What Are Website Custom Audiences?
Are you taking full advantage of Facebook custom audiences? Wondering how to retarget prospects on Facebook based on their activity with your website, or product or landing pages?
In this article, you’ll discover seven Facebook website custom audiences you can use to generate new sales or leads from your website traffic.
Website custom audiences (also known as website traffic custom audiences) allow you to create a list of people who have visited certain pages or taken particular actions on your website. You can then target these audiences with highly relevant ad campaigns.
These custom audiences are best used at Level 2 of the ALL Framework because they target the “hottest” audiences of people who have visited your website. The goal here is to re-engage the people who visited your website but haven’t taken the action you want them to take such as purchasing your product or inquiring about your services.
To create website custom audiences, you first need to install the Facebook pixel and any relevant conversion tracking.
With that in place, navigate to your Audiences dashboard via the Ads Manager main menu.
In your Audiences dashboard, click Create Audience and then select Custom Audience from the drop-down menu. In the Create a Custom Audience window, select Website Traffic.
The website custom audience creation window then pops up on the screen. This is where you’ll create the different website custom audience variations to target people who have visited your website.
There are three main types of website custom audiences:
- Standard website custom audiences, which include the default option as well as URL-based and time-on-site conditions
- Event-based website custom audiences, which use the conversion event actions you’ve installed on your website
- Advanced website custom audiences, which combine both standard and event-based conditions
Now let’s look at seven of the most effective website custom audiences you can use for your business.
#1: Target Everyone Who Visited Your Website
Targeting all website visitors is the default option when creating website custom audiences and will be automatically selected for you in the creation window. This website custom audience is a great option for smaller businesses that don’t have enough website traffic to target people by page views.
With the website condition already selected, move to the timeframe condition. For all website custom audiences, you need to specify how long you want someone to stay in your audience. A longer timeframe will create a larger audience, but a shorter duration will be more relevant, so it’s a tradeoff.
Finally, enter a name for your audience and click Create Audience.
#2: Target People Who Visited but Didn’t Purchase
Another type of website custom audience, specifically for ecommerce companies, targets people who have viewed a particular product page but haven’t purchased. This is an advanced website custom audience that combines a URL condition with an event action.
To create this audience, first select People Who Visited Specific Web Pages, and then from the Contains drop-down menu, select Equals. In the URL field below that, enter the specific URL of the product page that people need to have visited to be included in your audience. You don’t have to include the www or https in the URL.
Now you want to add an exclusion condition. Click Exclude to create another conditions box. From the drop-down menu under From Your Events, select Purchase.
Next, you want to refine the purchase condition (using the content ID method) to match only purchasers of the specific product. This is an advanced website custom audience that combines a URL condition with an event action.
Click URL, and under parameter, select content_ids. Next, click the Contains drop-down menuand select Equals. In the field below that, enter the ID of the product.
Finally, set your audience durations. Start with 7 days for the URL of the product page view. If your audience isn’t large enough, then increase your duration. For the purchase exclusion, you want as many people who have previously purchased your product to be excluded so set the duration at 180 days.
Your finished audience should look similar to this.
Target People Who Viewed Your Lead Magnet Landing Page but Didn’t Opt In
Similar to the previous website custom audience, you can use this next audience to target Facebook ads to people who visited your lead magnet landing page but haven’t opted in yet.
To get started, choose the standard condition of People Who Visit Specific Web Pages. Next to URL, change the condition from Contains to Equals. Then enter the full URL of your lead magnet landing page.
If you were to create this audience now, it would contain everyone who has visited and opted in. You want to exclude the people who have already opted in so they don’t see an ad for a lead magnet they already have.
The easiest way to exclude these people is to click Exclude. Then select People Who Visit Specific Web Pages, change the condition to Equals, and enter the full URL of your lead magnet thank-you page.
For the lead magnet landing page views duration, try 30 days and increase it if you don’t have a large enough audience size. For the thank-you page duration, you want to include as many people who have already opted in so go for the maximum 180 days.
Finally, give your audience a name and click Create Audience.
Your landing page website custom audience should look like this:
Target People Who Viewed Your Contact Page
This next audience is ideal for service businesses that want to target people who are interested in working with them. This audience groups people who have visited your contact page but haven’t completed your contact form.
First up, select People Who Visited Specific Web Pages from the conditions drop-down list. Then change Contains to Equals and enter the full URL of your contact page.
Next, add an exclusion. Click Exclude and then from the conditions drop-down list, select the event action you have installed on your contact thank-you page. For example, if you have installed a Lead action, select Lead from the drop-down list.
If you have multiple conversion actions using the same event, you can refine the action by the specific URL that triggers it. To do this, click Refine By, choose URL/Parameter, and enter the full URL of the thank-you page ensuring the equals condition is selected.
Finally, select your audience duration. Keeping the contact page view duration short will improve the timeliness of your ads, and using the maximum time duration for your exclusion will ensure you aren’t targeting ads to people who have already contacted you.
Your final view should look something like this, with the contact page view condition and the Lead event exclusion either with or without the URL refinement:
Target People Who Started the Buying Process but Didn’t Complete It
This next audience uses your event actions and is very effective for ecommerce companies. Creating this audience allows you to group people who have visited your website and started the buying process, such as adding a product to the basket or initiating checkout, but haven’t completed a purchase.
To get started, select the Add to Cart action from the drop-down list. After that, click Include More and select the Initiate Checkout action.
Finally, click Exclude and choose the Purchase action from the drop-down list. You can further refine all of these event actions to target people interested in specific products, using the content ID method outlined earlier in audience #2.
Target People Who Previously Purchased From You
One of the best ways to increase your revenue is to drive repeat purchases from existing customers. This website custom audience allows you to target people who have already purchased from you. You can then introduce new product offerings and exclusive discounts to encourage a further purchase.
To create this audience, select Purchase from the drop-down list, under your event actions.
That’s it, no inclusions or exclusions. The final thing is to set your duration (180 days will create the largest audience size) and give it a name.
If you have multiple products, you can also set product refinements using the content ID method, and create variations of this audience for purchasers of different products or product categories.
Target People Who Read Your Blog
If you have a blog, this website custom audience is for you. It allows you to target everyone who visits your blog or visitors to specific blog pages.
This is a hyper-responsive audience to which you can run offers or even just promote more content to build stronger brand awareness and deepen your relationship.
To create this audience, select People Who Visited Specific Web Pages, and under the Contains field, enter the keyword “blog.” This will group everyone who has visited a page that contains a URL with the word “blog” in it.
For instance, it would group people who have visited your blog homepage, such as www.mywebsite.com/blog, as well as specific posts like www.mywebsite.com/blog/post-1.
It’s worth creating multiple audiences with different time variations to see the size of your audience. Start by testing 30 days, 45 days, and 90 days.
Conclusion
Website custom audiences allow you to effectively target the most responsive and engaged people who visited your website and took a specific action. With the RTM method — which consists of three ad types: reminders, testimonials, and Messenger — you can re-engage your website visitors and drive traffic back to your site to increase conversions.
Reminders help create urgency to get potential customers to take action, testimonials provide social proof to build trust and confidence, and Messenger ads create a quick first touchpoint to start a conversation with your potential customers.
What do you think? Do you use any of these website custom audiences? Which do you find more effective for your business? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
