Which group of people should you target with your Meta ads? Targeting could be the difference between your ads succeeding and failing.

Of course, you can overthink this, too. You can spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect audience when, in reality, it may have been best to go as broad as possible.

You have a whole bunch of options available to you. Consider this your home base for all things targeting. Let’s walk through every possible lever you can pull to impact the people you reach with your ads…

Advantage+ Audience

Meta first introduced Advantage+ Audience in late 2023 as an advancement in machine learning and algorithmic targeting. This is default method of targeting for all manual campaigns.

The beauty of Advantage+ Audience is that any targeting inputs are purely optional. If you don’t provide an audience suggestion, Meta will prioritize things like conversion data, pixel history, and prior engagement with your ads.

Otherwise, Meta will prioritize your audience suggestion prior to going much broader.

Audience Controls are the few targeting constraints that you can provide. Meta will not deliver ads to people outside of designated locations, minimum age, excluded custom audiences, or languages determined here.

Otherwise, any other targeting inputs provided — including custom audiences, lookalike audiences, detailed targeting, gender, and age maximum — are considered suggestions.

Original Audiences

If you’d like to go back to the way we did prior to Advantage+ Audience, you can click the link to switch back to original audiences. But you’ll get a warning that doing so is unlikely to lead to better results.

Custom Audiences (General)

This is the first area you can use to refine your targeting. If you have created a custom or lookalike audience, you can enter it here. We’ll discuss in a moment what these are.

You can also choose to exclude a custom or lookalike audience from targeting. This is especially useful if you are promoting a product that cannot be purchased twice.

Custom Audience Types

Custom Audiences are groups of people who are connected to you in some way — they’ve engaged with you, bought from you, are on you email list, or visited something you own.

You can create a custom audience from the Audience section. Here are examples…

1. Website Custom Audience

Website Custom Audiences allow you to segment your website visitors for targeting. You can build these audiences because you utilize the Meta pixel or conversions API on your website. Here are some examples.

All website visitors…

People who visited specific web pages…

Visitors by time spent…

And from your events (like a purchase)…

2. Customer List Audience

You can upload your customer list of names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses and have Meta match up those people with users for targeting.

3. App Activity Audience

Create an audience of people based on their engagement with your app…

4. Catalog Audience

Segment people based on their engagement with your product catalog…

5. Video Engagement Audience

Segment people based on the depth of engagement and specific Facebook video watched…

6. Instagram Account Audience

Isolate those people who have engaged with your Instagram account, assuming it’s been connected to your Business Manager.

7. Lead Form Audience

Isolate those who have opened, opened but didn’t submit, or opened and submitted your lead form.

8. Events Custom Audience

Create an audience of people who engaged with your Facebook event…

9. Instant Experience Audience

Focus on those who opened or clicked on a link within your Instant Experience…

10. Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audience

Isolate those who engaged with your Facebook page in some way…

11. Shopping Custom Audience

Segment those who engaged with your Facebook or Instagram Shop…

12. On-Facebook Listings Custom Audience

Create an audience of people who interacted with the on-Facebook listings from your Marketplace catalog…

13. AR Experience Custom Audience

Create an audience of people who opened your AR experience on Facebook or Instagram…

Lookalike Audiences

When you create a Lookalike Audience, Meta will look for people who are similar to those who are already connected to you in some way.

The source audience will be a custom audience. The Lookalike Audience will be created by country and using anywhere from the top 1 to 10% of those in that country who are similar to this group.

Lookalike Audiences are often used when your custom audience is small and ineffective because there aren’t enough people to target.

Advantage Lookalike

Advantage Lookalike is also one of the Advantage audience expansion products that is only available with original audiences.

When turned on, Meta will expand your audience beyond the selected lookalike percentage if it will lead to better results. In some cases, Advantage Lookalike is on and cannot be turned off.

Location

You can select a location or multiple locations to filter your targeting. Only people living in or recently in that location, while also satisfying the other targeting requirements, will be considered.

You can include locations by country, state/region, city, postal code, address, DMA, or congressional district.

If you browse, you can select countries and regions manually or choose to go worldwide.

You can also exclude locations.

Age

The default, depending on your location, may be people 18 years and older. In some cases, you may be able to target people down to 13 years old. In others, the minimum age may be higher than 18. This will depend upon the laws and restrictions based on location and promotion.

Gender

By default, you will target all genders. You can choose to limit your targeting to men or women only, though that may be restricted if you are promoting a special ad category.

Detailed Targeting

Detailed targeting allows you to reach people by demographics, interests, and behaviors. Most of this information is provided within user profiles or collected based on activities within the Meta family of apps.

Meta has removed many interests and behaviors from targeting during recent years, largely due to privacy laws and restrictions.

You can also exclude people based on this information.

Advantage Detailed Targeting

Advantage Detailed Targeting is another of the Advantage expansion tools that are only available with original audiences.

When turned on, Meta can expand your audience to reach people beyond the detailed targeting that you selected if it will improve ad performance. Your exclusions, locations, age, and gender will continue to be respected.

As is the case with Advantage Lookalike, there are cases when Advantage Detailed Targeting is automatically on and cannot be turned off.

Languages

This is set to All Languages by default, but you can specify specific languages if you choose. In most cases, Meta recommends that you keep this blank.

Strategies

As I mentioned at the top, many advertisers have opted to go completely broad recently and forgo all other targeting considerations. You should at least experiment with that.

Others go with a mixture of Lookalike Audiences and Detailed Targeting for their cold targeting. While some swear by it, I’ve mostly abandoned this approach when prospecting.

I haven’t completely eliminated warm targeting from my mix, though. I will still use custom audiences for targeting in specific cases, especially for exclusions. In some cases, I’ll use custom audiences and turn Advantage Custom Audience on to give Meta the ability to go broader if necessary.

But again, not everyone believes in this approach. Some will tell you that remarketing is dead and is completely unnecessary. That if you go broad, the algorithm will naturally start with those who would be in your remarketing audience.

Find what works for you!

Your Turn

How do you approach targeting?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Meta Ads Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It’s finally here. You can run ads on Facebook and Instagram that target your Instagram followers.

If you’re like me and this sounds like old news, it’s not. There was something that was similar, but it didn’t include followers.

We’ll get to that. Let’s walk through how it works and how you can start targeting your Instagram followers today.

Make Sure It’s a Business Account

First, I don’t want to assume that you have everything set up properly to use this. Make sure that your Instagram profile is a business account. If it’s not, you may need to convert it.

Second, you’ll need to add that Instagram account to your Business Manager.

On the left, click “Instagram Accounts” under the Accounts section.

Click to add an account and then connect your Instagram account.

You may also need to give your ad account access to that asset.

Create an Audience

Next, go to your Audiences page and click to create a Custom Audience.

Select “Instagram Account.”

Click the “Events” drop-down and you’ll notice that the top option (not the pre-selected option) is “People who started following this professional account.”

You can then create an audience of your followers.

This is an audience that doesn’t have a number of days associated with it, so it doesn’t matter when people started following you. If they are following you now, they’ll be in the audience.

Yes, It’s New!

If you’re like me, you’re skeptical that this is new. This has been around for a few years now, right? I often second-guess myself when I see features that look new to me, but think maybe I just didn’t notice it.

This is indeed new. Luckily, I wrote a blog post on the Instagram Custom Audience a couple of years ago, so we can see what this looked like before.

Here’s how it looked previously…

It was always a bit odd that you could create a custom audience of your Facebook followers in this way but not your Instagram followers. That’s been fixed!

What to Do With It

Of course, you can now use this audience for targeting in your ad set…

You’ll need a reasonably sized audience, of course, to target this group. Or simply set budget and expectations accordingly.

You can also use it as your source for a Lookalike Audience.

This just gives you one more tool to work with.

Your Turn

Have you started using a custom audience for your Instagram followers yet?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post New Feature: Target Instagram Followers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook is rolling out Advantage Custom Audiences to advertisers, which will potentially expand your targeting when a custom audience is selected.

Wait… This isn’t new, right? Oh, it is?

You’d be forgiven if this sounds like something that’s already been around for a while. A couple of similar audience expansion features have been rolled out to the Advantage product line during the past year. But this, indeed, is new.

Let’s break down what this is, how it’s applied, when you’d use it, and when you absolutely should avoid it.

What Is This?

First, let me be clear that this is a rollout. I don’t have it in most of my accounts.

But, if you enter a custom audience into targeting and you see a checkbox for Advantage Custom Audience like the image below, congrats. You have it.

When Advantage Custom Audience is turned on, your custom audience will be targeted, but targeting can be expanded to people outside of that custom audience if it can improve performance.

Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s a lot like Advantage Detailed Targeting (formerly Detailed Targeting Expansion)…

and Advantage Lookalikes (formerly Lookalike Expansion).

In both cases, the audience can be expanded beyond what you enter if it can improve performance. But, of course, those features were unique to Detailed Targeting and Lookalike Audiences.

When Is It On?

How and when Advantage Custom Audiences are turned on are a bit different than for Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalikes. You can turn Advantage Custom Audiences on, no matter the objective. The other two are objective-specific.

Another difference is that even if Advantage Custom Audience is turned on by default (it will be), you can turn it off. Originally, this was the case with Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalikes. But now, you are unable to turn those two options off (at least in most cases).

Once you enter a custom audience, you can turn this on (assuming you have the feature), regardless of the objective.

When Should You Use It?

Admittedly, I’ve been a bit skeptical of the other two audience expansion products. I’ll get to that more in a moment. But, there is actually a good reason to use Advantage Custom Audiences.

Far too many advertisers struggle with understanding how to set budgets when targeting custom audiences. In almost all cases (unless you’re a big brand), these audiences are going to be small. It doesn’t matter whether it’s website visitors, page engagement, or your email list. We’re usually talking about a few thousand people — or at least under 100,000.

If you treat these audiences the way you do broad targeting and throw a $100 per day budget on it, you’re going to torch that audience pretty quickly. The frequency and CPM will also jump.

Assuming that your messaging isn’t unique to the audience you’re targeting (more on that in a moment), expanding the audience would make a lot of sense.

It’s important to understand how this works. The audience doesn’t immediately jump from 5,000 to 5,000,000 (even if the “potential” audience may look that way). The audience will only expand if it will improve results. The custom audience will still be the core audience used for targeting.

So, expanding your audience could actually improve your average frequency and CPM. Your audience is used in a similar way to how it’s used to generate a lookalike audience. But in this case, that source audience is still used for targeting.

When You Definitely Shouldn’t Use This

When I first heard that this feature was being tested, I was concerned. Audience expansion makes very little sense to much of our remarketing.

Consider the abandoned cart scenario. In that case, you are targeting people who added a specific product to their cart and didn’t purchase. You may create an ad that says something like, “Hey, did you forget something?” and showcase that product. This ad, of course, would only make sense for those in a specific audience.

The same would apply for cross promotions and up-sells. In either case, the ad copy may refer to something specific that a customer did or bought that’s related to another product. This would make no sense to an expanded audience.

In other words, be extra careful with your remarketing. If the ad copy and creative will only make sense to your targeted audience, make sure to turn off Advantage Custom Audience.

Transparency, blah, blah, blah…

If you’ve listened to my podcasts or are in the PHC community, you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about this by now. But I’m not going to stop until this is fixed.

Audience Expansion is a fine little feature if it’s effective. The problem is that we have very little evidence to prove this. It’s not that it’s not working. We just don’t know because it’s all left behind the curtain.

First, we don’t even know if the audience is expanded when this is turned on. Yes, in theory, it can be expanded when any of these features is turned on. We never know when the audience is expanded, how much it’s expanded, or how many of your results came due to expansion.

And that would be helpful, right? Give me a breakdown showing performance of my targeted audience compared to the expanded audience. This could then sell the feature, underscoring the benefit.

This doesn’t exist. You can split test two ad sets when expansion is on and when it’s off. But that’s the closest we get to fully understanding whether this feature is worthwhile. Beyond that, it’s all a guess.

Watch Video

Your Turn

Do you have Advantage Custom Audiences? What do you think, will you use it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Advantage Custom Audiences: What You Need to Know appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Previously, we talked about the glaring need for some sort of frequency control. The specific solution we focused on was frequency capping, like what is available when using Reach optimization. But, there’s actually another option that could be considered: An Impressions Shown Custom Audience.

It’s less sophisticated and it’s imperfect, but it could solve some of our problems while also providing some interesting options for campaign planning.

I think it could be great. Let’s discuss…

How the Audience Would Work

In its simplest form, it could work like this…

1. Create a custom audience of people who were shown an impression of a specific post or ad. This could work like Video View Custom Audiences, but the focus would be whether a user was shown a full impression of a specific post or ad.

2. Establish a retention window. This is the number of days that someone will remain in a custom audience after qualifying for it. We generally see anything from 90 to 365 days as a maximum, depending on the audience. For this purpose, let’s say the retention can be anywhere from 1 to 90 days.

How it Would Be Used

Once you’ve created the audience, how might you use it? Well, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you’re using this for frequency control, you could then automatically exclude anyone who was shown a specific ad during the past 7 days, for example. This is something I recommend for video ads right now. You can exclude those who watched at least three seconds, so that would pick up autoplay.

But, this could get a little more advanced…

Yes, you could exclude anyone who was shown a single impression during the past 7 days. Maybe Meta could add a frequency element. Then you could create a custom audience of anyone who was shown at least three impressions of an ad or post in 14 days. You could then, obviously, exclude them.

But, you could also use this for targeting purposes. Maybe once someone has seen a given post or ad — it could be once or maybe you’d want some additional frequency with it — you then target this group of people to show them another ad. So, you could create a series of ads to keep moving them through different ads, even if they don’t engage with them (but were shown them).

The hope would be that, eventually, you show them that magical ad that they click. Would it work? Maybe! Part of the fun of this is that it’s all hypothetical.

Maybe the feature wouldn’t work exactly like this. But these are some ideas, and I’d love to see something similar to experiment with.

Your Turn

What would you do with an Impressions Shown Custom Audience?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Needs an Impressions Shown Custom Audience appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When I logged into Ads Manager recently, I noticed a new alert at the top. I had been selected for an advertising study. Based on the description, it seems Meta is testing Custom Audience Expansion.

I know that’s not the best image. And I no longer see the message. But the full alert read as follows:

This ad account has been selected to participate in a 9-week study to help improve campaign performance. A small proportion of ads using Custom Audiences will be delivered to people beyond the Custom Audience. Expanding your audience is often an effective way to improve results, but you can opt out.

Next to the message was a button to opt-out.

First: Kinda cool to be part of a study!

Second: Oh, crap. What is this?

Let’s sort it out…

A Continuation of a Trend

Custom Audience Expansion would be a continuation of a trend. First, there was Detailed Targeting Expansion (which became Advantage Detailed Targeting). Then there was Lookalike Expansion (which became Advantage Lookalikes). In each case, the approach was similar:

1. You pick an initial audience to target
2. If Facebook/Meta think you can get better results, the audience will be expanded

That is precisely what’s happening here with CUSTOM audiences now (at least that’s what this looks like). You choose a custom audience or group of custom audiences to target. But, if Meta thinks you can get more or better results by expanding outside of that custom audience, the audience will be expanded.

Lack of Transparency Regarding Reporting

One problem, which I keep making regarding expansion of detailed targeting and lookalikes, is that we just have to take Facebook’s word for it. Technically, the audience will only be expanded if and when you can get more or better results. In theory, it can only be used for your benefit.

But, there’s no way to confirm that it was helpful. There’s no break-down option to see things like:

• How much your audience was expanded
• How many conversions happened because your audience was expanded
• The overall impact of expansion on your results

Because of this, we just have to trust the expansion, and that doesn’t feel right.

The Relevant Message Problem

One of the reasons remarketing is so powerful is that you can reach people with extremely relevant messaging based on things like:

• What they bought
• What they viewed on your website
• A specific action they performed

But, the way that you target these groups is with a custom audience. So, let’s say you create an ad targeting a custom audience with a very relevant ad — an ad that would be irrelevant to anyone else. We obviously would not want to reach someone outside of the custom audience.

I understand that there may be cases when expanding a custom audience may make sense. For example, if you’re targeting your website visitors generally to promote a product and you just don’t get the volume of traffic to exit the learning phase. Some expansion could be helpful.

But not always. In the example I describe, I absolutely do not want the audience expanded. Hopefully, it won’t be on at all times with an inability to turn it off. Of course, expansion always is on in some cases related to detailed targeting and lookalike audiences, so there’s reason to be concerned.

Trust Expansion?

This test is part of a continued trend related to Meta Advantage:

• More automation
• Less control
• More trust in Facebook
• More hidden behind the curtain

While automation can be helpful, too much automation can be a problem.

Your Turn

Do you have an ad account that is part of this test? What do you think?

The post Meta is Testing Custom Audience Expansion appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you have a product catalog that you promote with Facebook ads, you have a new targeting option. Catalog custom audiences have arrived.

Let’s walk through how to create catalog custom audiences and how they are different from a website custom audience.

How to Create

When you create a new custom audience, you should now see the option for “Catalog.” This, as Facebook says, allows you to “create an audience based on people who have interacted with items from your catalog.”

When you create the audience, you’ll first need to select the catalog and product set that you want to base the audience on.

You’ll then be able to select from the following groups:

• People who viewed products from your product set (default)
• People who added products from your product set to cart
• People who purchased products from your product set

One interesting note is that the default retention for these audiences is 14 days.

You’ll recall that the default retention for website custom audiences is 30 days. The 14-day retention is consistent with the default remarketing window that’s used in product ad targeting.

Like website custom audiences, the maximum retention is 180 days.

What Makes This Different?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “How is this new?”

Yes, you can already create website custom audiences of people who:

• Viewed a product page (by URL or View Content event)
• Added to Cart
• Purchased

The difference here is that now you can isolate these actions to your catalog. That catalog could be for website purchases, your Shop in Facebook Marketplace, or your Facebook page.

Catalog custom audiences also allow you to easily segment your audiences by product set, which is how you organize products by category. This can be especially useful for ecomm businesses that might have hundreds of products. And, logically, these are also the businesses most likely to have a product catalog in the first place!

Your Turn

Will you use catalog custom audiences? What makes them useful to you?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Catalog Custom Audiences: Target Facebook Ads Based on Catalog Engagement appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

We’re entering a time when tracking users from app to app and website to website is becoming increasingly difficult. Browser settings and Apple’s iOS 14.5 update are making the Facebook pixel less dependable for the purposes of tracking conversions and creating audiences for ad targeting.

That’s rough for advertisers. It creates a need for more granular targeting that isn’t impacted by these privacy developments. Activity that occurs entirely within the Facebook app, for example, can still be tracked and turned into audiences used for targeting.

Facebook offers some options. They just aren’t as robust as they could or should be. I’ve long wondered why many of the requests I make in this post aren’t already available. Until now, it was more of a luxury need. Now, though, they’re the type of options advertisers will need to replace or supplement some of their favorite options that are becoming less useful.

Facebook, if you’re reading this, it’s long past the time to offer these options for advertisers. You have the ability. Doing so will provide a little bit of sunshine during an otherwise tumultuous period.

Let’s go…

Clarification: What Is and Is Not Impacted

These additional audience targeting options are necessary because iOS 14 and other tracking restrictions are impacting the ability to target people based on their activity. Understand that iOS 14, specifically, applies to tracking across apps and websites.

This applies to the creation of website custom audiences and app activity custom audiences. If someone opts out of tracking, they will be removed from these audiences related to their activity while using an iOS device.

That said, this does not impact tracking that Facebook does and can do within their own app. As a result, this does not impact the following audience types:

• Video
• Lead Form
• Instant Experience
• Shopping
• Instagram Account
• Page Events
• Facebook Page
• On-Facebook Listings

It also doesn’t impact things like customer list audiences, interests, or lookalike audiences (though the source audiences may be impacted).

In this post, we’ll explore ways that Facebook can expand on those audiences that aren’t impacted.

Expansion of Engagement Types

The Facebook Page Engagement audience allows for several ways to target an audience that engages with your page…

Advertisers also have a similar method for building audiences of people who have engaged with their Instagram business account.

This is great and all, but the types of engagement are extremely general. The nice thing about website custom audiences is that I can isolate very specific types of events for targeting. That granularity does not exist here.

Here are a few engagement types that Facebook could turn into targeting audiences…

1. Post Shares
2. Post Comments
3. Post Reactions (or segmented by specific reaction type)
4. Image Click

You probably don’t realize this, but most of these actions (except for image click) were previously possible. Creation wasn’t part of Facebook’s main audience interface, though. It was done within Facebook Analytics.

In the example above, you’d first create a filter, save it, and then create a custom audience from it. Perfect, right? The problem is, of course, that Facebook Analytics went away on June 30, 2021.

We know that Facebook has the information to create these audiences. We could create them before. Facebook needs to make this part of the main audience interface.

Engagement on Specific Posts

Maybe you want to reach those who shared or commented but limit retargeting to that activity related to a specific post. In the example above, creating audiences for all comments, shares, or reactions would be good for building general targeting audiences. But there’s often a more specific need.

If you liked, shared, or commented on a specific post, I could then show you an ad related to that topic. Relevance, as always, is key.

Look, I understand that Facebook’s argument may be that this type of granularity wouldn’t be useful for those with small budgets or low levels of activity on their posts. The audience sizes will be small.

Fine. But it could be enormously valuable for those with higher budgets and those with more activity. Just make it available and let us sort out whether we have the volume to make it useful.

More Granular Instant Experience Actions

The Instant Experience ad format is likely to become more popular among Facebook advertisers since it doesn’t rely on the uncertainty of the pixel for audience creation. It keeps users entirely inside an “instant” experience that can consist of various “components,” or blocks of text, images, videos, products, or more.

You can create audiences of people who engage with these experiences. Audience creation options include anyone who opened the Instant Experience or anyone who opened and then clicked a link within it.

That’s a pretty soft offering of options. In addition to adding the components that were engaged with, what about adding specificity to the link clicked within the Instant Experience? You could include multiple links and buttons within the experience. Why not allow the ability to create an audience based on which one was clicked?

Impressions Shown

You may have been shown an ad or post, but you didn’t necessarily click on it. In fact, the odds are better that you didn’t. What if I could target or exclude people who were already shown a post or ad?

For example…

1. Show to followers who haven’t seen it.

Let’s say you published something organically to your followers. As we know, a small percentage of those followers will likely see it. What if we could create an ad that reaches only those who weren’t shown it so far? We could do that, but only if we could create an audience of those who were shown an impression and exclude that group.

2. Control frequency.

One of the biggest complaints among advertisers is that Facebook doesn’t give us enough ways to control frequency. We waste money showing ads to people who see them over and over again.

Currently, the best way to do that would be to use Frequency Capping when optimizing for Reach or using Reach and Frequency buying.

But, how would you control reach when simply optimizing for Conversions or something else with a modest budget? We could do that by creating an audience of people who already saw our post or ad during a set window of time (let’s say 14 days) and exclude that group.

3. Show a variety of content.

Or maybe we want to reach people who saw a post or ad (but didn’t necessarily engage with it) and show them something else. We could do that if we could target those who were shown that post or ad.

Frequency of Engagement or Impressions

One of the really cool and underutilized features related to website custom audiences is buried within pixel event audiences. You can create audiences based on parameters, values, and frequency of actions.

This is great! But we’ve already discussed how the pixel is becoming less dependable in the age of iOS 14 and less tracking. Anyone who opts out of tracking will be removed from these types of audiences.

What if we could apply this type of granularity to engagement with other types of Facebook content?

1. Frequency of engagement.

We mentioned creating an audience of people who engaged with a specific post or ad. But what about people who have engaged multiple times across your content? People who routinely like or love your posts, for example, may be valuable. Or people who message frequently, click links, comment, or provide numerous other types of engagement. It would be great to be able to isolate these people!

You can currently create an audience of people who engaged with any post or ad, but there’s no frequency element. That would decrease the audience size but increase the relevance.

2. Frequency of impressions.

Once again, a way to control frequency. Previously, we discussed creating an audience of people who were shown a specific post or ad during a specified window of time so that we could exclude them. Instead, what if we could exclude only those who saw that post or ad three times during the past seven days?

Watch Video

Your Turn

Facebook has the ability to provide these targeting options to advertisers. It would only enhance the performance of ads and the creativity of advertisers. Why not provide them?

Any other targeting options you want to see? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Audience Targeting Options Facebook Needs in the Age of Less Tracking appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Yeah, I hate that headline, too. Psychology and sense of urgency and whatnot. Usually, it’s a load of crap. Usually, there is no actual urgency. It’s all fabricated. Not this time. You need to create these audiences now, while you still can.

You may have heard that Facebook Analytics is going away after June 30, 2021.

There are many great uses for Facebook Analytics, and I’m bummed it’s going away. But one of its super-cool benefits is the ability to create custom audiences that can’t be created within the main Audiences interface.

Unless Facebook adds it, you’ll no longer be able to create these once Facebook Analytics goes away. And since custom audiences based on pixel events are becoming less dependable due to iOS 14 and browser changes related to privacy, Facebook advertisers need every good targeting option they can get.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to create custom audiences based on people who have performed the following actions on your Facebook page:

• Post Comments
• Post Shares
• Post Reactions

This is so much better than Facebook’s VERY general “engagement” audiences, which only allow you to isolate people based on very broad actions associated with your Facebook page.

