagement levels. Don’t underestimate the influence of mentioning someone’s city in your copy.
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7. Target Customers Who Refer the Most People

How many customers do you have who act as evangelists by referring others? If you use referral links or forms to identify your top referring customers, then you have a resulting list made of gold.
How do you entertain and stay relevant to these customers with Facebook ads?
Here are several ways:
1. Use a Facebook ad focused on engagement to remind them how much you cherish their relationships.
2. Show the epic story how of your company came to be using a Facebook ad.
3. Use a Facebook ad focused on highlighting your company’s culture.

8. Target Your Leads and Customers with the Most Twitter Followers

Wish you could target customers with personalized messaging based on their Twitter profile bio keywords and the number of followers?
With Audiense, you can by uploading your customer email list to their platform.
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The next step is to set your parameters to identify which customers are Twitter influencers. I set Time Since Last Tweet to one month to ensure they’re still active on Twitter, then I ensure they have, at least, a 2:1 Followers/Following Ratio.
When I see the resulting Twitter profiles, I click on All Criteria where it gives me the option to export them.
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The next step is to cross-match in Excel these Twitter profile names with the names connected to your email accounts. You’ll now have a resulting list of Twitter influencers and customers who you can target with Facebook ads.

9. Target Your Most Active Email List Subscribers

Do you use Facebook ads to activate your top engagers into referrers? If not, you can dive into your email marketing automation platform and segment the people on your email list based on recent opens or click-throughs.
Start with the people who opened your email consistently for the last couple of months. They have a strong positive association of your brand and content. It’s time to turn this engagement into a referral. Design Facebook ads to promote a unique ambassador or referral program (think contests and sweepstakes).
This is an easy way to turn your rabid fans into evangelists without annoying your customers not interested in engaging on social media.

10. Remind Customers of their Wins

Want to trigger a congratulations message with Facebook ads for a lead or customer who completes a particular step?
For example, let’s say you have an ambassador program, and one of your ambassadors refers ten people to your email list in exchange for a branded t-shirt. Wouldn’t it be nice to fuel their momentum by encouraging them to refer ten more people for the sweatshirt?
Once they get their first win (t-shirt), you target them with a Facebook ad containing acknowledgment of their efforts and encouragement to refer more people.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re looking to tie everything together, then use AdEspresso’s Pixel Caffeine WordPress plugin. It’s the first plugin to allow you to create hyper-segmented customer audiences and conversion tracking without leaving your website.
For people new or advanced with custom audiences, this will save you a significant amount of time implementing all of the above tactics.
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Based on the ten custom audiences mentioned, there are many avenues to refine your targeting, personalization, and copy.
The problem is many marketers focus entirely on building their email list rather than leveraging the emails they have with granular custom audiences.
Next time you decided to run a Facebook ad campaign, ask yourself whether it’s worth reaching a new audience or better leveraging the one you have.]]>

About the Author

The name's Houston Golden. I'm the Founder & CEO of BAMF — a company I've grown from $0 (yes, really) to well over $5M+ in revenue over a span of 5 years.

How did I do it? Well, it's quite simple, really. I've helped hundreds of business owners and executives get major traction (because when they win, we win), I tell all on this blog.

Growth hacking is a state of mind. Follow along as I explore and expose the unknown growth strategies and tactics that will change the way you think about marketing.
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1 comment

  • Avatar for Houston

    Great tremendous things here. I’m very glad to look your article. Thank you so much and i am taking a look ahead to contact you. Will you please drop me a mail?

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