What is a custom audience?
Custom audiences are groups of people identified by their past interactions with your business, used for highly targeted advertising campaigns on social media.
Key points
- Target specific users based on their past actions or data you provide.
- Significantly improve ad relevance and campaign return on investment.
- Can be built from website visitors, customer lists, app activity, or social engagement.
- Used for retargeting, excluding existing customers, and creating lookalike audiences.
A custom audience is a powerful tool in social media advertising that allows you to target specific groups of people who have already shown interest in your business. Instead of broadly targeting demographics, you can reach individuals who have visited your website, used your app, engaged with your social media content, or are on your customer email list.
These audiences are built by uploading your own data to advertising platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn, or X (formerly Twitter). The platform then matches this data to its user base, creating a segmented group of people you can specifically advertise to. This approach makes your ad spend much more efficient by focusing on those most likely to convert.
Why custom audiences matter
Custom audiences are crucial for modern digital marketing because they significantly boost the relevance and effectiveness of your ad campaigns. By speaking directly to people who already know your brand or have shown intent, you can achieve higher engagement rates, better conversion rates, and a stronger return on ad spend (ROAS).
Increased relevance and personalization
- Speak directly to their journey: If someone visited a specific product page, your ad can show them that exact product, perhaps with a special offer. This feels personal and relevant, rather than generic.
- Reduce ad fatigue: Avoid showing the same broad ads to everyone. Custom audiences allow you to tailor messages, ensuring users see content that's appropriate for where they are in their customer journey.
Cost efficiency
- Higher conversion rates: Targeting warm leads or existing customers often leads to more conversions because they are already familiar with your brand.
- Lower cost per acquisition (CPA): By focusing on high-intent audiences, you spend less money reaching uninterested prospects and more on those likely to become paying customers.
How to create and use custom audiences
Creating custom audiences typically involves a few key steps, regardless of the platform you use. Understanding the different sources for these audiences is the first step.
Common sources for custom audiences
- Website visitors: By installing a tracking pixel (like the Meta Pixel or LinkedIn Insight Tag) on your website, you can build audiences based on specific pages visited, time spent on site, or actions taken (e.g., adding to cart).
- Customer lists: You can upload customer email addresses or phone numbers from your CRM or email marketing platform. The social platform then matches these to its user profiles.
- App activity: If you have a mobile app, you can create audiences based on users who have installed it, performed specific actions within the app, or haven't used it recently.
- Engagement on social platforms: These audiences consist of people who have watched your videos, interacted with your posts, visited your profile, or followed your page on the platform itself.
Steps to create and apply
- Choose your source: Decide which data source is most relevant for your campaign goal.
- Upload/connect data: For customer lists, upload a CSV file. For website visitors or app activity, ensure your tracking pixel/SDK is correctly installed and active.
- Define parameters: Specify conditions for your audience, such as
Real-world examples
E-commerce abandoned cart recovery
An online store creates a custom audience of users who added items to their cart but did not complete the purchase. They then show these users ads featuring the abandoned products with a special discount code to encourage conversion.
B2B whitepaper download follow-up
A software company builds a custom audience from its CRM list of leads who downloaded a specific whitepaper. They then target these leads with ads for a related webinar or a free trial of their software, nurturing them further down the sales funnel.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Not segmenting custom audiences enough, leading to generic ads that miss the mark.
- Using outdated customer lists that haven't been refreshed, targeting irrelevant users.
- Ignoring privacy regulations like GDPR or CCPA when handling and uploading customer data.