“Engagement” can be so many things. But having the ability to focus only on those who comment, react, or share is a nice step up.

Yeah. It’s awesome. Let’s do it while you still can…

Select Your Page in Facebook Analytics

Go to Facebook Analytics. You’ll then need to select your Facebook page. You should see it within the “Pages” group of entities on that main page.

It’s important that you ONLY select your Facebook page. If you get cute and include a pixel or other entity, this may not work.

Create a Filter

At the very top, click to “Add Filter.”

Then click “Create new filter.”

You are creating a filter to include people who satisfy a condition.

You should experiment with these various conditions. You may find something there I haven’t tried before. But for the purpose of this post, we’re going to focus on “performed an event.”

The three we care about for the purposes of this post are…

• Post Comments (Pages)
• Post Reactions (Pages)
• Post Shares (Pages)

The time period you use for the filter itself won’t matter. But feel free to try different lengths of time to get a sense of how large each audience will be.

Save the Filter

Before you can turn this filter into a custom audience, you first need to save it. Click the purple bar and select “Save Filter.”

Name it whatever you want. You can use this filter later in your Facebook Analytics reports as well as for your custom audience (which we’ll create next).

Create a Custom Audience

Now, the part that matters most and why you’re reading this post. It’s time to create a custom audience based on that filter.

Click that purple bar again and select “Create Custom Audience.”

Select the filter that you previously created and saved.

As mentioned before, the time period you use for the filter doesn’t matter for this purpose. When creating your custom audience, you’ll be given a few options to choose from.

Unfortunately, you don’t have full flexibility here. But select one of the options given.

Name your custom audience and click to create it.

This custom audience will now appear within your main Audiences interface. You’ll be able to use it as you would any other custom audience for targeting and exclusions.

What About Detailed Events?

I know what you’re thinking because I was, too. You can create a filter based on specific type of reaction, like the “Love” reaction.

You can create a filter based on sharing a specific Facebook post.

There are a bunch of additional details that you can add to your filter. It’s useful for running reports in Facebook Analytics. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to create a custom audience from these filters…

These refinements will result in an error when you attempt to create a custom audience from such a filter (which is now grayed out).

Create Them All

Since Facebook Analytics is going away and it’s not clear if you’ll be able to create these audiences in the future, knock yourself out. Create them all.

• Post Reactions (1, 7, 28, 90, and 180 days)
• Post Comments (1, 7, 28, 90, and 180 days)
• Post Shares (1, 7, 28, 90, and 180 days)

If you find any other useful audiences from the various filters you can create, feel free to build those as well.

I’m making the assumption that once Facebook Analytics disappears, the audiences you created from within it will still exist and work. While I can’t think of any reason they’d stop working, we just don’t know for sure. But it’s better to create these audiences now and find out later than wish you had created them when you no longer can.

Use Cases

Use these audiences when you normally would normally use the main page engagement custom audience. You’ll typically use it as one of your warmer audiences for remarketing. I’d expect targeting such a group would result in more of those specific actions than normal.

In theory, these should be more valuable than the general engagement audience — particularly the Post Shares audience. Keep in mind, though, that the size of the audience will be significantly smaller. As a result, it may be useful for pages with greater activity. Also keep this in mind when setting budgets and choosing length of time.

Even if you can’t use them for targeting, these provide more options for lookalike audience sources.

Your Turn

Have you used these audiences for targeting? What kind of results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Targeting Audiences You Need to Create Now While You Still Can appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertisers are scrambling as a result of Apple’s iOS 14 update. This will impact virtually every aspect of our advertising, in some ways that aren’t yet clear. But one of the most important: Negatively impacting Facebook advertising audiences.

Let’s take a closer look at how and why iOS 14 will impact the composition and sizes of your targeting audiences.

If you want to learn more about this topic, I will go into significant additional detail in my new training, Facebook Ads and iOS 14. This will be my biggest and most important training yet (and I’ve done a lot of training!).

The Vague and Not Fully Explained

As I type this, we know that the iOS 14 update will have a negative impact on your remarketing audiences. From Facebook:

As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website Custom Audiences may decrease.

Details are limited. My belief is that Facebook isn’t fully clear yet what the full impact will be. There are a couple of things that should contribute to smaller and incomplete remarketing audiences…

Delayed Reporting

We’ve been accustomed to real-time reporting. When a conversion happens, it appears in Ads Manager rather quickly. This will not be the case for many iOS 14 users.

If you are running ads promoting your iOS app, it will rely on the SkAdNetwork. It may take Apple up to three days to send that data.

If a user opts not to share their data when they open the Facebook family of apps, conversion data from mobile web will also be delayed up to three days (and potentially unavailable for targeting audiences — more on that in a second).

When it comes to advertising, this means that remarketing audiences are not fully updated in real-time.

Limited Reporting: Aggregated Event Measurement

When a user opts to not share their data with the Facebook family of apps, this also impacts the volume of reporting. For this segment of users, Aggregated Event Measurement comes into play, resulting in partial event reporting.

Due to Aggregated Event Measurement, only the highest priority event will be reported for a single visit. For example, consider the following website visit:

• Visited a product page (ContentView pixel event)
• Added a product to a customer shopping cart (AddToCart pixel event)
• Completed a purchase (Purchase pixel event)

Normally, this behavior would result in at least three pixel events (even four, if you include the standard PageView event). But, for this segment of users, only the highest priority event will be reported: The Purchase.

The result is fewer events reported. But, it’s possible that this data will only be used for reporting — not for targeting audiences. For now, Facebook isn’t clear.

Other Potential Limitations Inferred

Let’s go back to that original Facebook quote and break it into chunks.

As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices

This suggests that once someone opts out, they may be excluded from your remarketing audience, even if their activity continues to be reported in some way.

the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences

Again, this is related to when someone opts out. The SkAdNetwork will result in data that is aggregated, restricted, and delayed — and that will impact all users, whether they opt out or not. But while aggregated data may help fill in the gap for reporting, it certainly feels like these people won’t be available for app activity Custom Audiences.

and website Custom Audiences may decrease

Above, I referred to how Facebook will report fewer mobile web conversion events and they will be delayed due to Aggregated Event Measurement. Does this suggest, too, that a user who opts out will not be used in a website custom audience? The “may” qualifier makes it unclear.

Bottom Line: Be Prepared

Facebook tells us that our app activity and website custom audiences should decrease as a result of iOS 14. How much? If any user who opts out is omitted from audiences, that could be a lot — at least if you have a heavy iOS audience.

Why is a delayed, incomplete, and smaller remarketing audience a problem? First, the obvious point that you want to reach everyone who should qualify in an audience. Smaller highly relevant audiences will mean less effective advertising when reaching your most relevant group of people.

But it’s also an exclusion issue. When promoting a product, you’ll want to exclude those who already purchased it. If that data is delayed, you’ll continue targeting a customer for up to three days after purchasing. If they opt out, you may not be able to exclude them at all — at least from website and app activity custom audiences.

The result is waste. Waste is an advertiser’s biggest enemy. No one wants to throw away money. We try to keep our targeting and exclusions tight to avoid it.

If your audience is mainly Android, I project the impact of changes will be focused on attribution, reporting, and optimization. It would seem that audiences would continue to build as normal for non-iOS users.

What to Do?

This is something we are all going to feel out as we go. How much will your audiences decrease? How much of a problem will it create?

Personally, I will continue to use these website custom audiences for targeting and exclusions. However, I will also stick with my long-term strategy of using every possible method at my disposal.

For example, when excluding someone who registered for something, I will exclude them in three ways:

• Facebook Lead Form Custom Audience (if lead ads used)
• Website Custom Audience of thank-you page or event
• Email/Data File Custom Audience

If it makes some of my most heavily used remarketing audiences too small to target, I may need to consider making them slightly broader.

Your Turn

How are you planning for smaller remarketing audiences as a result of iOS 14?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Advertising Audiences and iOS 14 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If your business has an active Instagram presence, you can leverage the engagement your account gets by creating an Instagram account custom audience for Facebook or Instagram ad targeting.

First, you can’t do this with personal Instagram profiles. It needs to be either an Instagram Business Account or an Instagram Creator Account. Click the links below to learn more:

• Convert to an Instagram Business Account
• Set Up an Instagram Creator Account

Once that’s out of the way, we can move forward. Let’s talk about how to add your Instagram account to Business Manager, how to create an Instagram account custom audience, and how you might use this.

Let’s go…

Connect Your Instagram Account to Business Manager

First, go to your Business Manager. Under “Accounts” click on “Instagram Accounts.”

Click to add an account and then connect your Instagram account.

Once you log in, it should be seamless. Your Instagram business account should be added to the list.

Once that’s taken care of, you can start creating audiences.

Create an Audience

First, go to your audiences, select “Create Audience” and then “Custom Audience.”

Select “Instagram Account.”

Select your Instagram account (if it’s not selected by default).

Next, you’ll need to select the type of engagement that will trigger adding someone to your audience.

By default, “Everyone who engaged with your professional account” is selected. Here are the options:

• Everyone who engaged with your professional account
• Anyone who visited your professional account’s profile
• People who engaged with any post or ad
• People who sent a message to your professional account
• People who saved any post or ad

The first option includes everyone: Those who visited your profile or took an action on a post or ad (likes, comments, saves, carousel swipes, button taps, or shares).

You can choose to have people remain in your audience for anywhere from 1 to 365 days.

Note that this updates dynamically.

Use Cases

If you have an active Instagram business account that gets a lot of engagement, now is the time to take advantage of it. Maybe your presence is larger on Instagram than Facebook. You can leverage that in your ad targeting.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Target everyone who engaged with your account to promote anything — blog post, lead magnet, or product.

2. Target those who sent a message to you and send them into a Messenger conversation.

3. Target those who engaged with any post or ad to promote your latest post.

What you do and the amount of time people stay in your audience will depend on volume, the engagement you get, and how you use your Instagram account.

Your Turn

Have you used Instagram account custom audiences? What’s another example of how you used them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create an Instagram Account Custom Audience for Facebook Ad Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you create and promote a Facebook event from your page, it’s important to engage, remind, and re-engage those who showed interest in it. One way to do this is by running ads targeting Facebook event custom audiences.

Let’s take a closer look…

Overview of Events

First, let’s talk briefly about Facebook events.

You can create an event from your Facebook page.

Your event can be either online or in person.

Events can be either free or paid.

When someone engages with your event, they can choose to indicate they are interested, going, or not interested.

These are things to think about when we create Facebook event custom audiences.

Create an Audience

First, go to your audiences, select “Create Audience” and then “Custom Audience.”

Select “Events.”

Select your page and event (or events). Note that you can select upcoming events or events that have already happened.

By default, your audience will include people who responded Going or Interested. But there are several options.

Options include:

• People who responded Going or Interested
• People who have responded Going
• People who have responded Interested
• People who have visited the event page
• People who have engaged (liked, commented, shared)
• People who have engaged with tickets (entered ticket flow and either bought or abandoned)
• People who have purchased tickets
• People who had intention of purchasing tickets (only those who entered ticket flow but didn’t purchase)

Determine the number of days people will remain in your audience.

You can use anything from 1 to 365 days. Note that this updates dynamically.

Use Cases

What are some ways that you can use Facebook event custom audiences? Let’s discuss…

1. Remind those who responded Going or Interested that the event is about to happen.

2. Reach those who responded Going to a prior event to promote a new one.

3. Encourage those who have responded Interested to change to Going.

4. Reach those who purchased tickets to a prior event about a new event.

5. Encourage those who abandoned their purchase to complete it.

The possibilities are endless! It all depends on how you run events.

Your Turn

Do you use Facebook events or target them with custom audiences? How do you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create a Facebook Event Custom Audience appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There are numerous ways that you can run Facebook ads to reach those who have engaged with your business or assets. App Activity Custom Audiences allow you to reach and re-engage those who engaged with your game or app.

Let’s break down how this works and how you might use it.

Register Your App

In order to take advantage of these audiences, you’ll first need to register your app with Facebook. If you haven’t done that yet, let’s at least touch on the basics.

Go to your app dashboard and create a new app if you haven’t created one yet.

I’m going to assume you’re setting up a third-party gaming app, but it doesn’t need to be…

Name the app, provide an email address, and select your Business Manager account.

Navigate to “Basic” under “Settings” on the left.

Within “App Domains,” provide the Google Play Store (if Android) or Apple App Store URL for your app.

Provide a privacy policy URL.

Provide a terms of service URL.

Click to Add a Platform at the very bottom.

Select your platform and provide the required information, if necessary.

Make sure to link your ad account by going to Advanced under Settings and add your ad account ID.

Here are some helpful links if you still need assistance getting set up:

• Android Setup
• iOS Setup
• App Development Doc

Create an Audience

From your audiences, click to create a custom audience.

Select “App Activity” so that you can create an audience of people who launched your app or game or took a specific action while using it.

After selecting your app, select from the activity that will result in being added to your audience.

Your options:

• Anyone who opened the app
• Most active users (based on number of times the app was opened)
• Users by purchase amount
• Users by segment (grouped by actions, demographics, device information, and more)

If you want to select users by segment, those segments would need to have been created already…

You can do that in Facebook Analytics.

Create a Segment

Go to Facebook Analytics and select your app as an Analytics Entity. If you don’t see it, the app likely still needs to be published, connected to your Business Manager, or connected to your ad account (as described above).

At the top, you’ll want to add a filter. This will be your segment.

Segment these people however you’d like.

When you’re done, save the filter.

This will now appear as a segment when creating your custom audience.

Use Cases

There are limitless ways to market to those who are already engaged with you, and the various opportunities you have will depend on your app and situation. But here are a few ideas…

1. Target those who installed the free version to get them to upgrade.

2. Target your most active users to let them know about a new feature.

3. Target those who are least active (exclude most active) to get them re-engaged.

4. Target those who spend the most money to get them to make an in-game payment.

Your Turn

Do you have additional ideas about how you could use app activity custom audiences? Are you using them now?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create an App Activity Custom Audience for Facebook Ads Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Video is big on Facebook. Not only is video popular and engaging, but Facebook prioritizes it in news feeds. If you’re utilizing videos, you need to create Facebook video engagement custom audiences.

Understand that this isn’t just about video ads. You can create organic videos or use video in ads, it doesn’t matter. But you need to take advantage of the ability to target and exclude the people who watch your videos.

Let’s discuss…

How Video Engagement Custom Audiences Work

The concept is simple: Add users to an audience based on their engagement level with one or multiple Facebook videos that you published. Then target or exclude those who engaged with those videos.

Of course, this only involves Facebook or Instagram videos (not YouTube, Vimeo, or any other platform).

You can add people to a video engagement custom audience based on the following levels of engagement:

• 3 seconds or more
• 10 seconds or more
• 15 seconds-plus or completed the video (ThruPlay)
• 25% or more
• 50% or more
• 75% or more
• 95% or more

Note that it doesn’t matter whether someone watches these videos with or without sound. And it doesn’t matter whether they saw it within the news feed or clicked to get a closer look.

You can create an audience of people who performed these actions at any time during the past 1 to 365 days. These audiences are updated dynamically.

How to Create Video Engagement Custom Audiences

Go to facebook.com/ads/manager/audiences or select Audiences within your Business Manager.

Click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Now, select “Video.”

You’ll get a screen that looks like this…

First, select the level of engagement that is required to be added to this audience (discussed earlier).

Next, click “Choose Videos”…

At the top, note that you can select videos by campaign, Facebook page, Instagram business profile, or video ID. It defaults to Facebook page.

These are videos that appeared on your Facebook page or Instagram business profile. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it was an Instagram video, for example. A Facebook video can appear on Instagram (usually as an ad).

These are merely ways to filter all of your videos to make them easier to find. For example, if you select Campaign, it will only display the videos appearing within a campaign. And you can select the specific campaign that the video is in.

Select one or multiple videos to be included in this audience. When you’re done, click “Confirm.”

Note that you could add another engagement rule if you want. I wouldn’t recommend this as it simply makes this audience more complicated and less flexible. I’d instead create two separate audiences that could be used either together or apart.

Set a duration of 1 to 365 days, name your audience, add an optional description, and click to Create Audience.

That’s it!

Targeting and Excluding People Who Watched Your Videos

Once you create these audiences, you can target and exclude them within the ad set as you normally would with custom audiences.

Things to Consider

First, let’s talk about levels of engagement and volume. Know that if you select the 3 seconds view, that’s going to capture a very high number of people who were served the video. It includes auto-play of videos that were passed over in the feed. You may want this, but keep it in mind.

Otherwise, consider the length of the video and potential volume before selecting an engagement level. If the video is 30 minutes long and was viewed by 1,000 people, don’t expect an audience of people who watched 95% to be very big. I’m sure you’re engaging, but no one’s that engaging.

The quality of these people may not be as high as you think unless you focus on the higher ends of engagement. That said, volume for shorter videos should be relatively easy to get.

Strategies

Let’s talk through a few ways that you can use Facebook video engagement custom audiences in your own advertising strategies.

1. Related sales.

Know that Facebook Live videos are included in the inventory that can source these audiences. Host a Facebook Live webinar or tutorial on a certain topic, mentioning your product. Then remarket to those who watched the video to promote the product related to your video.

2. Video series.

Show a series of five video tutorials or promos.

1. Target a broad group to promote Video #1; exclude those who watched Video #1
2. Target those who watched Video #1 to promote Video #2; exclude those who watched Video #2
3. Target those who watched Video #2 to promote Video #3; exclude those who watched Video #3
4. Target those who watched Video #3 to promote Video #4; exclude those who watched Video #4
5. Target those who watched Video #4 to promote Video #5; exclude those who watched Video #5

You could also use short durations, like somewhere between 3 and 7 days.

3. Higher volume exclusions.

I’m often asked how you can exclude people who already saw your ad. Technically, you can’t do this. And simply excluding people who clicked your link will only cut into a small percentage of the total people who saw it.

With video, you can leverage auto-play. Not everyone has auto-play, but a majority do. Use a video ad and exclude those who already watched 3 seconds of it.

4. Higher volume targeting.

On the flip side, maybe you want to target a large group of people who engaged with your content. Once again, volume is more difficult when it comes to clicks and pixel events. But, you could create an audience of 3 or 10-second video views to reach a larger group of people exposed to your content.

Your Turn

How are you using Facebook video engagement custom audiences?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Facebook Video Engagement Custom Audiences appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When running Facebook ads, advertisers have multiple steps of the funnel to attack. One key step of that funnel is the existing customer base. There are multiple ways to reach these people, but one way is by creating a custom audience based on your customer list.

This is one of the oldest methods of remarketing to a brand’s existing audience, but that doesn’t mean that you should neglect it. Facebook custom audiences based on a customer list remain a staple for successful advertising strategies.

Let’s walk through the following:

• What these audiences are
• How to prepare your list for a custom audience
• How to create your custom audience
• Targeting and excluding
• Custom Audience Terms
• How to update custom audiences
• What I do

Facebook Ads and Your Customer List

You have been building an email list away from Facebook. While Facebook advertising is a key part of my marketing, email marketing may be the most effective revenue driver. You should build this list, market to it, and leverage it with ads.

You can export your customer list and send it to Facebook. This data is hashed and then matched up with people on Facebook based on names, email addresses, physical addresses, and more found in profiles. You can then target or exclude these people within your advertising.

Generally, you can expect anywhere from 30-70% of the people on your list to match up with users on Facebook for targeting. In other words, an email list of 10,000 people doesn’t mean you can reach those 10,000 people with ads; you can expect somewhere closer to 3,000 – 7,000. It depends on the quality, accuracy, recency, and thoroughness of your list.

Prepare Your Customer List

Go to facebook.com/ads/manager/audiences or select Audiences within your Business Manager.

Click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Select “Customer List.”

You’ll get a screen that looks like this…

The file should be a CSV or TXT format and include at least one identifier.

This means that each column of your file represents a different customer identifier. This includes email address, phone number, first name, last name, and others. The more identifiers (columns of data) you include, the more likely Facebook can match a customer with a Facebook user. For example, your customer’s email address may not match up with a Facebook user, but the combination of their first name, last name, and phone number might.

If you hover over an identifier, Facebook will give you an example of the format that this data needs to be in.

See this resource for formatting guidelines. Facebook also provides a list template to help you understand what your file should look like.

You can also include a column for Customer Value so that you can later create value-based lookalike audiences. We won’t cover that here, but feel free to read more about them.

How to Create a Custom Audience Based on Customer List

First, indicate whether your file includes a column for customer value. Again, you only need this if you later expect to create a value-based lookalike audience.

You can either upload a CSV or TXT file or do a simple copy and paste. Assuming your list is more than a few dozen and includes multiple columns, I’d go with a CSV file.

Name your audience and click “Next.”

Assuming the names of your columns are different than what Facebook expects, you’ll need to map each column to its related identifier.

There may be columns that don’t match up to an identifier. In that case, just select “Do Not Upload” for that item.

When you’re done, click “Upload and Create” and you’re done!

MailChimp Integration

If you use MailChimp, Facebook makes the creation of these custom audiences easy. There’s a link at the bottom of the initial screen for creating your custom audience to “Import From MailChimp.” Click that.

First, log in to MailChimp.

Then select one or multiple lists to convert to a custom audience.

We’ll talk more about list syncing later, but know that this integration does not mean that your custom audience will be regularly updated based on changes to your customer list. It only allows you to easily create that custom audience for the first time. If you want to keep it updated, you’ll need to consider a third-party tool.

Targeting and Excluding

Once created, you can target or exclude this audience. Go to your ad set and select the audience that you want to target or exclude.

In the example above, I am targeting my customer list while excluding a list of people who registered for my Quiz Library. Both are data file custom audiences, but they don’t need to be. You can combine multiple custom audience types (website custom audiences, Facebook page engagement custom audiences, lead form custom audiences, etc.) within the same targeting.

Custom Audience Terms

There are some important rules that you need to understand when it comes to usage of data for Facebook custom audiences. While I won’t go through the entire Custom Audience Terms, here are a few highlights:

1. You must have rights to the data.

These are your customers, or they are the customers of your client whom you are advertising for. You’re not scraping data or compiling a list of people who have no connection to your business.

2. You can only use a customer’s data for a custom audience until they opt-out.

These are people who have opted into receiving messages from you. Once they opt out, they need to be removed from your targeting.

3. You won’t grant access to these audiences to parties who have no rights to them.

If you have multiple clients in the same industry, you can’t share or use this data across accounts unless you have the rights to this data for that particular business (see #1 and #2).

Granted, this document is in legal language. It’s not always clear how to interpret these rules. But this is how I interpret them.

Updating Custom Audiences

The thing about Facebook custom audiences based on a customer file is that it’s static. You upload a file, and that’s it. If you never touch it again, it won’t change.

This, of course, is a problem related to #2 in the Custom Audience Terms above. But, you should also want to keep it updated as much as possible so that your targeting is relevant.

There are two ways to keep your custom audience updated…

1. Update Manually.

To update manually, select it from your Audiences list and click the “Edit” button.

From there, you’ll need to upload a file of people you either want to add or remove from your audience. Unfortunately, you can’t simply upload a fresh list.

2. Use a Third-Party Tool.

This is the easiest, though it means an investment. You’ll typically need to pay a monthly fee to maintain regular updating of your audience. Cost is usually a sliding scale depending on the number of records that need to be updated.

There are many tools available that can do this. I already use Zapier for many types of automation like this. I’ve also used DriftRock. LeadsBridge has a good reputation, though I’ve never used it.

None of those are affiliate links. If you’re in need of a solution, hopefully this gets you started!

What I Do

While my customer list custom audiences aren’t a top priority in my targeting, they are certainly in the mix. Some examples…

1. Exclusions

Whenever I promote a product or opt-in, a high priority is excluding those who already signed up. As a result, I exclude every possible audience I can that represents those current customers.

Lead form custom audiences only last up to 90 days. Website custom audiences last 180 days. Even if both covered everyone within those time periods (they won’t), they create holes after that window expires.

While a custom audience based on your customer list may not have a 100% match rate, the nice thing is that there is no expiration date on the audience. Someone who signed up two years ago could still be on the list.

2. Up-Sell

Similar to #1, but for the purpose of targeting. Maybe I want to target everyone who signed up for Facebook Pixel Basics to promote the Facebook Pixel Masterclass. I could do this by targeting the website custom audience and customer file custom audience of those who signed up for the free series.

Of course, I’d also exclude those who signed up for the paid training (like I did in #1).

3. Full List

Sometimes, I’ll promote blog posts or free opt-ins to those who have engaged with me in some way. I won’t focus on the most engaged so as to have some volume.

Here’s an example…

I’m targeting people in a LOT of ways here in an effort to reach all of my most engaged readers. I included website custom audiences, lead form custom audiences, and customer file custom audiences in an attempt to generate the most volume of potential quality visitors.

Your Turn

How are you using Facebook custom audiences based on your customer list?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create a Facebook Custom Audience Based on Your Customer List appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When it comes to Facebook lead ads, their advantage is also a potential weakness. Since lead ad forms keep users on Facebook, you don’t drive traffic to your website. And if you aren’t driving traffic to your website, you’re losing the ability to create audiences and remarket to these people. Right?

Well, not entirely. Lead Form Custom Audiences help fill in the gaps. Let’s discuss…

[Tweet “You can now custom audiences to target those who opened or submitted a Facebook lead form. Here’s how…”]

The No-Landing-Page Problem

One of the inherent problems with Lead Ads — for advertisers, not users — was that they kept users on Facebook. Without a landing page, form engagement wouldn’t contribute to website traffic, which allows marketers to create Website Custom Audiences.

