We all know the money is in the list but not all of us are great at list building or email marketing. luckily for you and I, Facebook has made that easier.
No longer do you need to create pretty call-to-actions or provide a high quality lead magnet to get a prospect's details, Facebook has streamlined the process and made it foolproof.
What I am I talking about?
Facebook custom audiences
Okay, first of all, you can't build an email list on Facebook (well not yet anyway).
I'm talking about Facebook custom audiences. In a nutshell, it allows you to place a tracking cookie on your website, and when a visitor who has a Facebook user profile visits your website, they are tracked stored for up to 180 days in a list.
Let's assume your website receives 100 views per day and 70% of visitors have a Facebook user profile. Within a 180 day period you will have a custom audience size of 12,600 people.
These are 12,600 people who have previously visited your website and have some sort of interest in your product or service. Using this list you can create highly targeted adverts that are seen only by the people in your list.
I have a custom audience pixel on my website and have more than 180,000 prospects who I can display adverts to:
Custom audiences do more than just collect data, but I'll get to that later in this article.
Retargeting through Facebook is the new list building
I'm only joking about the headline (I don't want email marketers slating me), but it's a great alternative.
If you've ever ran adverts on Facebook before, I will assume that most ads targeted new prospects and don't provide a scalable ROI. Showing an advert to someone who is unaware of your website is always going to be a tough sell. They don't know who you're, there is no social proofing and there may be a good chance they have zero interest in what you're offering.
The result? Higher ad spend and poor conversion rates.
But when you show adverts to people who have visited your website in the past, there is an element of social proofing, they do know who you're and they are interested in what you're selling (or saying). 46% of marketers say that retargeting is one of the most underused marketing methods today with retargeted ads having a 70% success rate of increasing conversions over regular ads.
But that's not even the most compelling statistics (for anyone running an online store), it's estimated that over 67% of consumers abandon their online shopping carts, that's a lot of people who had the intent to buy but ended up leaving.
Now what if you could target the 67% of people to go back to their carts and checkout? You can.
How does it work
Custom audiences collect data of everyone who visits your website who has a Facebook profile. If you place the tracking code in the header or footer of your website, it will track every who visits your website. If you place it in a the body of a specific page (landing or product page), it will only collect data from people who visited that specific page.
For example, prospects who land on your thank you page after taking your lead magnet are tracked, put into a list and ready for you to advertise your next offer. You can track the following:
You're only allowed to have one custom audience per Facebook account, and creating more Facebook accounts to add more on your website will get you banned. Each custom audience lets you track prospects for 1-180 days. If your website doesn't get a lot of traffic opting for a longer time period is fine. For sites that receive thousands of visits per day, keep the tracking length shorter, as people who recently interacted with your website are ‘fresher' and more likely to convert.
Summary
Facebook is one of the world's biggest brands and the opportunities for marketers and businesses is endless. I myself have created so many ads on the fly through the Facebook Adverts Manager, targeting new prospects and I'm usually left scratching my head wondering why nobody has taken my offers. Then I started using custom audiences and my conversions went through the roof.
Using a custom audience to build a targeted Facebook list will provide you with cheaper ad spend and give a much better ROI. Have you used a a custom audience before? What are your thoughts?
