Beginners guide to run FB Ads with Custom Audience

We have evolved from the times when we considered Facebook more a hangout place for friends and family. Today, if Facebook is not part of your marketing plan then you’re losing a huge opportunity. Facebook for business gives many super powerful targeting options. Here I am talking about FB CUSTOM AUDIENCE.

Why FB Custom Audience?

Here, Facebook gives native advertising opportunity where ads stitched in the news feed. So they don’t look like spam or pop-ups. Facebook creates the custom audience of the users who know you through your website or they are your past customers or they are connecting you through any other mediums.

According to an eMarketer study, 96% of social media marketers consider Facebook the most effective social media advertising platform.eMarketer

The expected engagement level is always quite high with your existing contacts; when you surprisingly appear on user’s most favorite app or website it simply reinforces your brand.If you are already running Facebook Ads then you’re probably going to benefit a lot more by running Custom Audience Ads. Facebook Custom Audiences are one of – if not the most – essential tools for successful Facebook advertising campaigns.Although, Facebook has built a very powerful tool that enables marketers to do very complex actions in terms of creating Audiences and running Ads, but in the process, has forgotten to incorporate the ease of use of their product for a person who is a beginner. Sometimes even for a person who has been using the Facebook Marketing tool for a while, things get difficult to figure out as they constantly keep making new releases and the lack of supporting documentation and guides contribute to it even more. In this article, I have simplified the way you can use Custom Audiences for your marketing campaigns in just 5 easy steps.

Step 1 - Create a Profile on Facebook Business Manager

You can skip step 1 if you already have a Business Manager Account.

1. Open business.facebook.com after logging into the merchant’s Facebook account.
2. Click on Create Account on the Top Right.

1. Fill in your Business & Account Name and Email Address.
2. Click on “ Next ”

1. Add your business details
2. Fill in your Business Address (All fields are mandatory)
3. Fill in your Business Phone Number and Website (Fill in Zomato/Swiggy link if you no website is available)
4. Leave the Business Use as “Promote its own goods or services”
5. Click on “ Submit ”.

Step 2 - Add Facebook Page

1. Click on Business Settings or the Gear Icon on the top right corner of the screen
2. From the left sidebar, select “Pages” and you will see the below screen.
3. Click on Add Page if you have not already added a page here. If already added, skip to Step Three.
4. You will see this dialog when you click on Add Page
5. Enter your Facebook Page Name and it will appear in a drop-down. Select it and Click on “Add Page” on this dialog box.

Step 3 - Add an Ad Account

1. From the left sidebar, select  “ Ad Accounts ” and you will see the below screen.

1. Click on Add and a dropdown will appear as you will see in the above screen.
2. If you already have a postpaid ad account, please skip to step 8. If you have a prepaid Ad Account you will still have to create a new one. Only Postpaid accounts can be added to a Business Manager
3. Click on “Create a New Ad Account”.

1. Enter a Name for your Ad Account
2. Select currency to be in INR.
3. Click on “Create Ad Account”.
4. Click on Add an ad account.
5. Enter your existing Ad Account ID here. To get your Ad Account ID, refer to the below screenshot.

6. Click on “ Add Ad Account ”.

Step 4 - Create a Custom Audience

1. Go to Facebook Audience Manager

1. Click on Create a Custom Audience and a dialog box will appear as below

1. Select from the above options. Here you can select from your website traffic, your app activity, or the people who have engaged with your content that you have been posting on Facebook. I will go for Customer File where I have a list of phone numbers/email addresses I want to show my Ad to.
2. Another dialog will appear as below where you can either upload a CSV of the phone numbers/email addresses.

1. Facebook works very well if you have an active website from which people can place orders from you. Facebook Pixel works very well and lets you identify and create different FB Custom Audiences for sets of customers who clicked on a particular product, or made a purchase and so on. Facebook Pixel works well to get your Campaign tracking and analytics right. But here, I will select the first option that is “ Upload my own file “. The next dialog will ask me to actually upload the file after formatting a bit.
2. For phone numbers just prefix each phone with its country code
3. For email addresses, no changes are required

1. Select the source of your data. Give a name to your Audience and click on Next.
2. On the next screen, select the appropriate mapping, phone number or email address.
3. Click on  Upload and Create.

You are all set! Now we can begin running your Facebook Ads on Custom Audience. 😎

Step 5 - Create a Custom Audience Ad

1. Now let’s go to Facebook Ad Creation.
2. Select the objective of your Campaign and click on Next.
3. Now here you can add your Custom Audience you created in the last step.
4. Create your Ad as you normally do.

But, even after a lot that Facebook has already provided, FB Custom Audiences present a lot of challenges apart from getting it set up. Below are the few issues with FB Custom Audience:

1. Reaching out with the Relevant Content Every Time
2. Unoptimised Budget Allocation
3. Tracking Purchases is impossible

To know more about issues with Facebook Custom Audience, click here Here at Xeno, we are working continuously towards solving these challenges and making it a breeze to run the best FB Custom Audience Ads for your Business giving you the best bang for your buck. Xeno has a deep integration with the Facebook Marketing Tool that enables you to overcome all these challenges, and the results have been profounding.