Why was this important? It’s helpful to know whether a user clicked to open the form but didn’t submit or clicked and submitted. These actions could help the advertiser show the user a more relevant ad.

For example, when a user clicks and submits to register, they should be excluded from seeing that ad again. Additionally, you may want to show a different ad to a user who clicked and didn’t submit. Understanding that they got close to submitting, you could surface additional benefits or remind them that time is running out on signing up.

These are all things you can do with Website Custom Audiences when driving users to a landing page. Without that landing page, though, advertisers would appear to be limited.

The Lead Ad Form Engagement Custom Audience

Enter lead ad form custom audiences. Go to Audiences within your Ads Manager and click to create a Custom Audience.

Select “Lead Form.”

How to Create a Lead Ad Custom Audience

After going through the steps above, you are then given a dialog that looks like this…

First, indicate the lead form action that you want to isolate.

Following are your options:

• Anyone who opened this form
• People who opened but didn’t submit form
• People who opened and submitted form

The first (“anyone who opened this form”) would be the largest audience, including both those who submitted and those who didn’t. This is the default. The second only includes those who didn’t submit and the third only includes those who did submit.

Select the number of days people will remain in your audience…

Note that the limit for this has always been 90 days. The tooltip contradicts this, indicating “No Time Frame Limit.” But, when I tried 120 days, I get an error…

When I click away, it defaults back to 90. For now, I’ll assume this is just a typo in documentation. But it could be a sign that this will be changing.

Let’s explain what that number means. This audience will only include someone who has engaged with your form during the past 90 days. That’s kind of annoying since Page Engagement Custom Audiences are 365 days and Website Custom Audiences use 180 days. The 90-day limit makes these audiences a bit less useful.

Once you’ve selected your page, indicate which form(s) you want this audience based on. You can select one or multiple.

Name your audience and click “Create” and you’re done! It may take several hours to build, but you should be able to start using it nearly immediately.

How to Use These Audiences

Go ahead and create each audience for each form you have. You can certainly experiment with various durations if you want (especially if you want to create an Evergreen Campaign), but otherwise stick with the 90-day maximum.

Here are examples of how you might use these…

Anyone who opened this form

Since this is a larger audience, it may be one you could use for basic remarketing. All of these people engaged with your ad, so you may want to show them content related to that registration — regardless of whether or not they opted in.

People who opened but didn’t submit form

Consider this an “abandoned shopping cart” opportunity. Why didn’t they submit? Did they simply forget? Do they need more benefits before they submit? Do they need a sense of urgency? Create an ad based on one of these profiles.

People who opened and submitted form

An obvious opportunity is for up-sell. If someone registers for my Facebook Pixel Basics free video series, I’ll want to try to get them to sign up for the full Facebook Pixel Masterclass.

There’s another way that I use it, though. I hate waste. So when I promote a product or opt-in, I want to be sure to exclude those who already purchased or registered.

You can exclude Custom Audiences in your targeting. Previously, I would exclude the Website Custom Audience for the thank you page and the Email Custom Audience for the email address registered. But both of these were imperfect when using Lead Ads. This should provide a close-to 100% match for minimal waste.

Your Turn

Do you use Facebook lead form custom audiences? How are you using them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create Facebook Custom Audiences for Lead Ad Form Engagement appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Remarketing, or targeting people who recently visited your website with Facebook ads, is effective due to relevancy. One of the many ways you can increase this relevancy is by targeting those who spent the most time on your website.

Let’s walk through how to create those audiences here.

How to Create

Go to Audiences within the Business Tools menu.

Click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Select “Website” as your source.

It will look like this…

Click the drop-down menu the defaults to “All Website Visitors” and select “Visitors by Time Spent”…

You can create an audience of your top 5%, 10%, or 25% visitors in terms of time spent on your website.

If you want, you can further filter by pages visited. One example of why you might use this is if you have the same pixel on multiple domains.

While this approach is great for isolating valuable visitors, know that it’s also slicing your audience into a much smaller fraction. It may not be ideal for websites with light traffic. Or you may simply want to use a longer duration and lower budget.

A theoretical example of how this works:

Your website gets 100,000 visitors during the past 30 days. Those visitors are listed (hypothetically) in order of time spent on your website. So the first person has spent the most time on your website during those 30 days. We’ll say they spent 10 hours. The last person spent the least amount of time. We’ll say they spent one second.

To create an audience of the top 25% of active users on your website, Facebook takes the top 25,000 in this case.

How to Use Them

When creating these audiences, they will appear on the Audiences page along with other Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and Saved Audiences.

You can then target or exclude this audience when editing the audience while creating an ad set.

The Benefits of These Audiences

This is a really good way to isolate high-quality website visitors. Understand that your entire pool of visitors includes the good and the bad. So, when you create an audience of all visitors, it includes people who spent a couple of seconds on your site along with those who spent hours. We want to focus on those who spent hours.

There are many potential use cases. You can target this audience for driving traffic to a new blog post, promoting a list-builder, or selling a product. It’s simply one more tool for your targeting toolbox.

Your Turn

What do you think of these audiences? How do you use themm?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create an Audience of People Who Spent the Most Time on Your Website appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[NOTE: This post has been updated and completely rewritten from an original publication.]

If you are a consultant, work for an agency, or ever need to advertise for others — or are a company working with someone who manages your Facebook ads — you may need to share a Facebook pixel or advertising audience.

You can do this. Both parties need to have Business Manager accounts. You can share a pixel with a partner. You can share an audience with an ad account. Everyone will rejoice.

As we move forward, we’ll look at this from the perspective of the consultant, agency, or entity that needs access to the pixel or audience.

Let’s take a closer look…

Why Share Audiences and Pixels?

If your client is an established brand that has advertised on Facebook before, they likely have the Facebook pixel on their website. They also may have audiences that they have used before that proved to be successful.

As a new advertiser working with this client, you can start from scratch with a new audience or leverage what was created before. Starting from scratch with a new pixel for optimization and tracking or a new custom audience for targeting is messy and will likely negatively impact results.

You’re going to want access to that pixel and those audiences. It’s time to talk about how.

Add a Partner to Business Manager

Hopefully, you and your client are already using Business Manager. If not, this will be required for what we’re going to do today. You can set up a new Business Manager account by going here.

Now, they can go to their Business Manager Settings.

Go to “Pixels” under Data Sources.

Select the pixel and click “Assign Partners.”

To grant you access to the pixel, they’ll need to enter your Business ID.

If you’re not sure what this is, click on Business Info at the bottom left of your own Business Manager.

You’ll see the Business ID at the top.

You should now have access to their pixel.

Share an Audience

In a perfect world, once your client adds you as a partner, they should be able to share both the pixel and any audience they want to share with you. Well, my friend. This is not a perfect world.

This is where it gets a little weird. You can share all kinds of stuff with a partner, including access to:

• Pages
• Ad Accounts
• Catalogs
• Apps
• Pixels
• Instagram Accounts
• Offline Event Sets
• Block Lists
• Lines of Business
• Custom Conversions
• Leads Access
• Domains

Custom audiences? Hello? No?

To share an audience (not a saved audience, but custom or lookalike audience), all they need to do is select the audience(s) they want to share and click the “Share” button.

If your ad account was already added to their Business Manager, they can simply select it here. Otherwise, they can enter your Ad Account number and click “Share.”

They can allow access to both targeting and insights or targeting only.

When your client views their audiences, they will see a column for “Sharing” and see which audiences they are sharing.

Likewise, you will now see this audience in your list, with a note that it is being shared with you.

The post How to Share a Facebook Advertising Audience or Pixel appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

During the past couple of weeks, I’ve walked you through how to create custom Facebook pixel events that allow you to track, optimize for, and target visits based on time spent on a page and scroll depth. Today, we’ll take that a step further and combine the two.

The reason for this is simple. While both time on a page and scroll depth are good indicators by themselves of visit quality, they each have a weakness. You can spend three minutes staring at the title without scrolling (or simply load the page and walk away). You can scroll through a post in 10 seconds and not spend any time reading it.

Several people asked me whether the two can be combined, and I have good news: They can!

Today, we’re going to isolate that ultra-valuable audience of people who scroll at least 70% of a blog post AND spend at least two minutes reading it. If you read either of the past two weeks’ posts, portions of this post will be repetitive. But I want to be sure that, if you missed those posts, you know how to set up the base pixel in Google Tag Manager and test the events.

Add the Base Facebook Pixel

I assume you have the base Facebook pixel code already installed on your website. Just in case, let’s walk through this anyway.

We’re doing this within Google Tag Manager. While there are likely ways to do it elsewhere, the variables and triggers provided by GTM make it easier to execute.

1. Create a tag and name it “Facebook – Base Pixel.”

2. Choose “Custom HTML” as the tag type under Tag Configuration.

3. Paste your base pixel code in its entirety within the HTML text box. Below is an example, but you should use your own code unique to your ad account.

4. Under Triggering, we want our base pixel code to execute on all pages of our website.

Create Variables

There are a couple of variables that we created during the past two weeks that we’ll use here. If you haven’t created them yet, let’s do that now. We need the pixel to record the percentage scroll depth and time on a page, so we add variables in Google Tag Manager.

1. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerEventNumber” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerEventNumber.”

2. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerInterval” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerInterval.”

3. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.scrollThreshold” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.scrollThreshold.”

Create Scroll Depth Trigger

We want Facebook to fire an event as a visitor progresses on a page related to scroll depth.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog – Scroll to 50%.”

2. Select the “Scroll Depth” trigger type.

3. For vertical scroll depths, use percentages of 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100.

4. Enable this trigger on “Window Load (gtm.load).”

5. Set to page path contains “/blog/”. I’ve decided to focus only on blog posts, but this is again optional. You could skip this step and it would execute on any page.

Create a Timer Trigger

We want Facebook to fire an event for every 30 seconds a visitor is on a page.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog – 30, 60, 90, 120, 180 seconds.”

2. Select the “Timer” trigger type.

3. For interval, use 30000 milliseconds (30 seconds). You can use a different interval if you please.

4. Set a limit of 6. Again, this is optional, but in my case I wanted to record events at 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds.

5. Set to page path contains “/blog/”. I’ve decided to focus only on blog posts, but this is again optional. You could skip this step and it would execute on any page.

Create a Trigger to Combine Scroll Depth and Time Spent

We want Facebook to fire an event when a visitor spends at least 120 seconds and scrolls at least 70% of the way through a blog post.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog post – 120+ seconds AND 70% scroll.”

2. Select the “Custom Event” trigger type.

3. Enter “^gtm\.(timer|scrollDepth)$” for the event name and check the box for using Regex Matching.

4. Select to have the trigger fire on “Some Custom Events.”

5. Fire the trigger when DLV – gtm.timerEventNumber is greater than or equal to 4. Since we’re using intervals of 30 seconds, this equals 120 seconds.

6. Fire the trigger when DLV – gtm.scrollThreshold is greater than or equal to 70.

Create a Tag

Now, we are going to create a new tag in Google Tag Manager that will reference the trigger and variables we just made.

1. Create a new tag and name it “Facebook – Blog – 120+ Seconds AND 70% Scroll.” Names are up to you, of course.

2. Use the Custom HTML tag type.

3. Paste the following code within the HTML text box…

It should look like this…

4. Under Advanced Settings > Tag Sequencing, check the box next to “Facebook – Blog – 120+ Seconds AND 70% Scroll fires.”

5. Select the “Facebook – Base Pixel” tag under setup.

6. Under Triggering, select the trigger that we created previously.

Test Your Event

Let’s make sure this event is working. Within your Events Manager, select your pixel and click on Test Events on the left.

Open a separate window or tab and go to a page of your website where this event should trigger. Scroll through the entirety of that page, and it should appear within this window.

You can also use the Facebook Pixel Helper to test in this same way.

Create Custom Conversions

I’ve created a custom conversion for this event. We’ll need this for tracking and optimization.

1. Instead of “All URL Traffic,” select “Blog Tracking” under Custom Events.

2. Click to Add a Rule.

3. Instead of “URL,” select “Event Parameters.”

4. Select “Time and depth” as your custom parameter.

5. Enter “120” next to “Contains.” I’ve only created one custom parameter under this event, so this rule should pick it up.

6. Name it, select a category (probably “Other”), and set a value (probably leave it blank).

You can test these custom conversions just as you tested your event. You should also start to see activity within your list of custom conversions. Note that the activity will be lower than what you were seeing with time on page and scroll depth alone. These are now the best of the best visits!

Add Columns in Ad Reports

This is information you should monitor within your ad reports, particularly when you drive traffic to blog posts. To do that, click to Customize Columns…

And then find your new Custom Conversion and check the boxes to add it to your report.

Optimize for High-Quality Traffic

If you would normally run campaigns to promote blog posts, let’s do it a little differently.

First, use the Conversions objective rather than Traffic.

When you set Optimization for Ad Delivery at the ad set level, select the custom conversion you’ve created.

By setting up campaigns this way, Facebook will attempt to show your ads to people most likely to spend at least two minutes and scroll at least 70% on a blog post.

Create Website Custom Audiences

We can now create audiences based on the new event we’ve created…

This lets you focus on targeting those who actually READ your blog post — beyond those pesky Blog Post Title scanners and quick scrollers.

Your Turn

This approach has changed my Facebook advertising. It gives me a much clearer view of the quality of visitor I’m driving and allows me to optimize for that type of visitor. This isolated audience also gives me an option for targeting of a small, value-packed group.

Are you doing something similar? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create the Ultimate Facebook Pixel Event for Quality Traffic: Time and Scroll appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

A week ago, we discussed how to create Facebook pixel events for time spent on a page. This week, let’s create Facebook pixel events for scroll depth.

If you read last week’s post, portions of this post will be repetitive. But I want to be sure that, if you missed that post, you know how to set up the base pixel in Google Tag Manager and test the events.

I’ll go through even more detail in my upcoming Facebook Pixel Masterclass (the first lesson is free).

The Problem: Low-Quality Traffic

As discussed a week ago, the foundation of my marketing strategy is driving traffic to my website. I use organic content, email updates, and Facebook ads to send a constant pipeline of people to my site. That starts my funnel, where I hope to get them on my email list (usually via a free offer) before making a single-product sale and, hopefully, ongoing membership.

The quality of this funnel is reliant on the quality of that initial traffic. If my website is flooded by low-quality visits (typically reflected by a quick exit), my other efforts will fall apart.

I had become increasingly skeptical of results I was seeing from Traffic campaigns promoting blog posts using Landing Page Views optimization. I would occasionally see runs of too-good-to-be-true results. After digging further, the culprits were typically source country or placement (Audience Network almost always sends low-quality traffic).

Why does this happen? Simple: Facebook cares about volume and costs without care regarding quality. They don’t hide from this fact, either…

When optimizing for Landing Page Views (after clicking the ad, the website and Facebook pixel load), Facebook will try to get you the most LPVs for the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter whether those are three-second or three-hour views. Facebook doesn’t care.

This may not matter when it comes to sales. A $100 sale is a $100 sale. But there is a huge variance in the quality of a Landing Page View.

The Solution: Facebook Pixel Event for Scroll Depth

Scroll depth means how far down the page someone scrolls when viewing a page. While time on a page is a good indicator of quality, a visitor could theoretically spend three minutes staring at the title, and that’s not a high-quality visitor. We need another indicator of visit quality. Logging visits that result in viewing most or all of a post is a good option.

We want Facebook to track, report, optimize for, and even target based on how far someone scrolls on a page of our website. We can force Facebook to care about the quality of the traffic they are sending.

By creating a Facebook pixel event to create a log of visits based on 10-percent multiples (50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 percent), we can then do the following specific things:

1. Create Custom Conversions based on these events
2. Add columns to our ad reports for number and cost of these events to get a clearer view of ability to drive quality traffic
3. Optimize for any of these specific events to focus on targeting and driving high-quality visits
4. Create website custom audiences of those who performed these events for high-quality targeting

A member of my team did this for me using Google Tag Manager. I am going to walk through the specific steps so that you can do it, too.

Add the Base Facebook Pixel

I assume you have the base Facebook pixel code already installed on your website. Just in case, let’s walk through this anyway.

We’re doing this within Google Tag Manager. While there are likely ways to do it elsewhere, the variables and triggers provided by GTM make it easier to execute.

1. Create a tag and name it “Facebook – Base Pixel.”

2. Choose “Custom HTML” as the tag type under Tag Configuration.

3. Paste your base pixel code in its entirety within the HTML text box. Below is an example, but you should use your own code unique to your ad account.

4. Under Triggering, we want our base pixel code to execute on all pages of our website.

Note that I won’t have the events we’re going to create execute on every page (that’s up to you). But the base pixel absolutely should.

Create a Trigger

We want Facebook to fire an event as a visitor progresses on a page related to scroll depth.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog – Scroll to 50%.”

2. Select the “Scroll Depth” trigger type.

3. For vertical scroll depths, use percentages of 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100.

4. Enable this trigger on “Window Load (gtm.load).”

5. Set to page path contains “/blog/”. I’ve decided to focus only on blog posts, but this is again optional. You could skip this step and it would execute on any page.

Create Variable

We need the pixel to record the percentage scroll depth, so we add a variable in Google Tag Manager.

Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.scrollThreshold” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.scrollThreshold.”

Create a Tag

Now, we are going to create a new tag in Google Tag Manager that will reference the trigger and variable we just made.

1. Create a new tag and name it “Facebook – Blog – Scroll 50%-100%.” Names are up to you, of course.

2. Use the Custom HTML tag type.

3. Paste the following code within the HTML text box…

It should look like this…

4. Under Advanced Settings > Tag Sequencing, check the box next to “Fire a tag before Facebook – Blog – Scroll 50%-100% fires.”

5. Select the “Facebook – Base Pixel” tag under setup.

6. Under Triggering, select the trigger that we created previously.

Test Your Event

Let’s make sure this event is working. Within your Events Manager, select your pixel and click on Test Events on the left.

Open a separate window or tab and go to a page of your website where this event should trigger. Scroll through the entirety of that page, and it should appear within this window.

You can also use the Facebook Pixel Helper to test in this same way.

Create Custom Conversions

I’ve created custom conversions for each of the six interval scroll depth events that should be firing.

1. Instead of “All URL Traffic,” select “Blog Tracking” under Custom Events.

2. Click to Add a Rule.

3. Instead of “URL,” select “Event Parameters.”

4. Select “Scroll Depth” as your custom parameter.

5. Enter “50%” next to “Equals.”

6. Name it, select a category (probably “Other”), and set a value (probably leave it blank).

7. Repeat for 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, and 100%.

You can test these custom conversions just as you tested your event. You should also start to see activity within your list of custom conversions.

Add Columns in Ad Reports

This is information you should monitor within your ad reports, particularly when you drive traffic to blog posts. To do that, click to Customize Columns…

And then find your new Custom Conversions and check the boxes to add them to your report.

Optimize for High-Quality Traffic

If you would normally run campaigns to promote blog posts, let’s do it a little differently.

First, use the Conversions objective rather than Traffic.

When you set Optimization for Ad Delivery at the ad set level, select one of the custom conversions you’ve created.

Feel free to experiment with the different time intervals to see if it impacts your results.

By setting up campaigns this way, Facebook will attempt to show your ads to people most likely to scroll at least 70% on a blog post.

Create Website Custom Audiences

We can now create audiences based on these new events we’ve created…

This lets you focus on targeting those who actually READ your blog post — beyond those pesky Blog Post Title scanners.

Your Turn

This approach has changed my Facebook advertising. It gives me a much clearer view of the quality of visitor I’m driving and allows me to optimize for that type of visitor. This isolated audience also gives me an option for targeting of a small, value-packed group.

Are you doing something similar? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create Facebook Pixel Events for Scroll Depth appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In this post, I’m going to walk through how to create a custom Facebook pixel event based on time spent on your website (all pages or a section of your website). That event will help you better track, optimize, and target those who spend the most time on your website.

[READ ABOUT HOW TO CREATE A PIXEL EVENT FOR SCROLL DEPTH.]

This is a big deal. It’s more than simply creating a custom audience of those who spent the most time on your website, as is already easily possible (top 5%, 10%, and 25%). This provides more granularity of those audiences, but two most important capabilities of this approach are through measurement and optimizing for this type of visitor.

The Problem: Low-Quality Traffic

The foundation of my marketing strategy is driving traffic to my website. I use organic content, email updates, and Facebook ads to send a constant pipeline of people to my site. That starts my funnel, where I hope to get them on my email list (usually via a free offer) before making a single-product sale and, hopefully, ongoing membership.

The quality of this funnel is reliant on the quality of that initial traffic. If my website is flooded by low-quality visits (typically reflected by a quick exit), my other efforts will fall apart.

I had become increasingly skeptical of results I was seeing from Traffic campaigns promoting blog posts using Landing Page Views optimization. I would occasionally see runs of too-good-to-be-true results. After digging further, the culprits were typically source country or placement (Audience Network almost always sends low-quality traffic).

Why does this happen? Simple: Facebook cares about volume and costs without care regarding quality. They don’t hide from this fact, either…

When optimizing for Landing Page Views (after clicking the ad, the website and Facebook pixel load), Facebook will try to get you the most LPVs for the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter whether those are three-second or three-hour views. Facebook doesn’t care.

This may not matter when it comes to sales. A $100 sale is a $100 sale. But there is a huge variance in the quality of a Landing Page View.

The Solution: Facebook Pixel Event for Time Spent

We want Facebook to track, report, optimize for, and even target based on the time spent on our website. We can force Facebook to care about the quality of the traffic they are sending.

By creating a Facebook pixel event to create a log of visits based on 30-second multiples (30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds), we can then do the following specific things:

1. Create Custom Conversions based on these events
2. Add columns to our ad reports for number and cost of these events to get a clearer view of ability to drive quality traffic
3. Optimize for any of these specific events to focus on targeting and driving high-quality visits
4. Create website custom audiences of those who performed these events for high-quality targeting

A member of my team did this for me using Google Tag Manager. I am going to walk through the specific steps so that you can do it, too.

Add the Base Facebook Pixel

I assume you have the base Facebook pixel code already installed on your website. Just in case, let’s walk through this anyway.

We’re doing this within Google Tag Manager. While there are likely ways to do it elsewhere, the variables and triggers provided by GTM make it easier to execute.

1. Create a tag and name it “Facebook – Base Pixel.”

2. Choose “Custom HTML” as the tag type under Tag Configuration.

3. Paste your base pixel code in its entirety within the HTML text box. Below is an example, but you should use your own code unique to your ad account.

4. Under Triggering, we want our base pixel code to execute on all pages of our website.

Note that I won’t have the events we’re going to create execute on every page (that’s up to you). But the base pixel absolutely should.

Create a Trigger

We want Facebook to fire an event for every 30 seconds a visitor is on a page.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog – 30, 60, 90, 120, 180 seconds.”

2. Select the “Timer” trigger type.

3. For interval, use 30000 milliseconds (30 seconds). You can use a different interval if you please.

4. Set a limit of 6. Again, this is optional, but in my case I wanted to record events at 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds.

5. Set to page path contains “/blog/”. I’ve decided to focus only on blog posts, but this is again optional. You could skip this step and it would execute on any page.

Create Variables

We need the pixel to record the event number and interval so that this can be executed in the tag (coming up). So we need to create two variables in Google Tag Manager.

1. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerEventNumber” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerEventNumber.”

2. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerInterval” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerInterval.”

Create a Tag

Now, we are going to create a new tag in Google Tag Manager that will reference the trigger and variables we just made.

1. Create a new tag and name it “Facebook – Blog – 30 Seconds or more.” Names are up to you, of course.

2. Use the Custom HTML tag type.

3. Paste the following code within the HTML text box…

It should look like this…

4. Under Advanced Settings > Tag Sequencing, check the box next to “Fire a tag before Facebook – Blog – 30 Seconds or more fires.”

5. Select the “Facebook – Base Pixel” tag under setup.

6. Under Triggering, select the trigger that we created previously.

Test Your Event

Let’s make sure this event is working. Within your Events Manager, select your pixel and click on Test Events on the left.

Open a separate window or tab and go to a page of your website where this event should trigger. Wait a while, and it should appear within this window.

You can also use the Facebook Pixel Helper to test in this same way.

Create Custom Conversions

I’ve created custom conversions for each of the six interval timer events that should be firing.

1. Instead of “All URL Traffic,” select “Blog Tracking” under Custom Events.

2. Click to Add a Rule.

3. Instead of “URL,” select “Event Parameters.”

4. Select “Time on page” as your custom parameter.

5. Enter “30 seconds” next to “Equals.”

6. Name it, select a category (probably “Other”), and set a value (probably leave it blank).

7. Repeat for 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds.

You can test these custom conversions just as you tested your event. You should also start to see activity within your list of custom conversions.

Add Columns in Ad Reports

This is information you should monitor within your ad reports, particularly when you drive traffic to blog posts. To do that, click to Customize Columns…

And then find your new Custom Conversions and check the boxes to add them to your report.

Optimize for High-Quality Traffic

If you would normally run campaigns to promote blog posts, let’s do it a little differently.

First, use the Conversions objective rather than Traffic.

When you set Optimization for Ad Delivery at the ad set level, select one of the custom conversions you’ve created.

Feel free to experiment with the different time intervals to see if it impacts your results.

