When it comes to social media platforms, Facebook remains the undisputed champion. According to the latest data from parent company Meta, the platform boasts over 3.065 billion active users worldwide as of Q4 2023.
With such a colossal audience base, Facebook offers businesses endless growth opportunities. However, beyond its diverse reach, Facebook’s real power lies in its sophisticated ad targeting capabilities.
No platform allows you to reach your target audience on social media effortlessly than Facebook. It offers brands and advertisers access to various tools and features that enable them to expand their outreach, tailor their ads and improve social media marketing campaign performance.
Among these tools, two standout features have revolutionized the advertising landscape: Facebook custom audiences and lookalike audiences. These powerful tools have transformed how brands connect with their target audience on social media, allowing more precision and personalization.
In this blog, we differentiate Facebook custom audiences from Facebook lookalike audiences by looking at:
⢠What Are Custom Audiences?
⢠Benefits of Using Facebook Custom Audiences
⢠The Types of Custom Audiences You Can Create
⢠What Is a Lookalike Audience on Facebook?
⢠4 Facebook Advertising Tips To Improve Campaign Performance
Learn how to optimize Facebook ads using these two tools and discover helpful tips for Facebook advertising.
What Are Custom Audiences?
A custom audience is a Facebook ad targeting feature that allows you to discover users across Meta technologies who have previously shown interest in your business. These users may include those who have interacted with your content, bought from your offline store or subscribed to your newsletter.
Benefits of Using Facebook Custom Audiences
Upsell Existing Customers
You can use custom audiences to compile a list of past customers and build meaningful relationships. If you have related products or accessories that align with their previous purchases, you can promote them in an ad targeted to shoppers. This will help maximize the lifetime value of your customer base.
Attract More Qualified Leads at a Lower Cost
Facebook custom audiences allow you to retarget leads who have previously interacted with your business but have yet to convert into customers. By leveraging this Facebook ad targeting tool, you can nurture these qualified prospects into making a purchase decision and optimize your ad spend.
Enhance Relevance for Optimal Ad Performance
Through Facebook audience targeting, you’re in a better position to capture the attention of high-intent users. This tool also lets you further refine your audience by adding or removing users based on specific actions they’ve taken. As a result, your ad dollars are maximized and you reduce wasteful spending on ads that go unnoticed by the right people.
Achieve Greater Facebook Ad Conversion Rates
Displaying the right ads to the right audience results in higher response rates and Facebook ad conversion success. By leveraging this Facebook ad targeting tool, you can deliver tailored messages that resonate with your audience and prompt them to take action. This can help boost social media engagement, foster stronger connections and drive more sales.
Expand Your Reach
Beyond the immediate benefits of higher impressions and click-through rates, these interactions have a ripple effect. Capturing your audience’s attention with the right ads and content can boost likes, shares and comments. This creates a solid community of engaged and loyal followers that drive continuous business growth.
The Types of Custom Audiences You Can Create
Based on Website Activity
By installing the Facebook Pixel on your website, you can advertise to users who have visited your website in the past 180 days. The Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that allows you to track website activity. It lets you target people who visited specific pages. Alternatively, you can broaden your Facebook audience targeting to include users who visited any page on your site within the last 180 days.
You can also customize your approach by focusing on users based on time spent on your site. Similarly, if you have a mobile app, you can create custom audiences based on people who have used or engaged with it.
Based on Engagement With Your Content
Facebook audience targeting lets you connect with users based on their level of engagement with your brand across Meta technologies.
Engagement encompasses a wide range of activities, such as following a page, viewing videos or completing a lead form.
Here are the engagement custom audience types available:
⢠AR Experience
⢠Events
⢠Facebook Page
⢠Instagram account
⢠Instant Experience
⢠Lead form
⢠Shopping
⢠Video
Facebook allows you to set a “look-back window” for gathering engagement data. For instance, a 30-day time period means users who engaged with your content 10 days ago will be included in your audience. Any actions outside the defined timeframe will not be considered part of your audience.
What Is a Lookalike Audience on Facebook?
Facebook Lookalike audiences are a segmentation tool that allows you to discover users whose interests and demographics are similar to your existing followers and customers.
Rather than manually researching and assembling an audience, Facebook saves you time and energy with lookalike audiences. With a few clicks, you can create a new target group that shares key characteristics with your most valuable audiences. They are selected based on shares, comments, previous ad clicks and interests.
This targeting feature gives you valuable Facebook audience insights. It examines the commonalities in your customer base and uses this data to find highly qualified leads you previously wouldn’t have been able to tap.
Through this type of informed ad targeting, you can broaden your reach and, ultimately, attract more conversions. By directing your efforts towards people who have a great chance of converting, you can optimize your ad spend and lower the cost of lead generation.
Essentially, custom audiences are people who have already interacted with your brand. On the other hand, Facebook lookalike audiences are users who have yet to engage with your business but share commonalities with your existing customer base.
4 Facebook Advertising Tips To Improve Campaign Performance
Now that we’ve answered “What is a lookalike audience on Facebook?”, let’s move on to some helpful Facebook advertising tips.
1. Categorize and Test Your Ads
Testing different variations of your ads allows you to determine what resonates best with your audience, allowing you to refine your ads for better performance.
Categorizing your ads simplifies the testing process. You can group your ads based on design (image, text, headline, call to action), targeting (country, age, gender, interests, purchase behaviors) and others (ad type, ad placement, social media marketing campaign objective).
Knowing how to optimize Facebook Ads and conduct A/B testing lets you boost your campaigns’ effectiveness and drive better return on investment (ROI).
2. Install Facebook Pixel
Installing Facebook Pixel on your website is the secret to successful ad campaigns. This feature lets you track actions taken on your website. You can refine your ad strategy using these insights and inspire more users to convert.
3. Use Vertical Videos
Videos can be a powerful tool to cut through the noise and make your message more impactful. When posting videos or reels, always use a vertical or square format. While it may seem like a minor detail, doing so lets you provide a seamless and intuitive viewing experience.
Out of all the Facebook advertising tips, this is something you shouldn’t underestimate. Most users hold their phones vertically so that a vertical video format can increase the likelihood of social media engagement.
4. Write Short and Sweet Ad Copies
Keeping your ad copy short, catchy and concise is one of the most important tips for Facebook advertising. As an advertiser, you only have a fraction of a section to captivate your target audience’s attention. Aim for curiosity-driven headlines that will drive users to click and learn more.
Elevate Your Facebook Advertising Strategy With Thrive
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency understands the importance of a powerful Facebook advertising strategy. Our Facebook advertising agency has decades of experience helping brands reach their target audience on social media and improve campaign performance.
A family-owned and family-operated all-natural products company contacted us for help driving traffic to their website. Our team launched a full-funnel approach and paid ads targeting already engaged audience segments. We also performed campaign audits and market analyses to extract important Facebook audience insights.
This campaign aimed to direct referral traffic based on users’ previous actions. We designed ads for people who had previously viewed a product, left items in their cart and visited the company’s website.
Our paid social media efforts resulted in a 79.7% boost in total engagements and a 73.4% increase in website purchases.
With the right Facebook advertising strategy, brands like yours can develop a loyal following and a lucrative online presence. As your trusted Facebook advertising agency, we have the tools and skills to help you launch a conversion-focused social media marketing campaign. We know how to optimize Facebook ads and leverage Facebook audience insights so you can yield the best possible returns.
Book an appointment now and take your brand management and ad campaigns to the next level.
