The Low-Down on Facebook’s Website Custom Audiences

If you have a business website and you’re marketing your products and services on Facebook but aren’t making use of WCA (Website Custom Audiences), you’re missing a trick. With Facebook Website Custom Audiences, you can reach out well beyond your core Facebook fans because in its most basic form, Website Custom Audiences is a tool for marketers that has the ability to create Facebook ads that target users who have already visited your website.

In other words, WCA is a powerful tool that gifts marketers with the ability to hone in on highly targeted potential customers and deliver to them relevant and engaging advertisements to boost ROI.

So how does it work?

WCA works like this – you place a Facebook pixel on your website and then once a customer reaches your website and matches against the criteria you set in your Facebook ad campaign, a cookie will be placed on the customers system and then a targeted audience of Facebook users will be built into your Facebook account. Over time you can build up a considerable list of users to target with ads.

When it comes to targeting users with ads, you do this through Ads Manager or Power Editor. WCA has the ability to exclude audiences from ad targeting so that brands can focus on new and existing customer acquisitions. You have 180 days to target any users in Website Custom Audiences because after this time the user will be removed from your list – unless they happen to visit your website again.

Why does Facebook Website Custom Audiences matter?

The key to success when advertising on Facebook is relevance. The more relevant the connection the more likely a user is to buy. Website Custom Audiences is a fantastic way to target Facebook users who have already shown an interest in your brand. By serving up advertisements to these users, you can skip a connection stage and focus on delivering an ad that is relevant enough to get a reaction.

WCA also matters because it adds a new dimension to Facebook for marketers. Rather than focusing on core fans and relying on Facebook’s targeting tool to find potential customers, marketers can spend more time on producing quality ads for visitors who have already been qualified.

Anything else I need to know?

Yes – WCA has the power to target users in a mobile app. So for example if you have a customer who puts an item in her shopping cart with a mobile app and doesn’t complete the conversion, you can retarget that user on other devices, such as their laptop or desktop computer, devices where it has been proven consumers are more likely to convert. This is a powerful feature that future-proofs WCA.