By setting up campaigns this way, Facebook will attempt to show your ads to people most likely to click and spend 30+ seconds on a blog post.

Create Website Custom Audiences

As you probably know, there are already ways to target some of your highest quality website visitors. You can target based on time spent on your website…

You can also create audiences of people based on number of PageView events…

And we can now create audiences based on these new events we’ve created…

While the Time on Site audience will allow you to reach those who spent the most aggregate time on your website and the PageView audience allows you to target those who viewed the most pages, this lets you focus on those who spent a specific amount of time on any blog post.

Your Turn

This approach has changed my Facebook advertising. It gives me a much clearer view of the quality of visitor I’m driving and allows me to optimize for that type of visitor. This isolated audience also gives me an option for targeting of a small, value-packed group.

Are you doing something similar? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create Facebook Pixel Events for Time Spent appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How do you keep a campaign fresh? You make sure that the audience it reaches is perpetually fresh. You can do this with an evergreen Facebook campaign.

I’ve been using this approach since 2015. It still works today.

An evergreen Facebook campaign can utilize one ad or dozens of ads. It can be shown to each user for a handful of days or several weeks. It can be as simple as a single track or it can send people down different tracks depending on how they interact with it.

The possibilities are endless. But I wanted to give you an example of what I’m currently doing.

First, a little refresher…

What Are Evergreen Facebook Campaigns?

Your campaign works great for a few days. Sometimes a few weeks or even months. But then, inevitably, it hits a wall. Why?

In most cases, this can be attributed to ad fatigue. You ultimately start showing the ads — even if you change creative — to the same group of people. You exhaust those who are most likely to act.

Evergreen Facebook campaigns are effective because, while they might run for months at a time, you can limit how long each user is shown ads within it. And you can show a series of ads in sequence, like a drip campaign, to convey a message.

How does this work?

1. TRIGGER ACTION: A trigger action is an action that a user will only perform once. Typically, this may be a registration or even a low-level purchase. Ideally, it’s an action that has some volume, and you have the goal of some greater action later.

It’s important that a user performs this action only once and can’t do so again. Why? Because every time they perform that action, they go through the evergreen Facebook campaign again.

That’s what makes registrations and small one-time purchases ideal. They are easier to control. While you can use reading a blog post or watching a video as the trigger action, you need to get creative to make sure that if they read or watch again, they don’t restart the process.

2. DURATIONS: Evergreen Facebook campaigns work because of Custom Audience durations. What is this? It’s the length of time someone remains within your audience after performing a particular action.

For example…

In the hypothetical example above, you are creating an audience of all people who hit the thank you page following registering for a webinar during the past four days. That is a rolling four-day window. Someone can’t register for it twice (good trigger!).

So here, you can imagine creating an ad set that targets this audience — all people who registered for your webinar during the past four days — with a particular ad. Since this audience updates dynamically, people will only see the ad for up to four days, and a new audience will constantly see it as new people register.

3. EXCLUSIONS: Exclusions are one of the most important and under-utilized strategies in Facebook advertising. They are critical to the effectiveness of evergreen Facebook campaigns.

First, you can exclude people who already performed the action you are promoting in the ad. Whether it’s reading a blog post, watching a video, or buying a product, there’s no need to show people the ad after they perform that action.

Second, exclusions allow you to create a series of ads in sequence. For example, what if you wanted to show two ads in sequence, each for four days, following the registration for your webinar?

You’d do this…

• Ad #1: Target webinar registrations – 4 days
• Ad #2: Target webinar registrations – 8 days (exclude webinar registrations – 4 days)

You don’t have to stop at two ads. You could go on and on and on, showing a specific ad to people at specific points in their journey through the campaign.

For more on this, check out a couple of blog posts I’ve written:

• How to Create an Evergreen Facebook Ad Campaign
• How to Create a Basic Evergreen Facebook Ad Campaign

My Evergreen Facebook Campaign: Trigger

The trigger action that I use for my current evergreen Facebook campaign is registration for my free webinar. There are two ways that I can target these people.

People registered both on my website and via Facebook lead ad forms. As a result, I could target registrants via a Website Custom Audience of the thank you page following registration on my website as well as the engagement audience of those who registered via the lead ad form.

Note that I’m also running a similar evergreen Facebook campaign for people who participated in a quiz that I’m doing. That one functions almost the same way, so I’ll focus on the webinar example here.

My Evergreen Campaign: Durations

As you can see in the image above, I decided on durations in multiple of five for this campaign. No real reason. I actually went with four for the other campaign that targets quiz participants.

That means I can show people a new ad every five days. My campaign can run beyond 40 days for some people (showing eight very different ads).

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #1

I like to start with an About Me post, telling the new registrant more about me and my business.

Note that I’m not selling anything here. I’m taking a long-tail, soft sell approach. You don’t need to.

If you wanted, you could go straight to the sale. Promote something related to the trigger action.

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #2

During days 6-10, I show registrants an ad that includes a survey.

This survey occurs on my website and asks questions about your experience and comfort level with Facebook ads.

This is useful information generally, but I also use this for targeting later. You see, I’m able to create audiences of people based on their answers.

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #3

My next ad, during days 11-15, features another survey. This time, I want to know more about your business.

I want to uncover who is a business owner or entrepreneur. I’ll be able to target those people later in this campaign (and in other, separate campaigns).

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #4

Next, I showcase a quiz during days 16-20 of the campaign. This quiz tests you on your knowledge of Facebook ads.

Similar to the survey, I can use this information for later targeting.

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #5

During days 21-25, I utilize a carousel to showcase three blog posts I’ve written about evergreen Facebook campaigns.

The hope is to get you interested in this approach.

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #6

During days 26-30, I promote my upcoming Evergreen Campaigns Master Class.

I will exclude the following groups:

• Already signed up for training
• PHC – Elite member (already get access to training)
• Indicated they are a beginner advertiser in survey
• Faired poorly on quiz

Since creating evergreen Facebook campaigns is a more advanced strategy, I don’t want to show this ad to new advertisers who are just getting started. It is bound to be over their head.

My Evergreen Campaign: Ad #7

I will promote my PHC – Elite private community during days 36-40. This is also the ad that will run in place of promoting the training after the training is complete (since members can get access to the recordings).

Once again, we’ll exclude beginner advertisers and current PHC – Elite members from this audience.

My Evergreen Campaign: Entrepreneur Track

From there, the “base” evergreen Facebook campaign is complete. If you don’t sign up for the training or PHC – Elite after those first 40 days, you’ll stop seeing the ads in this campaign.

With one exception…

If you indicated in the business survey that you are a business owner or entrepreneur, you will now fall into the entrepreneur track of my evergreen Facebook campaign. That includes ads for blog posts focused on entrepreneurship…

This thing can keep going and going, depending on what you want to do!

My Evergreen Campaign: Optimization

Know that you have lots of options for optimization. There isn’t a clear right way to do this. Ultimately, two main questions should determine how you want to handle it…

1. Do you have lots of volume of trigger actions?
2. How important is it that you reach everyone who performs the trigger action?

If you have plenty of volume or don’t feel the need to reach everyone, you can optimize for a specific action, like a purchase.

But if volume is low or you are determined to reach a high percentage of people within the campaign, you might optimize for Reach using the Reach objective.

That’s typically my preference, capping frequency at once per day.

My Evergreen Campaign: Placements

Of course, what you do here coincides with your choice for optimization. If you optimize for an action like purchases, your options for placements are wide open. Do what works for you.

But, if you optimize for Reach and use a frequency cap like I do, limiting placements would be a good idea. Why? If you cap your frequency, you don’t want to waste an impression on a less effective placement (like the right-hand column or Audience Network).

I focus on the feeds only for the purpose of this campaign.

Your Turn

This is how my evergreen Facebook campaign works. Have you ever done anything like this before? How does yours work?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How My Evergreen Facebook Campaign Works appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertisers continue to experience challenges when using the platform’s custom audience feature to estimate potential audience sizes. In particular, many advertisers report seeing errors that state the audience size is “not available”.

In conversations among advertisers in the Power Hitters Club groups, these issues have been a recurring topic, with members sharing differing experiences (and frustrations!).

But there’s hope: Some advertisers are again seeing custom audience sizes. This post covers scenarios when audience size data may be available. We’ll also bring you up to speed on why this problem exists in the first place.

A Brief History on Facebook Custom Audience Size Issues

In March of this year (2018), Facebook removed the ability to view custom audience sizes. This was in response to a vulnerability that could be potentially exploited, allowing an advertiser to identify individual user data.

The official Facebook response (via a post on the Bug Bounty program page) stated that custom audience size data would simply no longer be available. The issue also made it into the platform status tool, and it appeared this would be the new normal.

While not directly related, Facebook’s recent issue with the log-in information of almost 50 million accounts may lead to increased scrutiny of user data. These types of issues are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Based on these challenges, it may seem safe to assume that advertisers will no longer have access to custom audience data.

However, it’s not that simple, and for some advertisers, the size data has returned.

Facebook Custom Audience Size Back? (Sort of!)

After reviewing several scenarios, we know that some advertisers are once again seeing custom audience size estimates. We haven’t been able to identify why this is available for some, but not all, advertisers.

Based on what we’ve seen, advertisers are not seeing custom audience sizes for website audiences, but they are populating for certain engagement audiences. Here’s an updated screenshot from this week to illustrate:

However, there are certain scenarios where the data becomes unavailable. In the example screenshots below, I’ve replaced the audience names for purposes of illustration:

1) If you use a custom audience as the base for a saved audience, the size will not populate. Instead, you will get a “Data is not available” error in place of the potential reach:

Similarly, saving the audience generates a “Not available” message on the main audience screen:

2) If you combine two custom audiences together for a saved audience – the size will not populate:

3) Using the custom audience to compare overlap with any other audience gives the message: “To protect the privacy of people on Facebook, the audiences you selected are unavailable for audience overlap.”:

*If you need a refresher on how to compare audience overlap, check out this write-up from Jon.

Funny enough: In the above example, the Test Custom Audience 1 shows as “Not available” under the audience title name, even while the audience number does appear in the main audience list:

Using Ads Manager, Estimated Potential Reach during ad setup will also not populate for custom audiences, even if the audience number does appear in the main Audiences screen:

As a final note, Audience Insights still displays no data for these custom audiences.

Implications for Advertisers: Custom Audiences

If inconsistency in the display of custom audience data is any indication, Facebook is still working through these issues. Given the high public scrutiny of any potential privacy irregularities, it’s unlikely we’ll see the wide availability of deep data for custom audiences anytime soon.

But, things change quickly, and as always, advertisers must adapt. We will continue to monitor this space (along with the advertisers in the Power Hitters Club!).

Regardless of the changes, custom audiences can still be a highly valuable feature for advertisers.

If you’re looking for inspiration on custom audiences, check out this fantastic guide to 55 custom audiences from Jon.

And remember, you can still use audience data for non-custom audiences for clues about your potential target groups, such as comparing Facebook and Instagram audiences.

Your Turn

Is your experience of seeing custom audience sizes any different from ours?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Custom Audience Sizes Have Returned (sort of!) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Multiple factors contribute to whether your Facebook advertising campaigns succeed or fail. Copy, imagery, optimization, bidding, placement, and countless other factors all matter. But nothing matters more than targeting.

In order to have this consistent, dependable success, you need to graduate beyond interests, which is best for top-of-the-funnel targeting. For sustained middle and bottom-of-the-funnel results, it’s imperative that you master warm targeting with Facebook Custom Audiences.

Custom Audiences began as a simple concept, launching with the ability to target current customers by email address in 2012. It’s nearly six years later, and advertisers have a cupboard full of ways to target customers and those who engage with them — both on and off of Facebook.

Below is a close-to-complete guide of the ways that you can use Custom Audiences to target warm audiences of people who are ready to act. It’s close-to-complete for a couple of reasons:

1. There are nearly limitless variations you can create based on variables
2. Facebook is constantly adding to these options

But consider this list a starting point. Many of these options are buried, and you’re bound to be exposed to a few for the first time. I encourage you to read through and experiment with the audiences that you can leverage.

Customer File

It’s the granddaddy of Custom Audiences. Originally, this type of audience and “Custom Audiences” were used interchangeably.

With this method, advertisers upload a customer list to Facebook with up to 15 identifiers. Facebook then searches out those same people on the platform. Typically, you can expect anywhere from 30-70% of your list to match up to Facebook users. When you’re done, you can use this to target or exclude users on Facebook.

The primary advantage of creating Customer File Custom Audiences is that those on that list are a customer at some level. They either provided an email address or made a purchase from you. As a result, this will be a valuable list for targeting that can be used for all purposes.

Of course, there are some inherent weaknesses with this method.

First, uploading a customer file results in a one-time, static audience. What that means is that as your customer list updates, your audience doesn’t — at least, it doesn’t without the help of a third party tool. If you don’t update it some way, the audience will be outdated and lose its effectiveness.

Another weakness is that the identifiers that a customer provides to you may not be the same information they provide to Facebook in their profile. Notably, a customer may provide you a different email address than what they publish for their friends. This will make the match rate less successful.

1. Upload, Copy/Paste, or Import

Using this first method, advertisers can provide Facebook with a customer file consisting of up to 15 identifiers by uploading…

…copying and pasting…

…or importing via MailChimp integration.

2. Lifetime Value Lookalikes

The thought here is that you first upload an entire customer list with up to 15 identifiers, as you would above. But you then include a column for Lifetime Value for each customer.

This list wouldn’t be used for targeting, but instead becomes a source so that Facebook can generate a Lookalike Audience of people similar to your most valuable customers. More on Lookalikes at the bottom.

Website Custom Audiences

And now it gets good. Real good.

Website Custom Audiences allow advertisers to create audiences based on actions performed on the pages of their own website. This is thanks to the Facebook pixel, which is a snippet of code added to your website.

The granularity of the audiences you can create depends partly on the amount of traffic as well as your diligence creating detailed pixel events.

What’s nice about WCAs is that they update in real time, and the match-up rate is high. Below is a sampling of the powerful audiences that you can create.

3. All Website Visitors

4. Visitors by Device

5. Visitors by Frequency

6. People Who Visited Specific Web Pages

You can include an entire URL, partial URL, or multiple URLs or keywords. There are a million and one uses for this type of audience.

7. Visitors by Time Spent

Not all website visitors are created equal. Focusing on those who spent the most time — though a smaller audience — can lead to amazing results.

8. From Your Events: Page View

Assuming you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website with events, the applicable events that have fired will appear for you…

The PageView event is one example.

9. From Your Events: Purchases

10. From Your Events: Registrations

11. From Your Events: Adds-to-Cart

12. From Your Events: Searches

13. From Your Events: By Search String Parameter

In the example above, you can create an audience of people who performed any search on your website. But you can also focus on searches by specific keywords.

14. From Your Events: By User Agent Parameter

What operating system and software were people using when they visited your website?

15. From Your Events: By Language Parameter

The language setting on someone’s browser can help you surface content to the right people in the proper language.

16. From Your Events: By Referrer Parameter

17. From Your Events: By UTM Parameter

UTM parameters are tracking codes you can add to the end of links broken down into campaign source, medium, name, term, sq, and content. At minimum, you need to include a source. Here’s an example of such a link…

Homepage

You can create an audience based on any of these UTM parameters…

Using the example link above, we could create the following audience for the “email” medium.

18. From Your Events: By Value Parameter

You can create audiences based on the value of purchases made on your website, assuming you’re using the value parameter with your Facebook pixel event code.

19. From Your Events: By Currency Parameter

20. From Your Events: By Content Name Parameter

21. From Your Events: By Content ID Parameter

22. From Your Events: By Aggregated Value

Earlier, you saw how you could create audiences based on a single purchase. But you can also do so based on all purchases someone made in aggregate.

App Activity

If you have an app (mobile or web) utilizing the Facebook SDK, you can create audiences of people based on their activity within that app. This can be a great opportunity for re-engaging and pushing people further along the funnel.

23. Anyone Who Opened the App

24. Most Active Users

25. Users by Purchase Amount

26. Users by Segment

Segments will be defined by you…

Offline Activity

Back in 2016, Facebook launched Offline Event Sets, allowing advertisers to provide Facebook with offline data that could then help show whether such sales were influenced by your ads. This was extremely valuable for brick and mortar stores, in particular, who struggled to show the impact of their ads.

About a year later, Facebook followed that up with Offline Event Custom Audiences, allowing you to create audiences of those who purchased something offline.

27. People Who Interacted Offline

28. From Your Events

When you send Facebook your offline data, you include a column that indicates the event performed. This can then be used to refine your offline event audience.

Engagement: Video

A great top-of-the-funnel audience is anyone who engaged with a video (or multiple videos) you’ve published. Someone can view your video — with or without sound — and automatically be added to an audience for you to target later.

29. People who watched at least 3 seconds of your video

Clearly, a 3-second view would be the lowest quality but result in the largest audience.

Other options (though all are set up identically otherwise)…

30. People who watched at least 10 seconds of your video

31. People who watched at least 25% of your video

32. People who watched at least 50% of your video

33. People who watched at least 75% of your video

34. People who watched at least 95% of your video

Engagement: Lead Form

Facebook Lead Ads allow advertisers to collect leads (email addresses and other contact info) without sending a user away from Facebook. Thanks to this Engagement Custom Audience, those who engage with the form can be added to one of three different audiences for targeting and exclusion purposes.

Advertisers can create audiences based on the interaction with one, multiple, or all forms you have during a given time period.

35. People who opened your form

This includes everyone who opened the form, whether they submitted it or not.

36. People who opened but didn’t submit your form

37. People who opened and submitted your form

Engagement: Fullscreen Experience

Facebook launched Facebook Canvas in its continued attempts to keep people on Facebook and improve the user experience. Canvas presents an immersive mobile experience for users who can view videos, images, product feeds, text, and more in one view.

For publishers, the one issue with this was losing the traffic and potential targeting power that goes along with sending someone to your website. This was changed with the launch of Fullscreen Experience Custom Audiences. You can create audiences of people who engaged with any Canvas, or one or more specific Canvases.

38. People who opened your canvas

39. People who clicked any links in your canvas

You can provide links within your Canvas, though they don’t need to go to your website. That’s where creating these audiences can be helpful. Think, for example, about a Canvas promoting a product with a button that sends users to an Amazon page.

Engagement: Facebook Page

The Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audience is a sneaky effective audience to target. You may assume that those who visit your website will be more effective than those who interact with you on Facebook, but that is not always the case.

In fact, it makes sense. Interacting with you on your website doesn’t mean they’ll interact with your ad on Facebook. And if someone has engaged with you on Facebook before, they’re likely to do it again.

40. People who engaged with your page

This is the broadest audience of all people who engaged with your page in any manner…

41. People who visited your page

42. People who engaged with any post or ad

This can be particulary effective when looking for an audience to target with your ads…

43. People who clicked any call-to-action button

44. People who sent a message to your page

A small audience, but potentially very valuable…

45. People who saved your page or any post

Engagement: Instagram Business Profile

Is your business on Instagram? If so, you can create an audience of those people who engage with your profile there — in nearly identical ways as with your Facebook page above.

Your Instagram profile will need to be a business profile, and you’ll need to connect it to your Business Manager in order to access this feature.

46. People who engaged with your business on Instagram

47. People who visited your Instagram profile

48. People who engaged with any post or ad

49. People who sent a message to your Instagram profile

50. People who saved any post or ad

Engagement: Event

It’s an old school feature, but many marketers still run Facebook Events. I’m not talking about the pixel events this time, but the posts on Facebook that alert people of an upcoming party or other activity.

Thanks to this Engagement Custom Audience, you can create audiences of people based on their specific activity with any event or specific events.

51. People who responded Going or Interested

52. People who responded Going

53. People who responded Interested

Lookalike Audiences

It may be cheating a little bit to include Lookalike Audiences because these aren’t people who are connected to your business in any way, but this is — at least loosely — part of the Custom Audience family.

Lookalike Audiences allow you to target those who are similar to people who are already connected to or interacting with you. Facebook does this by looking at a source audience (your Facebook Page or a Custom Audience), finding the similarities among those people, and finding a larger group of people who are similar to them.

This is particularly useful when your source audiences are small and you need to start somewhere.

54. Based on a Page

55. Based on a Custom Audience

Your Turn

Any other audiences I missed? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Guide: 55 Custom Audiences to Target People Ready to Act appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’ve been following my Facebook page or content lately, you know that I’ve been experimenting with something very different for me: Short Facebook videos.

Let’s take a closer look at what I’ve been doing, why, and my developing strategy using short Facebook videos.

Background: I Hate Videos

Let’s be clear: I get it. Video is powerful. I encourage everyone to create videos. But I freaking hate it.

We can go back nearly five years now to my New Year’s resolutions for 2013. Since then, I’ve told myself repeatedly that I need to commit to video.

I’ve messed with video. I created tutorials on YouTube for a while. I conduct live webinars to my private communities via Facebook Live. But video is a major struggle for me.

It wasn’t until recently that I was able to isolate why it’s such a struggle. And once I did, it allowed me to tackle it in a way that makes me comfortable.

My goal is to create content efficiently. High impact with a lower amount of effort, if possible. But video stresses me out. Is it live? Do I record it? Is the lighting right? How do I look? What’s my script?

In the long run, it became a bad fit for me. I focus on blog posts I can churn out in two hours and reach thousands of readers. I create webinars and live training programs that I can repeat again and again.

So instead of trying to transform myself into someone who does edited, professional videos, I decided to make videos fit my style.

Why not create short videos that are all under a minute? Screen shares only. No sound. High volume and high impact. Something I could spit out quickly, but provide significant value.

Suddenly, I was inspired…

My Test

Last Thursday, I whipped up this video…

The response was fantastic. I knew I had a potential hit on my hands.

All this time, I had been neglecting the fact that the power of Facebook video actually fits my strengths. The best Facebook videos are short. Most people watch without sound (though Facebook seems to be moving to autoplay with sound). I can take advantage of that.

I quickly got to work.

My Video Strategy

I’ve been writing blog posts on this website for more than six years now. I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t at least a little bit of burnout on the horizon. Video could be the answer.

It’s not only good for me, it’s good for my audience. It’s a different way to teach. A different way to consume content. And it generates, when done right, a ton of engagement.

Facebook advertising is a deep topic. I opened up a spreadsheet and started up a list of potential topics.

Here’s the beauty of a short (30-60 seconds) video: You can’t cover much. You can only cover one small part of a complicated problem.

That means lots and lots of video possilities. Within days, I’ve already created close to 20 of these videos with dozens more coming.

My Facebook page hasn’t been very active for a few years now. I use it to share my latest blog post. It does well for that one post. But my writing has been once or twice per week, sometimes once every two weeks. The page can get stale.

These videos have breathed new life into my page and my content. Every morning at 9:05am my time, I’m publishing a new video.

Through today, I’ve published the following from the “How To” series:

1. Video Custom Audience
2. Website Custom Audiences – CompleteRegistrations
3. Automated Rules
4. Reach Objective
5. Target Nearby Travelers
6. Post Engagement Audiences
7. Create Audience of Frequent Website Visitors
8. Target Highest Spending Customers

This gives me new content on a daily basis — something I haven’t provided my audience in three or four years.

After a few videos, one change I made was adding a call-to-action button that would drive people to my website to view the full list of videos.

Here’s an example…

This way, I could also drive traffic and build those valuable Website Custom Audiences. To where am I driving that traffic, you ask?

To this…

Website Integration

I wanted to leverage these videos for my most cherished asset: My website.

These videos needed a home base. I developed a page where I will embed all of these videos going forward.

The beauty of this is that I’m embedding the Facebook videos themselves. Anyone who watches these videos on my site will be adding to the engagement on the videos — adding more views and social proof.

Long-term, I’ll need to plan for ways to organize these videos as we start approaching 50 or 100. It could become a great resource for marketers looking for answers and quick tutorials.

List Building

I may be backwards, I admit. Most marketers think of how they can make money first. I start with a need and a way that I can fill it.

I don’t yet know how — or if — these videos will lead to a product. But after a few days, I decided to make it possible for people to subscribe so that they’re notified when a new video has been published.

One reason for this is that I know there’s no way I’ll be emailing my entire list every time I publish a video. But I want to allow people to opt-in to such a broadcast. That’s how this subscription was born.

That’s why you now see an opt-in form at the top of the Quick Video Tutorials page.

I love this type of subscription. My email list is a huge reason for the success of my website. It’s a built-in, unfair advantage. I email more than 100,000 people and immediately drive a few thousand page views.

While I won’t email 100,000 people on a daily basis for this, it’s still going to be a benefit to know that I can automatically send a few hundred to watch, engage with, and share these videos.

Of course, that gave me one more thing I could advertise…

Facebook Ads

I started simply. I created a Video Views campaign using the built-in split testing feature to try out three primary audiences:

• Website Custom Audience – Viewed Facebook Topic – 2+ Frequency – 180 Days
• Facebook Page Engagement Audience – Posts and Ads – 365 Days
• Page Likes

I limited my audience in each one to 13 “select countries” that are most likely to lead to an opt-in and sale (based on history).

I ran the split test for each of the first eight videos. The results? Very close.

In the end, my website visitors watch my videos slightly longer, with those who engage with my posts and ads close behind. Costs are very close.

