How To Use Website Custom Audiences To Grow Your Business

30
Mar 2015

If you have ever dabbled in Facebook advertising, you’ve most likely heard of Website Custom Audiences (WCA).

WCA @natural_p03t
WCA @natural_p03t

 

WCA is Facebook’s advertising feature that allows you to create ads that target users who have previously visited your website.

Why Does This Matter?

WCA is an incredible tool that can help you reach a highly relevant audience. Using WCA, you can reach people who may not be on your email list or connected to your Facebook page, but have visited your website.

This is exciting because you can now develop ad campaigns that can retarget visitors that have recently been to your website. If someone visited your website but did not purchase a product or sign up for your email list, you can serve advertisements to them encouraging them to perform that action.

How To Create A Website Custom Audience

In order to create a website custom audience, you first install the Facebook tracking pixel on your website.

To do this, you will need to navigate to your ads manager and then select audiences from the drop down menu. From there click create audience and select custom audience.  A dialog box will pop up, and you will want to select “Website Traffic.”

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After you make the selection, you will be given a Facebook pixel.

You are only given ONE Facebook pixel per ads account. This is very important because if you use this pixel on more than one website, Facebook will mix your web traffic together.  

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If you manage or own multiple websites but only have one Facebook Ad account, you will have to take an extra step to ensure that you do not combine traffic from both websites into one custom audience. I will explain how to do that later on in this article.

Before you can create a custom audience, you need to install the Facebook pixel between the <head> and </head> in your website code.

If you have no idea what that means or how to do it, you can download a plugin called OpenHook for your website if it uses WordPress. This plugin will place the code in the appropriate places for you once you copy and paste the tracking pixel from Facebook.

You only need to install the tracking pixel on your website once. After you install it the first time, there is no need to install it anywhere else.

Create An Audience

Once you have installed the code, you will be redirected to a template where you can create an audience. If this is the first WCA that you have made, I recommend creating one for your entire website.

To do this, simply select “anyone who visits your website” from the drop-down menu, and leave 30 days as your default.  Make sure to give your audience a name and description, so you remember why you created it.

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If your Facebook Pixel is installed on multiple websites, you need to create different custom audiences for both websites.

To do that, you will want to select “people who visit specific web pages,” from the menu and enter the web address of your website.

You will need to select this option instead of “anyone who visits your website” on each website that has the pixel installed.

Facebook will combine the web traffic from both websites if you do not separate them out by URL.  This will result in your ads being served to the wrong people.

You can also use the “people who visit specific web pages,” option to target visitors to individual pages on your site. This could be a landing page for an email opt-in form or a product page.

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Watch Your Audience Grow

Facebook will start building your audience seconds after it is created. As people visit your website, Facebook tracks those visitors and delivers them your ad.

If you have a large and steady stream of traffic, your custom audience will build quickly. On the other hand, if your website does not receive a lot of traffic then it will take some time to build your audience.

Facebook does not start building your audience until you create it in the ads manager. Facebook will not go back in time and grab past visitors to your website. It will only start collecting them from that day forward.

Facebook will not report your audience size until your website or web page has received at least 20 visitors during the allotted time for the custom audience (in our case, 30 days). Even though Facebook is not reporting your audience size, the retargeting pixel will still work.

The advertising possibilities with WCA are limitless. You can use it to create a sales funnel, drive traffic to a landing page or even target past customers.

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Core Values at KWSM a digital marketing agency