What’s a Facebook audience?

There’s a lot of buzz about Facebook audiences, custom-audiences and lookalike-audiences these days. But what is an audience? How does it work, and how can I get more business out of Facebook by using it? Keep on reading.

What is it?

An audience on Facebook is a list of people that you can reach through advertising with your message in the newsfeed (and on the right-hand side). It’s not just people – it’s the people you want to reach.

This list of people can really be two kinds of people:

1. People whose contact info (email and phone number) you already have
2. A selection of people based on Facebook’s data (country, city, age, interests, and much more)

You can also combine these lists to run ads with both your data and the Facebook data.

Why is this a good thing?

Relevant content to relevant people give higher conversion rates.

An extra smart way to use this is having different audiences for the different types of customers you have. Your list of the people who have not been buying your stuff lately, can see one type of post. Meanwhile, your most loyal customers can see a different post.

It works really well, and we’ve been testing it heavily over the past year.

How do I do this thing?

There are a couple of ways in which you can create an audience. Facebook offers this via the Ads Manager, or you can use a third-party solution like 24SevenSocial. Both work in a similar way – but the Audiencer by 24SevenSocial makes it easier to update your audiences.

Here’s how you create an audience with existing contact info, say, from your list of newsletter recipients.

1. You start by exporting the data into an excel or CSV file, and you then upload this to Facebook via your preferred solution.
2. Facebook then goes through your data and matches your information with their users, and try to find matches. Facebook usually matches about 60-80% of your list with actual Facebook users. An audience is created based on the matches made. This typically takes about 30 minutes.
3. Next, you choose your audience when you create your ads via the Facebook Ads Manager – and boom. Only the people you want will see your ads, even if they don’t like your page on Facebook yet.

3 tips to make sure you nail this

1. Create different audiences for different types of people. Showing different ads based on what kind of customer it is really works.
2. Remember to get permission to market to the people you have the contact information on. If not, you might get in trouble.
3. Create stand-out content. Use pictures, short sentences and be creative.

Want some help with this? Book a free demo of the 24SevenSocial Platform here.