Basically, this tells me that my page likes audience was built the right way. Going forward, I’ll use two ad sets to promote these videos:

• Website Custom Audience – Viewed Facebook Topic – 2+ Frequency – 180 Days
• Page Likes + Facebook Page Engagement Audience – Posts and Ads – 365 Days

This way, the second ad set will be those who like my page AND engage with my posts or ads.

I’m also running ads to promote the ability to subscribe to daily updates for this video series. There are a few variations of these ads, but here’s one…

If you’re wondering, this is a lead ad. Who am I targeting, you ask?

Video Views Custom Audiences

One of the big advantages of Facebook video is that it provides a new kind of remarketing. With video, you can build an audience efficiently that you can target later.

That’s what happened here. I created a video views audience of anyone who watched 95% of at least one of my Quick Video Tutorials during the past seven days. That way, I target those who found the most value in the videos, but I stop wasting my money on them if they haven’t subscribed within seven days.

I also create a three second video view audience for each individual video. I exclude this audience when promoting that particular video to prevent further waste. Once they see the video for at least three seconds, I won’t pay to show it to them again.

Here’s an example of the targeting for my eighth video.

I’m excluding anyone who already watched three seconds of the video I’m promoting.

Chat Bots?

I’ll admit that I’ve been slow to embrace Facebook Messenger chat bots. Some have expressed surprise by this. But I’ve always been one who favors a personal touch over automation.

However, this experiment got me thinking about chat bots again. What if someone could subscribe to my updates via Facebook Messenger?

There are lots of bottleknecks and hurdles associated with chat bots because all messaging currently goes directly into ZenDesk and generates a ticket. But I’m actively testing, and we’ll see where this goes.

YouTube

Taking me back to my roots…

I admit that I’ve completely neglected YouTube for the past few years. I even struggled to find my way around once I went back. But it occurred to me that YouTube is the perfect place for these videos.

Where do you go for “how to” videos? YouTube. What kind of video does great in Google searches? The “how to” video.

While it’s certainly not a major part of my strategy (and not making a big impact yet), I wanted to be sure to include YouTube in this as well.

On a side note, the mistake I see many YouTube-first marketers make is that they share links to their YouTube videos to Facebook. Those static, cropped, ugly links. Stop this. Upload your Facebook video! You can always link to your YouTube channel in the text or as the CTA button.

My Process

This is quickly getting complicated, but let’s recap…

1. Create a video ad with a CTA button to my website that is scheduled to my page at 9:05am on a designated day
2. Embed that video on my website
3. Create a Custom Audience for that video
4. Add that video to the 95% custom audience for all videos
5. Create a 1-day ad for that video
6. Run continuous ads promoting the Quick Video Tutorials subscription
7. Send a daily email to my (growing) list of QVT subscribers
8. Publish to YouTube
9. Rinse and repeat…

Your Turn

This is still a new and evolving strategy, but what I’ve outlined above is how it looks today. I’m energized by the results and feedback so far, so I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Are you experimenting with Facebook video? What else would you add to the strategy?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Short Facebook Videos: An Experiment appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Late last year, Facebook added the ability for brick and mortar businesses to track the offline impact of their Facebook ads with Offline Event Sets. Now advertisers can target these customers through Offline Event Custom Audiences.

Let’s take a closer look at Offline Event Sets and how advertisers can create audiences to target these customers with their Facebook ads.

Refresher: Offline Event Sets

Before we talk about creating these audiences, it’s important to understand how Offline Event Sets are created. First, go to Offline Events within your Ads Manager menu…

Click to add an Offline Event Set data source.

Name it and click to “create.”

Fast forward. You selected this offline event set for one of your ads. You’ve collected offline sales. You can now upload your offline event set file (or send the offline event data via API).

Your file can include columns for six event descriptions…

And 17 identifiers…

Think of it like this: You showed your ad to an audience. Some of those people saw or clicked your ad. Some of those who saw or clicked your ad visited your brick and mortar business. You now need to provide Facebook with evidence that those who saw or clicked your ad converted offline.

How? Some basic information that should be in your file:

• Event (Purchase, Lead, CompleteRegistration, etc.)
• Date/time of purchase
• First name
• Last name
• Order ID
• Value
• Email address, phone number, etc.

By providing this information, Facebook can then attempt to connect those who converted offline with those who saw or clicked your ad (within the 1-day view and 28-day click attribution windows).

Create an Offline Event Custom Audience: Method #1

Now that Facebook has this offline data, it’s valuable to create audiences to target these people later with Facebook ads.

It seems odd, but there are currently two methods for creating an Offline Event Custom Audience, and they don’t provide identical results. Let’s take a look at the first one.

Within the Offline Event Set, click the “Create Audience” drop-down at the top right and select “Custom Audience.”

After selecting your ad account, the process will look like this…

You’ll be able to create four different offline event audiences…

When selecting “Everyone in the event set,” you’re essentially turning your entire file (whether they saw/clicked on your ad or not) into a Custom Audience. You could have done the same thing by uploading it again as a data Custom Audience.

When you select “People based on total purchase value over time,” you can determine the value to qualify. By default, it’s “greater than or equal to 100.”

This is possible because your Offline Event Set file includes a column for event value.

You can also create an audience based on “People associated with a specific event type.”

You can select from event type and set a minimum or maximum frequency…

Finally, you can create an audience of offline events based on “People with custom attributes.”

You could base this on an event without accounting for value.

If your file includes custom attributes, you can leverage those here.

Create an Offline Event Custom Audience: Method #2

Another way to create Offline Event Custom Audiences is within the Audiences section.

If you have this, you’ll see an option for Offline Activity.

The description of this feature says that you can “Create a list of people who interacted with your business in-store, by phone, or through other offline channels.”

After selecting your Offline Event Set, you can create an audience of “People who interacted offline”…

This would presumably be the equivalent of selecting “Everyone in the event set” in the first option above.

The only other option is to select an individual event…

After selecting the event, you can further refine by Value, Custom Data, or Aggregated Value.

This is where you can add logic for value and frequency.

Your Turn

If you advertise for a brick and mortar business, it’s imperative that you’re measuring offline events. Now, you can also leverage the data from those offline event sets to target these people in ads.

Do you have the option to create these audiences yet? How are you using them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads: How to Create Offline Event Custom Audiences appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It never seems to stop. Facebook provides a constant stream of updates for advertisers looking to target their ideal customer. The latest addition to the tool box: Facebook Event Custom Audiences.

Facebook Events have been around for years. You’ve been able to create an Event from the Facebook publisher since 2009.

Facebook Events allow marketers to generate buzz and commitment around a virtual or in-person event. Up until now, Facebook ad targeting of those who engage with Events has been limited to targeting or excluding those who responded (in any way) to a specific Event.

The latest changes give advertisers much more power to target and exclude those who engage with their Events.

About Facebook Event Custom Audiences

Facebook Event Custom Audiences are a subset of Engagement Custom Audiences. Engagement Custom Audiences give advertisers multiple ways to target those who engage with their videos, lead forms, pages, canvas, Instagram business profiles, and now Events.

Advertisers can now create simple or complicated audiences of people who have engaged in multiple ways with one event, multiple events, or all events connected to a specific Facebook page.

Create Facebook Event Custom Audiences

Let’s create one of these now…

When creating a Custom Audience, select “Engagement.” When you first get this, you may notice an alert about the new feature.

Now you’ll see an option for “Event.” We’ll want to click on that.

The process to create a Facebook Event Custom Audience will look like this…

After selecting the page you want to be associated with your Events, the default audience will include all users who responded “Going” or “Interested” to any of your Events during the past 180 days.

However, you do have options to further refine this audience…

You could limit your audience only to those who responded “Going” to an Event or “Interested” in an Event as well.

Obviously, the largest audience will be of all who responded “Going” or “Interested.” As soon as you limit to one or the other, the number of people you’ll reach will drop.

Instead of creating an audience of all who responded to any Event, you could isolate those who responded to one or multiple specific Events.

You can also use “include” or “exclude” logic to further isolate those who responded to other Events — whether associated with the current page or another page you control.

Finally, these audiences allow advertisers to isolate those who engaged with their Events during a specific time period — from between the past 1 and 180 days.

As you undoubtedly know by now, this is dynamic. The shorter the time period, the more relevant your advertising may be to the targeted audience. The longer the time period, the larger the audience.

How to Use Facebook Event Custom Audiences

There are several use cases for Facebook Event Custom Audiences…

1. Remind those attending an upcoming Event.

2. Convince those interested in an upcoming Event to commit.

3. Promote a new Event to those who committed to previous Events.

4. Promote products or content related to a particular Event.

This is just scratching the surface, of course. These audiences could be incredibly valuable for any brand that actively utilizes Facebook Events.

Your Turn

Facebook says that this feature is in the process of being rolled out. If you don’t have it yet, you should soon!

Do you have this feature yet? What are ways that you might use it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Event Custom Audiences: More Targeting Power appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the primary struggles for new advertisers with a small audience is uncovering the most effective groups of people to target. Facebook is providing yet another tool for advertisers with the addition of the value-based Lookalike Audience.

As I type this, Lifetime Value (LTV) Custom Audiences and value-based Lookalike Audiences are available to select advertisers. Help Center pages dedicated to these features (here and here) are evidence that this is more than a test, but a new roll-out.

Let’s take a closer look at what Lifetime Value Custom Audiences and value-based Lookalike Audiences are, how to create them, and how you might use them.

NOTE: I don’t yet have this feature, so the screen grabs I provide below are from Nick Platt and David Herrmann, members of my Power Hitters Club – Elite community.

Lifetime Value (LTV) Custom Audiences

Customer lifetime value is the net profit you’ll earn from a single customer over the lifetime of your relationship.

Your customers aren’t all created equal. Even when uploading a list of customers who purchased a particular product, context is being obscured. Some customers are more valuable than others due to their lifetime value.

Some customers make a single purchase. Some come back again and again and again, ready to give you a credit card. It’s important to provide Facebook with lifetime value to help find other potential customers like them.

We’ll get to the details of how to create this in a bit, but understand that the Lifetime Value Custom Audience isn’t a new audience for you to target. It simply provides another column of data for an audience of your customers that you should already have.

The star of this update is the value-based Lookalike Audience that you can now create based on this.

Value-Based Lookalike Audience

The first step will be to provide Facebook with a lifetime value for all customers within a data Custom Audience. You should not focus only on the most valuable customers, but provide a comprehensive list to help differentiate the most valuable from the least valuable.

You will then be able to create a value-based Lookalike Audience. This allows Facebook to focus on those who provide the most value when finding others across Facebook with similar characteristics.

The end goal is to create a cold audience that is most likely to lead to positive results.

Create LTV Audiences

When creating a Custom Audience, select “Customer File.”

If you have this feature, you’ll then see an option for “Customer file with lifetime value (LTV).”

After selecting that, you’ll get what is similar to the typical process for creating a data Custom Audience off of your customer file.

You’ll notice a couple of differences.

First, you’ll need to “include a column with a range of customer values.”

Second, you’ll see a final step to create a Lookalike Audience. So the entire purpose of this, once again, is to create that Lookalike.

A few tips from Facebook…

1. Use dollar values only. Don’t include ratings or rankings, for example. You should be assigning a dollar value for each customer.

2. Include a full range of customers, from low to high value. This allows Facebook to be able to “hone in on what might distinguish an average customer from a great one.”

3. Don’t use negative values to signify undesirable customers. Facebook won’t count those.

4. Make sure you’re using the same currency throughout. Facebook will assume you are using the same currency otherwise.

5. Decimals for cents, but no other punctuation.

This file should include as much customer data as possible that can be matched to a Facebook user. There are 15 identifiers (including first name, last name, email address, and phone number) that can be used to increase your match rate.

Your file may look like this…

Notice the final column is for “value.”

Calculating Lifetime Value

This whole process assumes you know how to calculate lifetime value of your customers. This is most likely a manual process. And as I consider this for my own audience, it’s not all that easy to execute.

When in doubt, keep it simple. When generating your customer file, add columns for products purchased and price of that purchase. Use a formula to add up the values of those purchases.

This may be easier for some CRM software than others.

Create a Value-Based Lookalike Audience

Now that Facebook has a customer list including values, you will be able to generate a Lookalike Audience of those similar to your most valuable customers. You’ll need to select the country for each audience you create.

At this moment, I don’t have a screen grab for this process. However, I assume it’s no different than creating a Lookalike Audience off of any other source.

How to Use Value-Based Lookalike Audiences

Facebook recommends that you use this audience for lower funnel targeting. For example, use it for promoting a product instead of promoting a blog post or opt-in.

Facebook also says that your cost per result may be higher than usual initially, but that you should focus on the overall return on ad spend. Since Facebook is generating an audience of people most likely to have a high lifetime value, your focus shouldn’t be primarily on a single action.

This is all theory, of course, that needs to be proven in real life. And how we use a feature isn’t always as it’s intended.

My recommendation: Experiment. Try it for promoting content. Try it for promoting opt-ins. Try it for promoting products. You may or may not get great initial results. But you won’t know until you try.

But Facebook’s point concerning return on ad spend (ROAS) is a good one. If the focus of creating these audiences is on lifetime value, we should look beyond the initial action and monitor what these people do over the course of days, weeks, or months.

Future of Lifetime Value Audiences?

When I first heard about this, I assumed it would be based on the Facebook pixel. I’m surprised that the process is entirely manual, forcing advertisers to calculate and upload customer value.

It’s somewhat surprising that this is necessary. Facebook knows who hits a conversion page. They have the capability to assign a lifetime — or at least long-term — value of a single customer over days, weeks, months, or years.

The limitation could be “lifetime.” They can ditch website data after six months for Website Custom Audiences, so they may not have access to more than that at this time. Requiring more could be a storage issue (though I’m certainly no tech person).

Regardless, come on… This could easily be simplified for the advertiser who has routinely used Custom Conversions and events.

Your Turn

Do you have value-based Lookalike Audiences? How are you using them, and what types of results are you seeing? If you don’t have them, how might you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads: Create a Value-Based Lookalike Audience appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook quietly rolled out a big update for brands utilizing Canvas: The ability to create audiences of people who have engaged with that content.

Let’s take a closer look at Facebook Canvas and the importance of Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences.

What is Facebook Canvas?

Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled Canvas, a way for brands to create an immersive experience for users without leaving Facebook.

Marketers created a Canvas by compiling a story using a combination of components (text, links, carousels, videos, call-to-action buttons and product feeds). Initially for mobile ads only, Canvas can now be created organically from the publisher.

Here’s a video I created in February that provided a tour of the Canvas ad creation process…

The Problem with Facebook Canvas

Possibly the biggest issue with Facebook Canvas for marketers was also one of its strengths for the user experience: Users never left Facebook.

By staying on Facebook, users are presented media instantaneously. No load time. No quick abandonment.

But by staying on Facebook, that initial click was not available for remarketing. Had it been a link to a website landing page, for example, that user could be added to a Website Custom Audience to see a later, relevant Facebook ad.

Granted, link clicks within the Canvas that led out to a brand website could be captured. But the initial click fell into a remarketing black hole.

Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences

To fill this hole, Facebook has quietly begun to roll out Canvas Custom Audiences (it’s not clear how many advertisers have access to this or when all will have it). It’s one more addition to the Engagement on Facebook Custom Audience toolbox.

Within Audiences, click the drop-down to create a new Custom Audience…

Click “Engagement on Facebook.”

Now select the option for Canvas…

That will bring up a familiar process for creating a Custom Audience…

You’ll need to do the following:

1) Select the Canvas a user will engage with to be added to the audience.
2) Determine the action that will add a user to the audience.
3) Select a duration (between 1 and 365 days).
4) Name the audience.
5) Add a description (optional).

When determining the action that will add a user to the audience, you will have two options…

Basically, if you choose “People who opened this Canvas,” it will be a larger audience. It will include people who opened and then did nothing and it will also include people who clicked within the Canvas. If you choose “people who clicked any links within the Canvas,” it will be a smaller audience.

Ways to Use Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences

First, it’s interesting how there are different durations for different Custom Audiences. A Website Custom Audience has a maximum duration of 180 days, Lead Ad Custom Audiences have maximum durations of 90 days, and both Video Custom Audiences and now Canvas Custom Audiences have maximum durations of 365 days.

What that means is that someone is included in that audience if they performed the desired action within that moving window. If you choose 365 days, they’ll remain in that audience for up to a year.

The biggest development here is being able to create a Custom Audience of people who open your Canvas. Theoretically, you already could have created Website Custom Audiences of people who clicked on links within your Canvas, assuming they went to your website.

As a result, you can use this to create a funnel. Create a Canvas (ad or organic post) to introduce a story, brand, problem, solution or product. Those who open the Canvas get added to a Custom Audience. Then create another ad targeting those who opened it to take them further down the funnel.

One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is taking a shotgun approach. They shoot ads with a single objective out to an audience, pummeling them into submission. If they don’t perform that one desired action, they are lost.

Here, it’s about keeping users engaged who show initial interest, even if they don’t immediately convert. They opened that Canvas for a reason. They didn’t convert for a reason. Show them a different ad, taking a different angle.

Bottom line, Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences are a great new tool for advertisers. There isn’t one primary use for them. Instead, it will provide yet another option for advertisers willing to get creative and adventurous and do things in new and different ways.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences? How will you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Canvas Custom Audiences: How to Create appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook is implementing an updated version of the Custom Audience and Conversion pixels, which is great news. However, many marketers are still confused about the implications of this.

The official announcement from Facebook is too technical for most users, and there isn’t (yet) a clear step-by-step guide explaining how to implement this new pixel.

If you are also one of those confused marketers struggling to find your way around Facebook’s upgraded pixel, you are in the right place! Keep reading.

Why a New Pixel?

There are were two types of pixels available on Facebook, each with a different function.

• Audience Pixels: They are used to create website custom audiences. There’s only one pixel per advertising account.
• Conversion Pixels: These pixels have a double function: optimize advertising campaigns and track conversions.

However, as Facebook kept improving their advertising platform with new features, there was a need for a more robust pixel.

One of these features is Dynamic Products Ads, which allows retargeting users who have visited specific products or categories from your website.

If you have just a few products or pages, retargeting could easily be done using Website Custom Audiences; but as the product range increases the process becomes more complex. That’s where Dynamic Product Ads become really useful.

Furthermore, most businesses with a large product range require a comprehensive report with information not only about the revenue generated, but also products sold, number of items sold per transaction, user behavior, etc…

Including lots of different conversion pixels in your checkout pages is not a feasible option. All that code could slow down your website (which affects your SEO); and pixels could conflict with each other.

Facebook’s upgraded pixel has been implemented to solve all those issues while providing a more effective reporting process.

What Are The Main Features of The Upgraded Facebook Pixel?

The new pixel includes several interesting improvements and new features. The most significant ones are:

• Pixels are unified: There’s no need to use different pixels to track audiences and conversions.
• Loading is 3X faster: This improves your website SEO and reduces risks of malfunctioning.
• Pixels can be shared: Very useful when working with agencies or collaborating with other businesses.
• Multiple event tracking: New pixels allow tracking up to 9 different standard events, each of them with a set of parameters.

Let’s dig into each of these features.

One Pixel To Track Them All…

Until now there were two types of Facebook pixels with different functions: Audience Pixels and Conversion Pixels.

It was quite normal for a website to include several pixels in different pages — and sometimes within the same page. As we have seen, this practice could bring some problems.

Using Facebook Pixel Helper to test the pixels installed on a page, it is quite easy to see how multiple pixels take longer to load and could create errors — as you can see in the next image.

Now Facebook has simplified things by developing a single (and more robust) pixel.

[Tweet “The new #Facebook Pixel integrates Custom Audiences and conversion tracking in a single pixel.”]

Depending on the function(s) required, the code associated could be more or less complex and include extra lines. However, the base code is unique and common to all pages in the website.

Thus, moving forward you’ll need to include the new pixel in all the pages of your website, and then adapt the code only on the ones where you’ll like to track conversions.

Faster is Better

The new pixel provides faster loading times, which is certainly an advantage — especially for complex websites that require tracking multiple conversions.

According to Facebook:

All Facebook pixels are now up to 3X faster. We’ve rewritten a large part of our server response code and used javascript minification so that pixel load times can meet even the most strict customer SLAs.

Why is this important?

A pixel is actually an image of a size 1 x 1px (hence the name) that is loaded by a browser when a user accesses a page.

Having multiple pixels would require loading multiple images and thus increasing loading times. However, this is not the main problem.

Once the pixel is loaded, the code associated notifies Facebook’s servers; the more pixels, the more information that needs to be sent. Multiple pixels could try to communicate with Facebook simultaneously, and this could generate conflicts.

With the new pixel, not only do you need to load one pixel, but all the information associated is sent to Facebook once. Thus, increasing communication speed and reducing the risk of errors.

Imagine having 50 cars carrying 50 people (one per vehicle) from one place to another — or moving the same number of people in a bus. Same amount of people, but less traffic.

Sharing

Sometimes a business may want to share their pixels with another company. This is quite normal when working with agencies or as part of a business collaboration between different companies.

For example, a blog reviewing some products may be reached by the producing companies, so they could retarget users reading the articles related to their brands.

This process has also been simplified, and pixels can be shared with other Facebook Ad Account or Agencies.

Sharing a pixel is available only through Business Manager. To share your pixel, just follow these steps.

1. Go into Business Manager, and from the Settings menu select ‘Pixels’ on the left column
2. Select your pixel and then click on ‘Assign Account’ or ‘Assign Agency’, depending on your specific needs.

Remember that when you share your pixel, the other party will be able to see your code, including your pixel IDs.

You can stop sharing a pixel at any time by clicking on the X next to the name of the Ad Account or Agency you want to revoke access to your pixel.

Events and Parameters

The old conversion pixel allowed tracking 5 different types of user actions:

• Checkouts
• Registrations
• Leads
• Key Page Views
• Adds to Cart

These actions were enough for many businesses, but quite often complex websites required more information. Also, the only data tracked (apart of the number of conversions) was the conversion value and currency.

Now, the new pixel allows tracking 9 different user actions (or standard events). Each of these standard events can incorporate a series of parameters that could provide additional data.

The new standard events available are:

• View Content
• Search
• Add to Cart
• Add to Wishlist
• Start Checkout process
• Add Payment Information
• Complete Purchase
• Lead
• Complete registration

While the list of parameters are (not all parameters are available for all events)…

• Value
• Currency
• Content Name: for the name of the page or product
• Content category (for the product category)
• Content Ids (such as SKUs)
• Content Type (downloadable product, physical product, etc.)
• Number of Items
• Search String (if users search for particular terms on the site)
• Status (To confirm if a registration has been completed or not)

As you can see, this structure allows for more effective conversion tracking. For example, now you are able to understand the exact value of abandoned carts on an eCommerce website and redesign your retargeting strategy with a specific ROI goal in mind.

How To Implement Facebook’s Upgraded Custom Audience Pixel

Migrating to the upgraded pixel is a three step process:

1. Implement the new Audience pixel
2. Adapt the new pixel to track conversions
3. Remove the old Facebook pixel

1) Implement the New Pixel

The first step is really simple; all it requires is placing the following code into each page of your website, just before the closing </head> tag.

This is what we call Base Code.

Remember to replace <FB_PIXEL_ID> with your own pixel ID — the one associated to your account, NOT the ones used to track conversions.

You can find your pixel IDs by following these steps:

1. Go into your Ads Manager dashboard, and on the left column select ‘Audiences’
2. Click into the name of an existing Website Custom Audience (or create a new one first, if you don’t have any)
3. Facebook will open a new window. On the right side you’ll have an information box showing your pixel ID, as you can see in the following image.

2) Adapt the code to track conversions

So far we have only implemented the pixel code required to create audiences.

As we have seen before, tracking conversions requires adding some extra code as part of the base code — but only on the pages where the conversion will happen (remember that the base code needs to be implemented in ALL pages of your website).

It is very important to remember two things:

• The base code needs to be loaded before the conversion tracking code.
• The conversion tracking code is part of the same script that contains the base code, and thus it must be included before the closing </script> tag.

Considering these two rules, the code for your upgraded pixel should have the following structure (the following is just an example)…

The structure of the conversion code could vary depending on the event being tracked, but it will look similar to the following.

fbq(‘track’,  ‘EVENT NAME’, {

PARAMETER_1:‘PARAMETER_VALUE’,

PARAMETER_2: ‘PARAMETER_VALUE’,

PARAMETER_3:PARAMETER_VALUE,

PARAMETER_4:  ‘PARAMETER_VALUE’ });

For example, let’s say you want to track leads on a page where users request a brochure for a new Volkswagen Golf with a market value of $40,000 USD. Then you could place the following code on the page that is displayed after users submit their data.

fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’, {

content_name: ‘Volkswagen Golf’,

content_category:  ‘Brochure’,

value: 40000.00,

currency:  ‘USD’ });

Remember most parameters are optional and you could simply leave them out. In this case the previous code would look like this:

fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’, {

});

You can also track several conversions in the same page. All you’d need to do is add another piece of extra code — always before the closing </script> tag.

3) Remove the old pixel

Once you have included the new pixel in your website, including the code to track conversions in specific pages, you are ready to remove all previous pixels.

Should You Make The Move?

There’s something important you should consider before upgrading to the new pixel: Facebook is still rolling out this new feature, and your account may not be ready yet to read information received from the new pixels.

According to Facebook:

Through a new Custom Audience Pixel Stats API and in Power Editor and Ads Manager we are gradually rolling out a new pixel view and troubleshooting dashboard that allows marketers to get a snapshot of the pixel traffic on their website.

This means there could be cases where Power Editor or Ads Manager do not report the standard events for the new pixel. In these cases upgrading to the new pixel would show zero conversions for your campaigns.

To confirm if your account is ready to work and report on the new pixel, do the following:

1. Go to Ads Manager or Power Editor and create a ‘Website Conversions’ campaign.
2. When prompted, click on the field labelled ‘Choose a Conversion‘
3. If your account is ready, Facebook will display the new 9 standard events — together with any conversion pixels you had created previously.

If you cannot see these 9 standard events, then your account is not ready yet. If this is the case, don’t worry. Your existing conversion and custom audience pixels will continue to work and you can keep using them until Facebook migrates your account to the new pixel.

Your Turn

The new version of the Facebook pixel offers great features that allow for a better reporting. However, remember that if you are not sure how to use it — or if your account is not yet ready — you can still use the existing pixel to track conversions.

Will you upgrade to the new pixel? What do you think of the new events and parameters? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

The post How to Use Facebook’s Upgraded Website Custom Audience Pixel appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

You can create ads with amazing imagery and compelling copy, but many advertisers are missing a very important component: Targeting.

Create the best possible ad, and it won’t matter if you’re reaching the wrong people. The truth is that most advertisers are simply in the dark when it comes to targeting, focusing on the same broad group of people no matter the objective.

This post is meant to help demystify when each level of targeting should be used based on your objective. I recommend that you actively run all four types of campaigns instead of focusing only on the sale.

[Tweet “Not sure where to start with Facebook ad targeting? Use this 4-step approach…”]

1. Objective: Website Traffic or Engagement

This is the lightest type of action. As a result, brand recognition and trust aren’t major hurdles for campaigns with these objectives.

Promoting posts with light actions is important, but I strongly recommend that you focus on driving website traffic rather than general post engagement (like with an image). When you drive website traffic, you are actively building a Website Custom Audience (or should be) for later targeting.

I promote every new blog post that I publish. Here’s an example…

You can bet that once I publish this very post you’re reading, I’ll promote it, too!

When I promote these posts, I primarily target two different groups:

• Fans
• Website Visitors Last 30 Days

I can do this because I have more than 200,000 visitors to my site every month and approximately 80,000 fans. So these groups are very effective for all actions.

But what if I didn’t have these audiences to work with? What about brands that are just getting off the ground and lack a built-in audience?

In those cases, I still recommend you target the above groups. But you should assign a very small budget for them since you’ll exhaust them quickly.

Dedicate more budget to the following:

• Lookalike Audiences
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Demographics

I personally prioritize audiences not connected to my brand in that order, but do what works. Your goal should be to drive these people to your website so that you can target them — potentially with something heavier — later.

Think of it like this… When you target a broad group of people to drive website traffic, you can bet that approximately 99% (give or take) will ignore your ad. That top 1% that clicks your link separated themselves as people who have interest in you. You’ll want to focus on them later.

Promoting posts is a great way to set the foundation. You are simply sharing helpful, educational or entertaining content with no strings attached — no sale and no opt-in required. This is how you build trust and a reputation for someone who can be respected in a certain topic.

2. Objective: Page Like

What type of Facebook user is most likely to like your page? It’s typically going to be someone who already knows who you are — typically someone who has bought from you or visited your website.

It’s important to have campaigns running for the sole purpose of driving traffic so that any of the following objectives can be promoted with success. I’d even say that’s true of increasing page likes.

I’d start with these two main audiences for the purpose of increasing page likes:

• All Website Visitors 30 Days
• Email Custom Audience

Now, it’s up to you whether you need to target both. Personally, I think that if someone has visited my website lately that they’re more valuable than someone who is on my email list but hasn’t seen my stuff lately. And some of those email addresses may be old and stale. Either way, up to you!

Sure, you could target Lookalike Audiences, interests, behaviors and demographics to build your page likes. On the surface it may even seem effective if based solely on a cost per page like basis.

However, keep in mind that many of these fans didn’t know who you were before they liked your page. You gave a compelling reason to like your page, but are they likely to be loyal readers or fans who will provide heavy engagement?

I know that building a fan base can be a challenge early (and YES, page likes still matter). I understand wanting to skip straight to Lookalike Audiences and interests. But I’d strongly advise that you prioritize website visitors.

Quality of your audience is more important than ever — and the argument for quality over quantity has never been stronger. If you don’t want to be one of those brands complaining about reach or a lack of engagement, you can’t afford taking short-cuts here.

If you aren’t getting enough website traffic to target many people for the purpose of building a fan base, then you should dedicate more budget early to drive traffic. You’ll be happy you did later!

I won’t say to completely avoid Lookalike Audiences and interests for the purpose of building a fan base. But you should limit how much of your audience is built this way and be prepared to move more — or all — of your budget to targeting website visitors eventually.

3. Objective: Opt-in or Install

You can probably see where this is going, but we’re moving further down the funnel now.

Driving website traffic or engagement is a light action. It requires very little brand recognition or trust to click a link. Your goal is to build more trust by providing valuable content for them to read. In this case, you can target broadly.

While a page like may not be a “heavy” action, you also have to be careful that you are building a quality audience. In that case, you should focus fan base building primarily around targeting those who already know and trust you through visiting your website.

That takes us to the opt-in or install. I can tell you that I am very protective of both my email address and my phone. I won’t give my email address to just anyone. And I’m going to use a limited number of apps on my phone.

While some may have success targeting broadly for these actions, such success is rare. And when you think about the value of your own email address or space on your phone, you should understand why.

For someone to provide an email address, it helps significantly if they know who you are. It helps even more if they’ve read a blog post by you in the past. And it could also help if they are a fan of your Facebook page.

When it comes to targeting website visitors for an opt-in, I suggest taking it a step further and targeting those who read something specific related to your offer. I’d prioritize targeting like this:

• Facebook Fans (if built properly)
• Website Visitors of Specific Pages
• All Website Visitors

I’ve found that fans are most likely to opt-in or buy something. However, it’s important to note that just “any old fan” won’t do here. You need to build your fan base the right way, as explained above. Otherwise, don’t expect success.

Ideally, you will get enough website traffic where you can segment your website retargeting to focus on specific pages. For example, I might target anyone who read a blog post about Power Editor to promote my Power Editor ebook.

Of course, such segmentation will limit your audience. This will only work for those with a lot of traffic or low budgets.

I’ve found targeting “all website visitors” during the past 30 days to be very effective for opt-ins. Of course, all of my content is also closely related. This may not work as well for a site that publishes content covering wide ranging topics.

4. Objective: Sale

This is what everyone wants. But far too many advertisers start here, and far too often they are targeting broadly with minimal success.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the first three steps. Without them, getting a positive ROI here can be incredibly difficult.

If people are protective of their email addresses, how likely is a user to whip out a credit card to buy a product if they don’t know or trust you? I’ll answer that for you: very unlikely.

But by following the first three steps, you are setting yourself up for success. You are laying the building blocks, and you’ll be happy you did!

Here is how I’d prioritize targeting for closing the sale:

• Related Opt-in Custom Audience
• Related Purchase Custom Audience
• Facebook Fans (if built properly)
• Website Visitors of Specific Pages
• All Website Visitors

Related Opt-in Custom Audience: When you create something that requires an email address (like an ebook or white paper), it should be for the purpose of eventually selling something. Those who request the opt-in are often not ready to buy from you, but trust you enough to provide an email address.

That opt-in should help answer questions that these people had to convince them that your product is necessary. The opt-in should be the start of an email funnel that will result in messages being sent to them to push the sale.

You shouldn’t rely only on the email funnel. You should target those who provided their email address for that opt-in to promote the related product.

You can do this via either an email custom audience or Website Custom Audience for the success page following the opt-in (or both). I personally prefer the WCA since it’s dynamic and there are fewer issues matching up Facebook users to those who opted in (expect 30-70% of email addresses to match up).

Related Purchase Custom Audience: You should also target those who have already bought from you — preferably a related product. A couple of examples would be for upgrades (new model released) and upsells.

If you are launching Widget 2.0, you should make sure to alert those who purchased Widget 1.0 that the new model is available.

if you have a product that is available at multiple tiers and prices, you should target those at the lower tiers to upsell the more expensive ones.

Again, you can do this with a combination of email custom audience and WCA targeting.

Facebook Fans (if built properly): I’ve found a great amount of success selling to my fans. But once again, this won’t work if you don’t focus on quality when building your fan base.

Website Visitors of Specific Pages: Just as I could target people reading my articles about Power Editor to promote my Power Editor ebook, I can target this same group to promote my Power Editor training course. In either case, these are people who — by their actions — expressed interest in a topic directly related to my products.

You may also want to take the “abandoned shopping cart” approach and target those who visited the landing page for your product but didn’t convert. Sometimes, all these people need is a reminder, but they may also have outstanding questions that they’d like you to answer prior to making the purchase.

All Website Visitors: The more traffic and business you get, the more segmented you can get in your targeting. But if it’s early and you’re still building an audience, targeting general website visitors can be effective, too!

Your Turn

This is the approach that I take with Facebook ad targeting, but how about you?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The 4-Step Approach to Effective Facebook Ad Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Advertising on Facebook is incredibly powerful because of the ability to target your ideal customer. You can even target those on your email list, used your app or visited your website, making ads more relevant.

But with great power comes great responsibility…

Unfortunately, many advertisers took advantage of some of this power and targeted in ways that weren’t allowed by Facebook. But there was so much confusion about what advertisers could and couldn’t do that not all were knowingly breaking the rules.

Facebook just updated their Custom Audiences Terms of Service to help clarify what advertisers can and can’t do.

[Tweet “Facebook has updated their Custom Audiences TOS to clarify: You can’t scrape UIDs! Details here…”]

What Custom Audiences Are

I assume you know what Custom Audiences are, but that may be a mistake. So a quick overview.

You can create ads that target users who are closely connected to you via any of the following:

• Email Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• Website Visitors
• Facebook App UIDs
• Mobile App Users

This is done within the Audiences area of Ads Manager or Power Editor.

How Advertisers Were Using Custom Audiences

This created some pretty powerful opportunities for advertisers.

They uploaded their customer lists (email or phone numbers) and created ads targeting them.

They placed pixels on their websites to remarket to those who have read particular articles.

They uploaded User ID lists of those who used their Facebook apps.

The things above are all allowed.

But they were also using email lists of people who weren’t customers — bought lists or otherwise. They were scraping UIDs from Facebook pages and groups as a way to better target those connected to these things.

This is against the rules. Some advertisers knew this and did it anyway. Others broke the rules unknowingly because those rules were not clear.

The Rules for Custom Audiences

I say the rules weren’t clear, but I think most of this was willful ignorance. I wrote a post about how advertisers broke these rules nearly a year ago, so this is nothing new.

If you create Custom Audiences, you need to read the Terms of Service. The bottom line is that you can’t create Custom Audiences unless you have rights to the data.

So if you have an email list that includes people who have not willingly opted onto that list, you can’t target them.

If you are using scraping tools to build Facebook UID lists of people (even if they are your fans or in your group), you can’t target them.

If you are manually finding users and building a Facebook UID list for a Custom Audience, you can’t target them.

The Changes to Custom Audience Terms of Service

Facebook announced some Custom Audiences TOS language changes within the PMD News group. The changes don’t impact the rules in any way, but they should help clarify what advertisers can and can’t do.

Posted by Abha Maheshwari on September 9:

Our goal with this recent change is to provide more clarity around Custom Audiences for our valued advertisers. There are no material changes to the product, however we have clarified the language to make it clear that we will not use an advertiser’s Custom Audiences for any purpose not authorized by the client.

Following are the changes and clarifications Maheshwari highlighted (direct quote):

• “If you are using a Facebook identifier to create a Custom Audience, you must have obtained the identifier directly from the data subject in compliance with these terms.” This means that Custom Audiences using the Facebook user ID must be composed of users who have accepted or engaged with their app. Scraping UIDs is prohibited.
• “Facebook will not give access to or information about your custom audience to third parties or other advertisers, use your custom audience to append to the information we have about our users or build interest-based profiles, or use your custom audience {REMOVED “in any way associated with your brand”} except to provide services to you, unless we have your permission or are required to do so by law.” This means that Facebook will not use Custom Audiences in any way without the advertiser’s permission.
• “If you are providing Hashed Data on behalf of a third party, you may only use that third party’s own data to create custom audiences on its behalf and may not augment or supplement that data with other data. You may not sell or transfer custom audiences, or authorize any third party to sell or transfer Custom Audiences.” This means that Custom Audiences cannot be sold or transferred, and third parties may not use their data to create custom audiences on behalf of an advertiser; they can only use the advertiser’s data. These terms come from our existing platform policies.

Maheshwari clearly states that “scraping UIDs is prohibited.” Of course, it doesn’t explicitly say that, though it is implied.

However, note 3.2 of Facebook’s main TOS:

You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our prior permission.

That is pretty darn clear!

While the focus of this post is on scraping, note Maheshwari’s third point as well about sharing data. If you have many clients, you can only use the customer data for the particular client. You can’t share it between similar clients in the same field, for example.

The Changes to Custom Audience Creation

Knowing that most advertisers will never read the TOS (those terms you say you’ve read when you create your Custom Audience), Facebook updated the creation of Custom Audiences to make the rules a bit clearer, particularly when it comes to UIDs.

According to an announcement from Maheshwari in the PMD News group on September 11, advertisers must now specify an app they are uploading UIDs from:

Starting today, advertisers will need to specify one or many App IDs when creating Custom Audiences based on the Facebook user ID or app-scoped user ID in all self-serve interfaces (Ads Create Tool and Power Editor). This requirement will be enforced within the interfaces, and API enhancements will be announced separately at the end of October as part of the breaking change announcements.

By requiring an App ID, Facebook is ensuring that Custom Audiences created only include IDs associated with people who have actually logged in or engaged with an advertiser’s app.

Here is what the flow now looks like when attempting to create a Custom Audience from a UID list:

Notice that you are now required to provide an app ID.

Will You Still Break the Rules?

It’s unclear what impact this will have on those who willingly break the rules. If an advertiser has an app, I haven’t heard whether there’s a check to be sure that the UIDs being uploaded are from users of that app.

First, use the smell test. If it smells wrong, it probably is. I find it pretty easy to stay within the rules if you have a strong ethical foundation.

Second, you don’t want to get on Facebook’s bad side. It could mean shutting down your advertising account. It could mean a lot of things. You may get away with breaking the rules for a while, but the cheaters always seem to get burned eventually.

Cheaters are gonna cheat. And cheaters are gonna get burned. And cheaters will continue to try and manipulate the system for short-term gain while ignoring the long-term impact.

But this should help the many advertisers who innocently followed others, thinking this was accepted practice.

Your Turn

What do you think of these updates? Do they impact how you use Custom Audiences?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Updates Custom Audiences TOS: No Scraping UIDs appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

While not everyone agrees, I still firmly believe that building relevant Facebook Page Likes is as important as it’s ever been. As a result, I keep a Page Likes campaign constantly running.

I was going through my regular Page Like campaign maintenance when it occurred to me that I should share this exercise as an example of ways that you might target. I’ve been tweaking and optimizing for years now, and it’s a tried and true process that works for me.

Before I get to the groups I target, I thought it would be helpful to share how I organize these different target groups…

I create a different ad set for each audience (which is actually what Facebook recommends), and then each ad set consists of image and copy variations that will reach that group of users.

Since I target eight groups of people (those groups are listed below), I end up with eight ad sets that all fall within a Page Likes campaign.

When I launch the campaign, I vary the budgets based on the size of the audience (audiences with under 10,000 people, for example, will have a budget of $5/day). But this will be adjusted as I see what does and doesn’t work.

The majority of my paying customers come from four main countries, so these ads target to reach users here:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Australia

I create imagery and copy that appeals to the target demographic. For the current campaign, I use one set of copy for each audience and four image variations. Much more would water down the results depending on the budget.

So let’s take a look at the groups of people I target in this campaign…

[Tweet “Here are eight groups of people you should be targeting in your Facebook Page Like ad campaigns…”]

Email List

This is a logical group of people to target first. Target those who are on your email list, but aren’t currently fans. You do this with Custom Audiences.

I called out the fact that these people already get my emails, but that’s also because I know my audience. Depending on your audience, you may want to be careful with that language as it could raise privacy concerns from those new to that type of targeting.

Of course, the number targeted is bound to be small. Even though my email list is more than 25,000 strong, it dwindles in a hurry for targeting once you remove fans, the addresses that don’t match up to Facebook users and those who fall outside of the four core countries I’m targeting.

This is why you should also watch your daily budget based on audience size. With a potential audience of no more than 3,600 people (it will be far less after optimization and accounting for those not online), budget doesn’t need to be more than $5.

I’ll also monitor to make sure my oCPM doesn’t get out of hand, which is always possible if budget is too high for the potential audience served.

Note that I could segment this list and focus only on paying customers, for example. Truth is that my email list is about two and a half years old, so some of these people are stale and unlikely to act.

But given I’m already down to 3,600 people, there’s no reason to cut that number down any more.

Website Visitors – 1 Day

If you get decent website traffic, this is something you absolutely should do. Website Custom Audiences allow you to target Facebook users who visited your website recently.

I create Website Custom Audiences for many pages and durations, starting at one day and going up to 180 days.

The shorter the duration, the more relevant. Someone is much more likely to act on your ad if they visited your website today while you are top of mind than if they visited 180 days ago and already forgot about it.

I get more than 10,000 visitors to my website per day, so this gives me a decent number of people to target. Of course, that number drops in a hurry when you account for optimization and those on Facebook in a given day. Once again, address your budget accordingly.

You’ll notice that I call out the fact that the audience visited my website today. This should appeal to my target demographic of advanced Facebook marketers. It may not appeal to many other groups.

Website Visitors – 30 Days

If you don’t get as much website traffic, you may want to expand the net. I like to experiment with 30 days anyway since a larger audience sometimes means lower oCPM costs.

Once again, I call out the fact that those seeing the ad have visited my website. This could be creepy to some, but it works for my audience.

Paying Customer Lookalike

I prefer to focus first on people most closely connected to me. But that doesn’t mean I stop experimenting with other groups.

Lookalike Audiences are the next in line for my targeting prioritization. Facebook matches up the interests, demographics and activities of a particular audience and finds other users similar to them.

In this case, I’m using my most important audience — my paying customers — as a model for my Lookalike Audience. While the initial group may have been too small to target, the Lookalikes help me target a much larger group of people similar to them.

WCA Lookalike

You can also target people similar to those who visit your website with Lookalike Audiences. In this case, I’m targeting users similar to those who visited my website during the past 30 days and read an article published in 2014.

Page Lookalike

One more Lookalike Audience to consider is modeled off of your current fans. Of course, you should only do this if you have a high confidence level in the quality of your current fan base. If you bought fans or used any strategies that would water down the value of these people, Lookalikes probably won’t help you.

Single Interest

Interest targeting isn’t something I do much of. In fact, I even labeled it “dead” in a blog post not long ago. But there can be exceptions.

Using Audience Insights, I discovered that more than 10,000 of my fans in the US also like the Facebook for Business page. In fact, more than 16,000 in my four core countries like that page. That was enough for me to take notice.

You could target many interests, but it’s then difficult to see what works and what doesn’t. So in this case, I’m targeting only the one that is most relevant to my fan base.

I could choose to create a separate ad set targeting fans of Social Media Examiner. While relevant, I don’t consider it as relevant as Facebook for Business since Social Media Examiner deals with more than just Facebook marketing.

Lookalikes, Interests and Behaviors

Finally, I will experiment with a combination of Lookalike Audiences, Interests and Behaviors. For the ad set highlighted above, I targeted the following:

• Lookalike Audiences: Website Visitors and Fans
• Interests: Facebook for Business
• Behaviors: Business Marketing or Facebook Page Admins
• Education: At Least Some College
• Income: $75,000 or More

These are again qualities I found were important with my current audience using Audience Insights.

Your Turn

These are the groups of people I target when building Facebook Page Likes. How about you?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 8 Effective Targeting Strategies for Building Facebook Page Likes appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In the video above, I cover the New Lookalike Audiences and how they impact Facebook ad targeting. Some key points:

• Lookalike Audiences: The Way They Were.
• What are the New Lookalike Audiences?
• How to Find Users Similar to Those Connected to You: Mobile Apps, Website Visitors, Facebook Fans
• The Bottom Line: Increase Sales

[Tweet “Facebook’s New Lookalike Audiences: Everything you need to know…”]

The Important Links

In the video above, I address several features and topics that could use a bit more explanation. Relevant links are below:

• Facebook Lookalike Audiences: Website Visitors, Fans and Conversions
• The Death of Facebook Interest Targeting: Shifting Budget Priorities
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Website Custom Audiences: Target Visitors with Facebook Ads (Not FBX!)
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: What You Need to Know [Video]
• Facebook Custom Audiences: Target Facebook Ads by Email List

Subscribe to My YouTube Channel!

If you haven’t already, subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay ahead on all things related to advanced Facebook marketing!

Do you need some help with Lookalike Audiences? Schedule a one-on-one session with me!

The post Facebook’s New Lookalike Audiences: What You Need to Know [Video] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This episode was broken down into the following sections:

• Social Media Marketing World Rocks!
• Tales From My Session
• A Lesson Learned
• My Presentation: Taking Control

[Tweet “#SMMW14 rocked! Lessons learned, overcoming fear and reflections on public speaking…”]

Mentioned and Related Links

Following are links that were either mentioned during this episode or are relevant to the discussion:

• 2 Years Later: From Laid Off to Successfully Doing Uncomfortable Things
• About me
• Building a Business: The Importance of Structure
• 4 Steps to an Effective Facebook Sales Funnel
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Facebook Lookalike Audiences: Website Visitors, Fans and Conversions

As many know, I offer one-on-one 45 minute coaching sessions to help you create strategies for your Facebook ads campaign. As of April 11, my session price will be increasing to $297 per session.  Book your session today before the price changes next week.

Listen, Subscribe, Rate and Review!

Listen from either the player or by clicking the iTunes button below.

If you use iTunes, please subscribe, rate and review! That’s how I end up reaching more people.

The post Pop the Guinness: Lessons Learned and Reflections on Public Speaking appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook announced expanded capabilities for Lookalike Audiences so that you can target even more users who are similar to those closest to your brand.

Let’s take a closer look at the following:

• What Are Lookalike Audiences?
• Lookalikes of the Past
• Lookalikes for Website Visitors
• Lookalikes for Conversion Pixels
• Lookalikes for Pages
• Lookalikes for Mobile App Users
• How to Create
• How to Target

[Tweet “Facebook now lets you target users similar to your fans and website visitors. Here’s how…”]

What Are Lookalike Audiences?

Lookalike Audiences have been around since March 19, 2013. They allow advertisers to target Facebook users who are similar to their customers away from Facebook.

Advertisers could ask Facebook to find the top 1% (optimize for similarity) or 5% (optimize for greater reach) of users in a specific country who were similar to their customers.

This is great for expanding the net since small customer lists of 1,000 people could often be turned into Lookalike Audience targeting capabilities exceeding 1 Million users.

Lookalikes of the Past

In the past, this was a two-step process:

1. Create a Custom Audience
2. Create a Lookalike Audience from that Custom Audience

In the vast majority of cases, marketers were uploading an email list to create that Custom Audience. Facebook would match up those email addresses to actual Facebook users to allow advertisers to target them in ads.

Advertisers could then turn around and ask Facebook to find users similar to those on that list. While email lists were most common, this could also be done with lists of phone numbers and UIDs.

Lookalikes for Website Visitors

Back in January, Facebook launched Website Custom Audiences. This amazing feature allows advertisers to target visitors to their websites. This includes any general visitor as well as visitors to specific pages.

Soon after, Facebook briefly made Lookalike Audiences available for WCAs. But that period of time was very short-lived. Until now.

This is great news on several levels.

First, you can find users similar to any visitor to your website. If you don’t get much traffic, this will allow you to target relevant users while expanding the net from what was otherwise a very small group of people.

Second, you can find users similar to those who visited a specific page of your site. You could use the success page following a conversion, for example, as your basis for a Lookalike Audience. So Facebook would then find users similar to those who bought a particular product (though that will come up again shortly).

Finally, you can find users similar to those who visited a specific section of your site. For this to work, the URL structure needs to include that category within it — or visitors need to be guided to specific landing pages when looking for product types.

An example would be visitors to a retail website that sells men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, hats and bags. It’s important that Website Custom Audiences be created for visitors to each individual section so that they — or their Lookalikes — can be targeted on Facebook.

Lookalikes for Conversion Pixels

Facebook now also allows advertisers to generate Lookalike Audiences for a specific Conversion Pixel. This would allow marketers to target users similar to those who converted (sale, registration, lead, etc.).

Keep in mind that this can essentially be done via WCA Lookalike Audiences, too. There has actually been talk of merging conversion pixels and Website Custom Audiences, and here is an example of why that may be necessary.

Regardless, a dynamic way to target Facebook users similar to those who have bought from us is an important development. While you could target a Lookalike Audience based on email addresses of customers in the past, that email list was not dynamic.

Lookalikes for Pages

Quite possibly the most interesting development of all. Advertisers can now generate a Lookalike Audience of pages within their control so that they can target users similar to their own fans.

[NOTE: No, you cannot create Lookalike Audiences of pages outside of your control.]

This will be very helpful for brands looking to grow, but lacking substantial traffic or an email list.

Lookalikes for Mobile App Users

Finally, advertisers now have the option of generating a Lookalike Audience of users who currently use their mobile apps.

Mobile App Custom Audiences are relatively new (they came out along with Website Custom Audiences) and allow marketers to retarget those who make specific actions within their apps.

Now they’ll be able to target users similar to those who make these actions.

How to Create the New Lookalike Audiences

First, click the Ad Tools drop-down at the top right of Power Editor and select “Audiences.”

Next, click the Create Audience drop-down at the top left and select “Lookalike Audience.”

That will give you a dialog that looks like this…

Within the “Source” text box, you can select a page that you control…

…a Custom Audience (including a Website Custom Audience or Mobile App Custom Audience)…

…or Conversion Pixel.

You will then need to select a country (your native country is chosen by default). Note that you can only generate one Lookalike Audience per country at a time. But you can create as many as you want if you want lookalikes for other countries.

Finally, use the slider to determine whether you want to optimize for Similarity or Reach. In the past, Facebook only gave you the option of one or the other. Now you can pick your audience size.

When I keep the slider furthest to the left on Similarity, I can generate a Lookalike Audience for my page of 2.3 Million people…

When I move that slider all the way to the right to optimize for the greatest Reach, that potential Lookalike Audience expands to 23 Million…

Once you click the “Create Audience” button, Facebook will start building your audience. Expect it to take 6-24 hours to complete.

How to Target Lookalike Audiences

Once that Lookalike Audience is ready, you can target it in your ads.

This is done within the Custom Audiences text field of the “Audience” step of ad creation…

You can also exclude Lookalike Audiences.

Your Turn

Have you started creating these types of Lookalike Audiences yet? What results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Lookalike Audiences: Website Visitors, Fans and Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In the video above, I cover how to sell on Facebook using a simple four step sales funnel:

• Attract A Relevant Audience (Organically and with Ads)
• Earn Trust by Sharing Useful Information
• Collect Email Addresses
• Sell

[Tweet “Attract. Share. Collect. Sell. Profit! Sell on Facebook with this simple sales funnel…”]

The Important Links

In the video above, I address several features and topics that could use a bit more explanation. Relevant links are below!

• 4 Steps to an Effective Facebook Sales Funnel
• How to Sell on Facebook: A Detailed, 9-Step Guide
• How to Build a Facebook Audience From Scratch
• WCA Lookalike: Target Facebook Users Similar to Website Visitors
• The Death of Facebook Interest Targeting: Shifting Budget Priorities
• Website Custom Audiences: Target Visitors with Facebook Ads (Not FBX!)
• How to Use Facebook to Increase Website Traffic
• This is Why You Shouldn’t Build a Business Entirely Within Facebook
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Facebook Custom Audiences: Target Facebook Ads by Email List
• 14 Facebook Marketing Goals for 2014

Subscribe to My YouTube Channel!

Thank you for watching! If you haven’t already, subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay ahead on all things related to advanced Facebook marketing. I’m publishing a different video every week!

Be sure to watch to the end for the bloopers! Enjoy!

The post How to Sell on Facebook [Video] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: As an experiment, I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

I don’t like making things black and white. There is a time and place for interest targeting in Facebook ads. But it’s far less central to my advertising than it once was.

This isn’t because it’s necessarily less effective than before (though some may disagree since the merger of precise and broad interest targeting). It’s more about the emergence of better options that has made interest targeting less necessary.

The purpose of this post is to explore why interest targeting is dropping in priority and align the types of targeting you should be using instead.

[Tweet “Interest targeting is fifth in priority for my Facebook ads targeting. Here’s the list and why…”]

What is Interest Targeting?

I shouldn’t assume you know what I’m talking about here.

When creating an ad in Power Editor or the self-serve ad tool, you’re able to list interests to target.

As you can see in this screen grab, this allows me to target “people who have expressed an interest in or like pages related to” particular people or brands.

While this does include people who like these pages, it also includes users interacting with them.

The Weaknesses of Interest Targeting

First of all, the merger of interest targeting (combining precise and #interests) has caused a headache for some marketers. I’ve heard of examples where the potential audience targeted has multiplied as a result. Bigger is not always better in this case.

Now, that’s also why it was important to be targeting a very specific interest to start. For example, I was targeting a group of brands that includes Mari Smith, Amy Porterfield and Social Media Examiner. The audiences for those interests changed very little, if at all. But if you targeted something more broadly (like “social media marketing”) you’ve likely seen effectiveness decrease.

The second major weakness of interest targeting is that you are putting a great deal of faith in the brands you focus on. You assume they built a highly relevant audience that would be interested in your brand, but what if their fans were bought or brought in through poorly targeted advertising?

You guessed it, you may be accidentally running ads targeted at bots and fake accounts. There’s little way of knowing how a brand built their audience, so you take a bit of a risk by targeting it.

The New Facebook Ads Targeting Priority

Interest targeting now only needs to be done when you have no other options. The truth is that you can very easily target users who already have a connection to your brand.

Here’s how I prioritize the type of targeting I’ll use with Facebook ads…

1. Fans: Some will scoff at paying to reach your fans. Such people don’t have a proper understanding of Facebook, and don’t grasp how valuable this group of people can be.

Yes, you should pay to build your fan base with ads. Yes, you will reach them organically. And no, you won’t reach every fan with a single post.

When you understand how Facebook works, you know that expecting a high percentage of your fans to read a single post is unreasonable. But if you promote it, you can reach more.

These are the people most likely to buy from you. I’ve found it time and time again. You can get incredibly high ROI when running ads promoting your product to your fans.

Sure, you could just share an organic post to this group. But, as you know, you likely won’t get 10% of your fans to see it organically. So why not promote the post if it is likely to result in positive ROI?

I always scratch my head when I hear a marketer tell me they pay for Facebook ads, but don’t promote anything to their fans. You’re leaving money on the table!

2. Custom Audiences (Email Subscribers): This is likely your most valuable list. This includes not only those who subscribed to your newsletter, but those who bought from you.

Create ads that target your email subscribers who aren’t currently fans. Do this to increase your fan base, but also do it to promote posts and sell products.

You may wonder why I list your current customers second after fans even though I mentioned this is your most important list. I’ve personally found that fans respond best on Facebook — they expect to see you in their News Feed and provide the most positive feedback. It’s all about context.

That doesn’t mean that email subscribers who aren’t fans don’t want to see you. It’s just that, in my experience, this group doesn’t get me quite the response that I get from fans.

When you target this group, make sure to exclude fans. There’s no reason to hit them twice. Run ads to get them to like your page, read a blog post or buy a product.

3. Website Custom Audiences (Website Visitors): You have no idea how happy I am that this feature is available.

Very few of your website visitors are subscribers to your email list. Or, more precisely, this is the case if you get much traffic from places other than your email list (60% of my traffic comes from Google).

As a result, this feature fills a gaping hole. Without it, you could target your fans and email subscribers, but there were still potentially huge numbers of users who read your content but who are not being targeted in your ads.

In a little over two weeks, my base Website Custom Audience has nearly 100,000 users on it. That’s 100,000 unique users who have visited my website and are on Facebook.

Considering there are only 16,000 people on my email list and about 40,000 people who like my Facebook page, that means there are at least 44,000 new people being targeted who are familiar with my content.

And what better group to target when promoting a post than someone who has recently visited my website? You could make an argument that this may be even more relevant than your fan base when it comes to post promotion.

The beauty of WCA is that you can promote a post while also excluding those who already read it. That’s being efficient and limiting waste!

Of course, you should also target website visitors who aren’t fans and try to convert them. And they are also likely buyers, so you should target them when promoting products.

An example of this is my ad that promotes my one-on-one service…

4. Lookalike Audiences: It’s a very short step from Lookalike Audiences to interest targeting, but I prioritize lookalikes first.

If you aren’t familiar with Lookalike Audiences, this is when Facebook generates an audience of users you can target who are similar to one of your Custom Audiences. We can assume they do this by combing through mounds of data that will include interests, demographics and more.

The key here is that you aren’t guessing which brands to target. You are using your proven customers or website visitors as the starting point for this lookalike audience list.

While I rarely target Lookalike Audiences when selling products, I will target them when building my fan base, promoting an especially popular post or driving registrations for a free webinar.

5. Interests: And that brings us here.

As you can see, there are four really good targeting options before you even get to interests. I still target interests, but I put a smaller percentage of my budget into them than I once did.

I use Graph Search to help me find the interests to target. And I’ll also cross interests with users on Lookalike Audience lists (users on a Lookalike Audience also connected with certain interests) to make that targeting more relevant.

This is mainly for audience building now, though it isn’t as effective as targeting website visitors who aren’t fans. And I’ll also occasionally target people by interests to promote posts.

The Evolution of Your Facebook Ads Targeting

Now, I also understand that the first four targeting types may not always be much of an option.

Let’s assume that you just started both your business and your page. In that case, you don’t have fans yet. Your email list is just getting started. And traffic to your website may be nonexistent.

So in the beginning, the bulk of your budget may go in this order:

1. Interests
2. Lookalike Audiences
3. Fans
4. Custom Audiences
5. Website Custom Audiences

That doesn’t change the priority list. That order remains the same. It’s just that you’re going to exhaust that list so quickly that you need to expand the net to grow.

This is also why it’s so important to not only build your fan base, but grow your email list and website traffic as well. The more people who visit your website and subscribe to your newsletter, the larger the relevant audience of people you can target.

As you grow, more and more of your budget should go towards targeting your fans, email list and website visitors, shifting away from interests and lookalikes.

Your Turn

How much of your budget do you dedicate to targeting interests versus the other methods?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Death of Facebook Interest Targeting: Shifting Budget Priorities appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: As an experiment, I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

If you’ve been following closely, you know that I’m excited about Website Custom Audiences. Feel free to brush up on my latest posts on the topic:

• Website Custom Audiences: Target Visitors with Facebook Ads (Not FBX!)
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: What You Need to Know [Video]
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Experimenting with Facebook Website Custom Audiences

I’m obsessed with this feature. I’ve already created over 50 Website Custom Audiences.

My one disappointment when this feature started rolling out was that you couldn’t generate a Lookalike Audience from it.

Now you can!

In this post, we’re going to focus on the following:

• What WCA Lookalike Audiences Are
• How to Create a WCA Lookalike Audience
• How to Apply WCA Lookalike Audiences
• Ways to Use WCA Lookalike Audiences

[Tweet “You can now target Facebook users SIMILAR to your website visitors through WCA Lookalike Audiences. Check it out…”]

What WCA Lookalike Audiences Are

The Lookalike Audience is something that has been available within Power Editor for a while now. If you had created a Custom Audience and uploaded a customer email list, you could have then targeted users similar to your customer list by generating a Lookalike Audience.

This process involves Facebook finding the top 1% (Optimized for Similarity) or 5% (Optimized for Reach) of users similar to those within your Custom Audience. Facebook isn’t clear on how this is done, but we can assume it involves comparing demographics and interests.

This is great for anyone with smaller audiences. Instead of relying entirely on an audience of 3,000 people, for example, Facebook may turn that into 500,000 or even 3 Million people.

How to Create a WCA Lookalike Audience

Within Power Editor, click on Audiences at the top left to view all of your current Custom Audiences and Saved Audiences.

Highlight your Website Custom Audience. Then click the “Create Lookalike Audience” button.

That will bring up the following dialog…

You can only create one audience per country at a time. You can, of course, create multiple audiences, one for each of your main targeted countries.

Just a reminder about the difference between the two options:

• Similarity: Top 1% of Facebook Users
• Reach: Top 5% of Facebook Users

While optimizing for similarity will certainly result in the more relevant audience, I tend to create both and test to see what is most effective.

Note that it can take up to (and sometimes longer than) 24 hours for Facebook to generate this Lookalike Audience. The status will appear as “waiting” while it is generating.

How to Apply WCA Lookalike Audiences

Once you’ve created your Lookalike Audience, you can target it within an ad.

From the Audience step of ad creation, simply start typing the name of your Lookalike Audience in the Custom Audience text box.

You can list several Custom or Lookalike Audiences here. You can also choose to exclude them.

Note that if you have several that you will often use, it may be best to create a Saved Audience to make this step easier.

Ways to Use WCA Lookalike Audiences

Your priority with creating Facebook ads should be on targeting your most relevant audience. That starts first with targeting your fans, email list and website visitors.

Targeting your email list and website visitors is also a great way to increase your fan base by reaching those who are on that list, but aren’t fans.

However, what if you want to expand the net a little bit and still reach a relevant audience? That’s where Lookalike Audiences come into play.

When I run ads to increase page likes, I tend to create separate ads targeted at the following groups:

• Email List (not fans)
• Website Visitors (not fans)
• Similar Interests
• Email List Lookalike Audience (Similarity)
• Email List Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• Email List Lookalike Audience (Similarity) + Similar Interests
• Email List Lookalike Audience (Reach) + Similar Interest

[Note: I use this process to build an Interests targeting list.]

Well, now we can add the following to the mix:

• Website Visitors Lookalike Audience (Similarity)
• Website Visitors Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• Website Visitors Lookalike Audience (Similarity) + Similar Interests
• Website Visitors Lookalike Audience (Reach) + Similar Interests

Of course, you could also try targeting these groups when you have other goals, like driving traffic, sales and other conversions.

While I tend to focus on my fans for conversions, I’ll often target non-fans when promoting especially popular pieces of content. This would be another group to target in those cases.

Your Turn

How are you looking to use Lookalike Audiences for WCA? Let me know in the comments below!

The post WCA Lookalike: Target Facebook Users Similar to Website Visitors appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Now that Facebook has started their roll-out of Website Custom Audiences to target your website visitors with ads when they return to Facebook (see my tutorial here), it’s time to start thinking about ways that you can take advantage of a potentially powerful advertising tool.

There are three main reasons you should experiment with Website Custom Audiences:

• Get Relevant Fans
• Drive Website Traffic
• Increase Sales

With this post I will explore specific strategies for achieving each goal.

[Tweet “Here are ways you can use WCAs to increase relevant Facebook fans, website traffic and sales…”]

Get Relevant Fans

The number of Facebook fans you have, in and of itself, means very little. But make no mistake: The number of relevant Facebook fans who care about your brand means everything.

Building that number of quality fans, of course, is a challenge. You may target your offline customers who aren’t currently fans through the use of Custom Audiences. And you undoubtedly target users by related interests to attract the right crowd.

But with Website Custom Audiences, you can now reach a neglected group: Users who visit your website but who are neither Facebook fans or on your email list.

I’ve already begun targeting this very valuable group with my own Page Like ads. What’s beautiful about this is that you no longer need to guess: These people know who you are.

Following are a couple of ads that I have been running to all of my website visitors who live in my four core countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada)…

As you can see, these ads play off of the fact that anyone who sees the ad has been to my website — and that I know they have. Since I know my audience (people who are looking to succeed with Facebook ads), this is a risk that I expect to pay off.

So far, that has been the case. I am seeing costs per page like at levels that are nearly half of what I was seeing before.

I am also running a simple Page Like Sponsored Story (of course, this will no longer be possible soon), and finding good success there as well. However, the custom copy has certainly been more effective.

I see this as a potential game changer when it comes to quickly and affordably building a highly relevant audience. If I can continue to maintain low costs, I’ll ultimately be able to build that audience more efficiently.

Drive Website Traffic

If I am going to promote a post that drives traffic to my website, what type of user would be most likely to click the link? Someone who has been there before, of course!

I currently have a very simple strategy when it comes to promoting posts. When I create an organic Facebook post that drives traffic to a new blog entry, I’ll promote that post to reach the most fans. And if that post is more popular than most, I’ll also promote it to a specific non-fan audience based on interests and Lookalike Audiences.

Website Custom Audiences changes everything. Now I can make sure to also target users who have generally visited my website during the past 30 days (or up to 180 days, if I choose).

Here’s an example of a post I promoted that does just that…

But here’s where it really gets interesting…

I can promote my post to those who have visited my website, but exclude those who already read that post.

This is huge. Why promote a post to someone who already read it? That’s a waste of money. I want those who are not only most likely to want to read the post, but those who have yet to see it.

Website Custom Audiences are dynamic (your list is constantly building as visitors come to your site), so Facebook knows just who visited your site and when. And since you can use AND/OR logic, you can have Facebook exclude those who visited a particular page of your site.

Not only could you exclude those who already read that post when promoting to website visitors, you could do this when promoting any post to any audience.

This is huge!

Increase Sales

The bottom line may just be where Website Custom Audiences make the greatest difference for Facebook advertisers.

Sure, you could very generally target any visitor to your website with a Facebook ad that promotes a product. I fully expect this approach will be more effective than your current targeting method for converting sales.

But let’s bump this up a notch…

Let’s also create an ad that only targets those website users who already visited the landing page for your product or service but didn’t complete the purchase!

You undoubtedly see dozens of similar ads like this every day. You’ve visited Amazon or some other online retail site and looked at a product. You come to Facebook, and there it is again.

You can do this with Website Custom Audiences!

The first key is that you target those who visited that landing page. So if I were to create an ad that targets people who visited the landing page for my Power Editor training course, I would create a Website Custom Audience for that URL.

The second key is that I’d create a second Website Custom Audience for the success page that a user sees when making a purchase. This way, I can exclude anyone who completed the purchase.

This is how to make the targeting dynamic. But I’d also make sure to upload my old email list of customers who purchased the course to exclude anyone who falls outside of the 30-day window (or before the day I created the audience).

This way, I can reach warm leads that — for whatever reason — decided not to buy. Maybe they were distracted by something else. Maybe they needed a little more convincing.

Use this ad to seal the deal.

Here’s another thought: Since you know the people you target in these ads visited your landing page but didn’t purchase, use that to your advantage. Instead of simply driving them back to your landing page, ask them if they have any questions you can answer about the product. Send them to an FAQ or contact form to get the conversation going!

Your Turn

My mind is spinning with ideas of ways that I could use Website Custom Audiences. What I’ve described here is just the tip of the iceberg.

What other ideas do you have? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

ALSO SEE:

• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: What You Need to Know [Video]
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Website Custom Audiences Workshop: Sign Up!

I don’t recall the last time I was this excited about a new Facebook feature. Facebook has started rolling out Website Custom Audiences to all advertisers across Power Editor, Ads Manager and the ads API.

Here’s what I want you to know:

• What Website Custom Audiences Are
• How to Create a Website Custom Audience in Power Editor
• How to Create a Website Custom Audience in Ads Manager
• How to Create an Ad Using a Website Custom Audience
• My Quick Test
• Some Final Notes

[Tweet “Facebook is rolling out their most compelling ad product in some time: Website Custom Audiences.”]

What Are Website Custom Audiences?

Website Custom Audiences (known by the cool kids as WCA) allow you to create Facebook ads that target users who have previously visited your website.

Why is this awesome?

It’s one more way to reach an incredibly relevant audience. You can target fans organically. You can target your email list or other offline customers through Custom Audiences. And now you can reach people who may not be either an offline customer or a Facebook fan, but who visited your website.

Another very cool benefit is that you can isolate specific visitors within these Website Custom Audiences. So you can focus only on those who visited a specific page or section of your site, or those who visited pages that included a particular keyword in the URL.

The customization potential for such ads is incredible.

How They Are Different From FBX

If you’re an experienced Facebook advertiser, I know what you’re thinking: “But Jon. This sounds awfully familiar. Isn’t this FBX?”

FBX, you’ll recall, is another way to retarget your website visitors with Facebook ads. Yes, they are similar. But they are different. In my opinion, WCA is far better.

With FBX, you have to use an approved third party instead of building the ads through Power Editor or the self-serve ad tool. I’ve been recommending Perfect Audience and AdRoll.

And when you create FBX, it is a specific type of ad. It’s essentially a domain ad that can run either in the News Feed or sidebar. Tight restrictions on what you can do, and advertising isn’t connected to your page.

With Website Custom Audiences, you can create such ads within Power Editor and the self-serve ad tool. So first of all, this is much more convenient as it allows you to keep track of all advertising efforts in one place.

But the biggest advantage for WCA, in my opinion, is that you can create any ad the way you normally would, using the WCA you created as your targeted audience.

In other words, you can reach desktop News Feed, mobile or sidebar. You can promote an organic post or unpublished post. You can promote your page, event or app.

You have no limitations on what you can do. And you can also exclude these Website Custom Audiences for even more powerful targeting.

One final advantage is that we can plausibly assume that WCA will be cheaper than FBX. While FBX is plenty effective and affordable, the third parties need to take their cut. This is no longer necessary.

Facebook says that FBX still has a place, but it would appear to be for the bigger brands that want to set up liquid — or more dynamic — advertising. So this would apply to companies that want to set up dozens or hundreds of ads based on the specific page someone visits.

Still, one has to think that far fewer brands will be using FBX going forward. I know that I have very little use for it now.

How To Create a Website Custom Audience in Power Editor

On the left hand side, click on the “Manage Ads” drop-down and select Audiences.

Then click the “Create Audience” drop-down and select Custom Audience.

Next you’ll be given a dialog that looks like this…

You’ll want to click on “Custom Audience from your Website.”

You’ll then be asked to accept Facebook’s terms for Custom Audiences from your Website. You’ll want to do that.

That will bring up a dialog that looks like this…

A few notes…

Audience Name: Name your WCA something you’ll remember later. Make it descriptive of the audience you are going to target.

Description: Not required, but you can add some more details here if you desire.

Website Traffic: This is where you’ll tell Facebook how to target users based on the specific pages of your site that they visited. By default, Facebook will generate a Website Custom Audience of all website visitors, no matter what page they visited.

But you can also target people who visited specific pages by toggling to “People visiting specific pages.”

You can select URL, Domain or Path…

And then “Contains Any,” “Doesn’t Contain,” “Is Equal To” or “Is Not Equal To…”

You can enter either entire URLs, paths, domains, or keywords found within URLs, paths or domains. The door is clearly wide open for plenty of logic options.

However, the most common type of Website Custom Audience (other than for all visitors) will be for a specific page. For example, if I want to target only people who visited the landing page for my Power Editor training course, I’d use this:

/fb-marketing-advanced-university

If you add more keywords, Facebook will target anyone who visits any page that includes any of the keywords listed.

You can add “AND” logic by clicking the + button…

That way, Facebook will create a Website Custom Audience consisting of anyone who satisfies both rules you create.

If Facebook would target such a person based on the link you provided, you’ll see a green checkmark. Otherwise, it will be a red “X.”

Next, you’ll want to click the “View Remarketing Pixel” if this is the first time you’ve created a Website Custom Audience.

You’ll want to copy this to be used in the next step. Just in case, feel free to paste it to a text document for reference later.

Know that if you can’t access it, you’ll use the same pixel for all future Website Custom Audiences (it only needs to be pasted once). So just create a new WCA to get the pixel.

Duration: By default, Facebook sets this to 30 days. This way, you will be targeting anyone who visited your website within the past 30 days. Obviously, that clock starts ticking the minute your pixel is live.

Facebook allows you to use a duration of up to 180 days. What you use here should be related to the size of your potential audience. If you get really good traffic to the pages you are targeting, consider using shorter time periods to make the targeting more relevant.

Create a Website Custom Audience in Ads Manager

Within Ads Manager, click the “Audiences” link on the left.

Then click the green “Create Audience” button at the top right.

That will bring up this dialog again…

Everything from this point forward will be exactly the same as the steps within Power Editor. Refer to the passage above for details!

Install the Pixel

In the previous step, you copied the remarketing pixel. You’ll need that now!

Go into your website’s CMS. You will want to paste this code before the closing /HEADER tag of your website’s template.

I use WordPress and my site is built on Genesis Framework. As a result, I have a plugin called Genesis Simple Hooks that allows me to easily paste in code to go before that closing tag.

If you aren’t on Genesis, you can surely find another plugin that will do the same thing. OpenHook is one to consider.

Facebook will now start building your audience as visitors to your website are cookied. Facebook will match up those visitors with actual Facebook users.

If you get a lot of traffic, this audience will build quickly. Otherwise, it will take some time. Around four hours after creating my Website Custom Audience, Facebook is showing that I could potentially reach 1,100 people with the WCA that would target all website visitors.

Click the “Check Updates” button within Power Editor (or refresh Ads Manager) periodically if you’re impatient!

How to Create an Ad Using Website Custom Audiences

Using Website Custom Audiences is a snap. If you’ve ever used Custom Audiences before, you know the drill.

From the Advanced link of Audience during the ad creation process in Power Editor, you’ll be able to enter your Custom Audiences.

You can also exclude any Custom Audience as well, whether WCA or otherwise.

My Ad

I wanted to test this out immediately. So I created a really basic ad to get the attention of anyone who saw it.

The ad received very positive response, but that’s because I was up front about my test. It’ll be interesting to see how people receive it going forward.

It’s a very small sample size, but the ad had a Click-Through Rate of 9.091%.

Some Tips

Just a few things you need to know…

You only need to paste the pixel on your website once. This wasn’t clear to me at first. But the pixel is going to be the same every time. Activate the feature with the first pixel. All future audiences will be created to customize your audience.

You can create up to 200 Website Custom Audiences. Oh, the possibilities!

No Lookalike Audiences yet. I want this! Imagine being able to target users similar to your website visitors. This is only available via the ads API for now.

You can edit your audience, but it’s currently a pain. I can’t edit my audience yet within Power Editor. While I don’t currently have access to creating WCAs within the Ads Manager, I can view and edit them there. This will undoubtedly be fixed in Power Editor soon.

Benefits: More to Come

In this post, I wanted to first focus on what Website Custom Audiences are and how you can create them. But stay tuned. A separate post is coming about how you can use them for your business.

This feature is going to be huge!

What do you think? Are you excited? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Website Custom Audiences: Target Visitors with Facebook Ads (Not FBX!) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertising can be a bit complicated. There are endless terms and features that you need to know about, and this makes learning advertising on Facebook a challenge.

That’s why I created this Facebook ads glossary, and now why I’m excited to share my first (professionally done) infographic!

Bookmark this and keep this baby handy for later!

This is just one in a series of infographics that I’ve published lately that will help simplify Facebook marketing for you:

• Ultimate Guide: Facebook Insights Glossary of Terms [Infographic]
• All Facebook Image Dimensions: Timeline, Posts, Ads [Infographic]

Like this infographic? Share it! Hover over the graphic to share to Pinterest. Or you can snag the embed code at the bottom of this page to share it on your website.

Enjoy!

[Tweet “Check out this COMPLETE glossary of every Facebook ads term and feature you’ll ever need…”]

The post Facebook Ads Glossary: Reference of All Important Terms [Infographic] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Forrester recently published a blog post called An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg that carelessly attempted to claim that Facebook advertising and marketing are ineffective, using a survey of 395 marketers and business executives as the proof.

I was initially going to write a post that would pick apart the endless flaws found throughout that study. But after reading the comments attached to the post, I realized I wouldn’t be breaking ground here — most rational people know the report can’t be taken seriously.

But what a post like that does is provide validation for the people who fail at Facebook. They use this as their excuse when things don’t go as planned. This allows them to put the blame on Facebook for their failures rather than accepting responsibility.

Still, that post got me thinking. It raised many questions. I wanted to know whether the 395 marketers and executives had ever used any of the countless tools and strategies common among those who succeed with Facebook.

As a result, I use that awful post as inspiration. I am willing to wager that the vast majority of brands and marketers who don’t find success on Facebook aren’t doing many of the following things…

[Tweet “If you’re failing at Facebook marketing, it’s probably because you aren’t doing these 14 things…”]

1. Provide Value

This should be obvious, but failure on Facebook can often be tracked back to this simple step.

Are you providing value? Are you making the lives of people better when sharing content? Are you educating or entertaining? Would you want to see your content every day in your News Feed?

If all you do is post content that tries to sell your stuff or act as your brand’s PR, you aren’t providing value. You are spamming.

2. Use a Consistent and Frequent Publishing Schedule

Now you need to provide that value on a consistent basis. Once or twice a week isn’t going to cut it. Post multiple times per day, spaced out by at least a few hours.

Implement a content plan and use scheduling software (or Facebook’s built in scheduler) to make sure you have content flowing through on a regular basis.

3. Involve Your Fans

When Fans comment on your post, respond. When they ask you a question, give them a thoughtful reply.

Create posts that involve your audience. Ask them what they think. Ask them to share their story. Ask them to provide their opinion.

Don’t know what types of content your Fans want to see? Ask them!

4. Focus on Relevant Fans, Not Cheapest Price

Far too often, the brands that fail on Facebook slip up here. They care about the “almighty Like” more than the people behind the action.

As a result, they buy Likes. Or they run poorly targeted ads that bring in bots and people who don’t care about their brand. All because they are concerned first with cost and last with relevance.

Craft content that appeals to your target audience. Run ads that are micro-targeted to reach those who matter most.

Forget about ads that generate Likes at 10 cents a piece. You will spend more. But when your focus is on quality, these efforts will pay off.

5. Find Your Target Audience Using Graph Search and Lookalike Audiences

Sure, you have committed to finding your ideal audience and attracting them. But how do you go about it?

You could guess by running ads that target precise interests that you think are associated with your target audience. Or you could be more scientific about it.

Whenever I run ads that target non-Fans, I create separate ads that reach each of the following groups:

• People who like similar Pages and interests
• Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• Lookalike Audience (Similarity)
• People who like similar Pages and interests + Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• People who like similar Pages and interests + Lookalike Audience (Similarity)

First, let me explain how I generate my list of similar Pages and interests.

Come up with two brands that you consider your competitors or would have a very similar audience to your own. Then run a series of Graph Searches.

When I search for Pages liked by people who like Social Media Examiner and Mari Smith, I get the following first page results:

• Mari Smith
• Mashable
• Social Media Today
• Seth Godin
• Guy Kawasaki
• Social Fresh
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Tech Crunch
• Social Media Club
• New Media Expo
• Amy Porterfield
• The Next Web

This is a great start for a Precise Interests list when targeting ads (I’d turn that list into a Saved Target Group).

Next, you’ll want to take your email list and generate a Custom Audience. You could use your full email list or a list only of those who have bought from you.

From that Custom Audience, have Facebook generate Lookalike Audiences optimized for both Reach and Similarity.

When you’re done, you’ll have the building blocks for targeting relevant non-Fans.

6. Focus on the Metrics that Matter

What determines the success or failure of your Page or advertising efforts? Are you focusing on the metrics that matter?

Far too many marketers get bent out of shape obsessing over things like Reach and Page Likes. Neither of these two things, in and of themselves, mean a whole lot. And if they drive your strategy, you are bound to fail.

How much valuable engagement does your content drive? How much traffic to your website?

Do your ads result in conversions and sales? What is your cost per conversion?

These are the types of things you need to be worried about. Don’t distract yourself with metrics like Reach, CPM, CPC and Click Through Rate.

7. Don’t Click the Boost Post Button

While there are over 1 Million advertisers on Facebook, I guarantee that a high percentage of these people are casual advertisers who have only hit the Boost Post button.

It’s easy to do. But with simplicity goes a lack of control, and this way of advertising will likely lead to wasted ad spend.

You are more sophisticated than this. You want to reach a specific audience in specific placements.

8. Use Power Editor

One way to promote a post effectively is with Power Editor. You can, for example, target only Fans and reach them only in the News Feed.

If you’re serious about Facebook advertising, you need to use Power Editor. This is how you get full control over your ads and get full access to all of the tools and features that come with Facebook advertising.

While using the self-serve ad tool is certainly a step up from boosting a post, you can do better.

9. Use Conversion Tracking

Every time you run an ad that leads to some sort of conversion (purchase, registration or lead), you need to use Conversion Tracking.

Every. Single. Time.

If you don’t use Conversion Tracking, you won’t know whether your campaign truly was a success or failure. You’ll guess regarding the number of conversions it brought. And you’ll focus on metrics that could be completely independent of a conversion (CPM, CPC, CTR, etc.).

If your ad leads to a conversion, the only metrics you need to be aware of are Conversions and Cost Per Conversion. You want the lowest Cost Per Conversion as is possible.

But if you don’t use Conversion Tracking, this isn’t an option.

10. Target Your Email List

When you build your Fan base, do you run an ad that targets your email list to attract those who have already done business with you?

When you launch a product, do you run an ad targeted at those who have bought from you before?

You can do this with Custom Audiences. And if you don’t use this feature, you are ignoring a very important segment of your customer base!

11. Sell to Your Fans

While your focus on Facebook shouldn’t be only to sell, your Fans are the people most likely to buy from you.

If you spend more on ads that target non-Fans with product offers than Fans, you are likely throwing money away.

Target non-Fans to bring in new Fans. Gain trust from them by consistently providing value. Then sell.

It’s a simple Facebook sales funnel. And one that can lead to a very high ROI.

12. Optimize Your Images

When you share a link or run a link ad, does the thumbnail image take up the width of the News Feed, whether on desktop or mobile?

Bigger images lead to more engagement. Those thumbnails are begging to be clicked on.

If your link share results in a tiny, square thumbnail image, don’t expect it to get clicked!

13. Create Multiple Campaign and Ad Variations

You can’t report success or failure based on a single ad. There are far too many factors that lead to whether or not an ad works.

Test different copy, images and targeting. Test with different ad types, using Sponsored Stories or page posts. Test using link shares, videos or photos.

Don’t trust small sample sizes. Find what doesn’t work and stop those ads. Find what does work and escalate!

14. Optimize Ads Using Ad Reports

You may have an apparent failing ad that actually has success buried within the results. But you won’t know that without using Facebook’s ad reports.

With this amazing tool, you can figure out the Cost Per Action based on age, gender, country and placement. Placement, in particular, can result in wildly varying costs.

Use these reports to find what does and doesn’t work. Then optimize your ads!

Your Turn

What other tools and strategies are common among those who succeed on Facebook? Let me know in the comments below!

The post 14 Steps to Succeeding at Facebook Marketing appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Now that Custom Audiences are available to all advertisers, there’s been a rush of products and services created to help you “take advantage” of the tool in potentially shady ways.

Of course, most who are doing this do not realize they are violating Facebook’s terms regarding use of Custom Audiences. But ignorance won’t keep you from becoming Facebook’s target.

If you aren’t familiar with Custom Audiences, this is Facebook’s amazing feature that allows you to target users who are also on your customer list (email addresses, Facebook UIDs and phone numbers being the most common method). Advertisers can upload their customer list into Power Editor or the self-serve ad tool and target them in ads.

Some have seen this as an opportunity to create software that scrapes UIDs and email addresses from Pages and groups to generate Custom Audiences from them. If you do this, you’re fighting with fire.

[Tweet “Are you unknowingly violating Facebook’s Terms of Use for Custom Audiences?”]

Facebook’s Custom Audience Terms of Service

I encourage you to read Facebook’s TOS that relate to Custom Audiences. But I’m going to highlight a couple of the points that apply to some of the common ways advertisers are currently breaking the rules.

Here is how those terms begin (emphasis is my own):

Without limiting any agreement between you and Facebook, by clicking “I accept” and uploading this data, you agree to the following:

A. You represent and warrant with respect to the data that you are using as part of your creation of a custom audience that you (or your data provider) have provided appropriate notice to and secured any necessary consent from the data subjects whose data you are using, which explains your use of the data, including as needed to be in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and industry guidelines. If you have not collected the data directly, you confirm, without limiting anything in these terms, that you have all necessary rights and permissions to use the data.

My Interpretation: You need to have consent from the people on your list to use their data. This can be accomplished through a privacy policy and opt-ins on your site. If you scraped this data, you did not receive proper permission to use that information within Custom Audiences.

We can assume that this also includes buying lists, though that may be a bit murkier.

Let’s move on…

B. You confirm that the data you are using to create your custom audience does not relate to any data subject who has exercised an option to opt out of having that data used by you or on your behalf for targeted advertising. To the extent a data subject makes such a request after you have used data relating to that data subject to create a custom audience, you agree to remove that data from the custom audience.

My Interpretation: This could mean one of two things, in my opinion. First, you are not to target anyone who has opted out of your email list. Since Custom Audiences are not dynamic, you should regularly update the list to make sure you are only using email addresses you have permission to use.

It could also mean that if someone has explicitly asked you not to use their data in this way that you are required to remove them from targeting.

I have heard of some marketers using lists of people who have opted out of their email newsletter as a way to bring them back in with targeted advertising. Depending on how you interpret the passage above, this may very well be against Facebook’s terms.

[UPDATE: Thanks to reader Sarah Sal who pointed out that Facebook also has an anti-scraping policy. So this is very clearly against Facebook’s terms.]

Is it Unethical?

The act of scraping, buying or using data you do not have permission to use appears to be against Facebook’s Terms of Service. So it’s wrong in the sense that Facebook prohibits it.

But is it unethical? That’s a tougher question. You are already able to target users based on their buying histories, lifestyle and home ownership status through the use of Partner Categories. While the response to this may be that people willingly gave up this info to Facebook’s partners in this case (and they then were granted that permission), an email address is no less sensitive than the data accumulated with Partner Categories.

And no one knows how you target them in ads. You could target them based on age, gender, interests and a long list of things.

But I can’t fight the feeling that this is simply the wrong thing to do. And I often let that gut reaction guide me.

Is it Worthwhile?

We’ve established that the process of scraping email addresses and UIDs for use in Custom Audiences is probably against Facebook’s rules. So the next question: Does the reward outweigh the risk?

I honestly don’t understand why anyone would do this. If you want to target the Fans of Social Media Examiner, you don’t need to scrape Fan user data and create a Custom Audience to do that. You just need to include Social Media Examiner within Precise Interests.

The only potential value I see in this practice is that you can create a Lookalike Audience from that list. But I just don’t see that payoff coming close to outweighing the risk of getting shut down.

In Conclusion

I can understand the argument that the act of scraping this data for use in Custom Audiences is no worse than a long list of tactics that Facebook allows.

In fact, you might even compare this to a couple of Facebook rules that have recently been loosened, most notably cover photo and contest rules. There wasn’t necessarily anything unethical about doing those things before, but it was against Facebook’s terms.

While I do believe this is an unethical practice, that could be put up for debate. But using data that you do not have permission to use does appear to be against Facebook’s terms. This means you could be shut down as a result.

Frankly, I could never in good conscience tell a client that this is something they should consider doing. And unless Facebook changes or clarifies their terms, I’ll never use it as part of my own strategy.

Your Turn

What is your interpretation of the rules? Is this something you’d do? Do you believe it’s unethical?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Custom Audience Terms of Service: Are You Breaking the Rules? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Now that all advertisers have access to Custom Audiences via the self-serve ad tool and Power Editor, it’s time to start talking more about some creative ways to use them.

If you haven’t heard of Custom Audiences before, this is how you can target your customers in Facebook ads, whether they are Fans or not already.

To create a Custom Audience in Power Editor, click on “Audiences” on the left and then click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Then name and describe your audience. You’ll want it to be something descriptive so you’ll know what it is later.

Finally, you’ll upload your file that has your list of customers on it. This should be either a CSV or TXT file. If it’s an email list, make sure it’s only one column and only has valid email addresses in it.

It will take Facebook up to an hour to generate a list of Facebook users who are also on your email list. Expect anywhere from 30-70% of those email addresses to match up to Facebook users.

Once you have that list, what are you going to do with it? Here are four suggestions…

[Tweet “Here are 4 creative and powerful ways to use Facebook Custom Audiences to target your email list…”]

1. Increase Page Likes

This is a layup. Once you upload your email list and Facebook says it’s ready, this should be the first thing you do.

Until now, you’ve probably been stressing over which interests, ages, countries and other targeting options you need to use when targeting your ideal audience. This one’s easy.

You already know the people on your email list have interest in your content. Now you just need to be sure that you get as many of them as possible to like your Page — if they don’t like it already.

Within the Audience step of ad creation within Power Editor, you only need to do two things:

1. Exclude current Fans from targeting
2. Add your email list to targeting

To exclude your current Fans, go to the bottom where you’ll see Connections. Here, you’ll want to enter your Page name within the text box for “Target users who are not already connected to…”

Then click the “Advanced” link within the Audience step and enter the name of the Custom Audience you created that represents your email list within the first Custom Audiences text box.

To clarify what you just did: You are now targeting everyone on your email list who is not currently a Fan of your Page. You want those people!

The only concern left is choosing what type of ad to create. Personally, I’d recommend a Page Like Sponsored Story as well as a standard Page Like ad that drives users to a landing tab where you offer something of value in exchange for a Like.

Keep in mind that the Sponsored Story will have a smaller audience because you’ll only reach Facebook users on your email list who aren’t currently Fans but have friends who are Fans of your Page.

2. Extend the Reach of Your Posts

This is one I’m doing more and more of lately.

When you publish a post to your Page, you’ll likely reach anywhere from 10-16% of your Fans organically. If you’re like me, you want to reach more of them so you’ll promote a post (through Power Editor — don’t click the Boost Post button!) that targets your Fans only in the News Feed.

You may also target non-Fans who have specific interests similar to your niche. But you have to treat that group carefully since many Facebook users don’t like seeing content from Pages they don’t like in their feed.

But you could instead reach non-Fans who are on your email list. These are people who have already expressed interest in your content, so they’re bound to embrace seeing you in their News Feed.

First, let’s promote a post. Thanks to the new Objective flow, there are now two different ways to do the same thing.

Objective: Select “Clicks to website” and “Page post linked to your website.” Then select the post you want to promote.

Old Ad Types: Select “Ad” and “For a Facebook Page using a Page post.” Then select the post you want to promote.

What you do next is the same for either ad creation flow.

Now do exactly what you did in example #1 to target non-Fans who are also on your email list.

The result: You’ll reach more people who are interested in seeing your content. You should also expect to get some of these people to like your Page when your post is shown in their News Feeds.

3. Sell or Upgrade a Product

I’ve found that current Fans are overwhelmingly more likely to buy from me than well targeted non-Fans (this is why I talk about creating a Facebook sales funnel). So you should target this group when selling a product.

The method is just like what you did in step #2 where you promote a post to non-Fans who are on your email list. One addition is that you should also track conversions. You do this by clicking “Track conversions on my website for this ad” and select the pixel that applies to this promotion (if you need help on Conversion Tracking, see my tutorial).

Another opportunity is for upgrades. Hopefully, you have customer lists that are segmented based on their action: newsletter sign-up, opt-in and specific product purchase.

Let’s assume you have a list of people who purchased Widget 1.0. You are now announcing the release of Widget 2.0. If you’re a smart marketer, you’re going to send an email to those who bought Widget 1.0 to let them know of the release.

But you should also target these people in Facebook ads. This allows you to craft copy and imagery around the people you are targeting. For example, the copy should assume that the user who is seeing the ad already owns Widget 1.0. Let them know it’s time to upgrade!

You would target these users by creating a Custom Audience that is for the list of people who purchased Widget 1.0 only. Then enter that audience in your targeting as described earlier.

4. Target Users Similar to Your Subscribers

This goes a bit beyond Custom Audiences, but let’s assume you have a modest-sized email list. You want to target a larger group of people to perform any of the three steps suggested above. You can do this by creating Lookalike Audiences.

While you aren’t specifically targeting your email list in this case, you are using that email list to target other Facebook users like them.

To create a Lookalike Audience, click on the name of your Custom Audience within “Audiences” on the left of Power Editor. Then click “Create Similar Audience.”

Then select a country and whether you want to optimize for Similarity (top 1% of Facebook users) or Greater Reach (top 5%).

It will take up to 24 hours for Facebook to generate this list (possibly longer).

Now when you create an ad to get Page Likes, extend the Reach of your posts or sell a product, you can create a variation that targets users who are similar to those on your email list.

Your Turn

Do you have any other creative examples of using Custom Audiences? Let me know in the comments below!

The post 4 Creative Ways to Target Your Email List with Facebook Custom Audiences appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’re looking to reach a cold audience of people who are likely to act on your Meta ads, a good place to start is with a lookalike audience.

Sure, you could experiment with interests and behaviors, but that’s always a bit of a guess. The nice thing about lookalike audiences is that they are modeled after people who may be your current customers.

Let’s walk through it…

What Are Lookalike Audiences?

Lookalike audiences first rolled out in 2013 (when this post was originally published). They allow you to reach people who are similar to your existing customers or others who are closely connected to you.

Lookalike audiences are based on a source audience that you’ve already created. Meta’s system builds it using information such as demographics, interests, and behaviors from your source audience to find other people who are most similar to them.

You can control the size and similarity of your lookalike audience by setting a percentage from 1 to 10 to focus or broaden your audience based on the country or region these people are pulled from.

Source Audiences

Meta recommends the source audience have between 1,000 and 5,000 people, though the quality of that audience also matters. The more closely aligned the source audience is to your goals, the more likely the lookalike audience will be valuable.

For example, if you used a very broad and large source audience, there may be very few tight similarities between those people. Meta may struggle to put together a lookalike audience that will be effective for you.

Your source audience must contain at least 100 people from a single country in order to create a lookalike audience off of it in that country.

How to Create Lookalike Audiences

Go to the Audience Manager section of your Business Tools to create a lookalike audience.

At the top left, click the blue “Create Audience” button and select “Lookalike Audience.”

It will look like this…

The first thing you will need to do is select a source. Meta prefers you select a value-based source, but it doesn’t need to be. Examples of value-based sources would be (assuming you pass value with purchase events)…

• Meta pixel
• App
• Product catalog
• Offline events

After selecting the lookalike source, you’ll need to select an event source (either Website or Store).

Then select which event with value you want to select. By default, Purchase is selected (and recommended). But you can select another.

Meta will tell you the highest and lowest values passed as well as the number of unique customers and events during the past 60 days.

Of course, you aren’t required to select an event with value. When selecting your lookalike source, there’s a tab for “Other Sources.”

Unlike the Value-Based lookalike source where you could simply select your pixel and an event, you won’t have that option here. You’ll see a list of custom audiences and page names. You can type the name of an audience into the search bar to find it.

After entering your lookalike source, select your audience location by entering at least one region or country.

Next, you’ll need to select the number of lookalike audiences that you want to create. We’re only going to create one, but you could create up to six at once if you wanted.

Next, you’ll need to select the percentage you want to use. The size of a 1% audience in the United States will always be the top 1% of all Meta app users in the United States who are most similar to your source audience. The size of your source audience won’t impact the size of the lookalike audience.

I’m going to use 1% since this is most relevant and still equals 2.8 Million people in the United States. But if you use smaller countries, you may want to increase this percentage.

The final product looks like this…

Create from Ads Manager

Another (and possibly easier) way to create a lookalike audience is directly from the ad set in Ads Manager.

After selecting a custom audience in the Audiences section, click the little arrow to the right and select “Create Lookalike Audience.”

That custom audience will be automatically selected as your source audience.

Populating and Updating

Meta says it should take between six and 24 hours for your lookalike audience to populate. However, you can still use it for targeting while you wait.

This audience will continue to update every three to seven days, as long as you’re actively targeting it in an ad set. It will stop updating otherwise, though updating will restart as soon as you begin using it again.

Within Audience Manager, there are columns to see when the audience was created and last edited.

Targeting

To target a lookalike audience, enter the name and select it from the Custom Audiences field within the Audience section of your ad set.

Note that your targeting will automatically exclude people in the source audience that your lookalike audience is based on.

You could also choose to exclude a lookalike audience.

Advantage Lookalike

One reason to go with a 1% lookalike audience, regardless of the size, is that you can turn on Advantage Lookalike. This is one of the Advantage Audience Expansion products.

When Advantage Lookalike is turned on, Meta can expand the percentage if it will lead to better results. There are times, based on objective, when you won’t have the option of turning this off.

Should You Target Lookalike Audiences?

Back when lookalike audiences were first launched, they represented a huge advancement in cold targeting. Lookalike audiences simplified the process of finding the ideal group of people to target when prospecting.

Lookalike audiences likely represent a better option than interests and behaviors these days as more interests are removed on a regular basis. But you should still test it.

Of course, completely broad targeting has emerged, as well. Is there an advantage to using lookalike audiences (with or without Advantage Lookalike turned on) instead of removing all targeting filters?

That’s for you to figure out. Like everything, there is no universal rule. Always experiment and find what works for you.

Your Turn

Do you use lookalike audiences? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Lookalike Audiences: A Complete Guide appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook now gives brands the ability to target Facebook ads to their current customers based on email, phone or Facebook user ID list.

The new feature is called Custom Audiences and is available through Power Editor and the Facebook advertising API.

What does this mean and how can you use it? Let me do my best to explain…

What Are Facebook Custom Audiences?

You have been building an email list away from Facebook. You likely use AWeber, MailChimp or another tool to do this. Not all of these people Like your Facebook Page.

You can now export that email list into a one column CSV file and upload it into a Custom Audience within Power Editor. Then, Facebook will match up the email addresses with current Facebook users to serve your ads to only those people.

You can still layer on other targeting as well. So you could target only those users in your email list who aren’t currently a Facebook Fan, live in the US and are female.

You could also use a phone list or Facebook UID list that would be gathered with a Facebook application. For those worrying about privacy, the email addresses and phone numbers are “hashed” (or encrypted) before being sent to Facebook.

There are rules that you need to follow when targeting ads at Custom Audiences. And to be honest, I’m still digesting exactly what the rules mean, what would be allowable and what would be a violation.

I’ll cover that in more detail later. Until then, you should certainly be careful about how it is you use your customer data. If you’ve determined that you can use that data for Facebook advertising, this has significant potential for you since you’ll be reaching people who are already close to your brand.

How to Create a Facebook Custom Audience

Within Power Editor, you will now see a new main navigation item for Custom Audiences. Click on that and then click Create Audience.

First, name your audience. Then select whether you are uploading a file of email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook ID’s. In each case, make sure that it is a CSV or TXT file with only one column and no header row. Then upload the file.

Next, highlight that Custom Audience you created and click the Create Ad Using Audience button. You will now create an ad the way you normally would, but the Custom Audience is now automatically added within the new Custom Audiences ad creation step.

As you can see, you can also exclude targeted users by Custom Audience. If you have very segmented email lists, this could come in handy.

Topics to Cover Later

Privacy Concerns?

Effectiveness of Custom Audiences

Strategies for Using Custom Audiences

Will Custom Audiences remain free?

There’s currently no charge for making a data match and building your custom audiences on Facebook…

Yes, currently. And if it’s as effective as I expect it to be, Facebook will certainly charge for it and many advertisers will be willing to buck up.

How About You?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Custom Audiences: Target Facebook Ads by Email List appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.