How to Create an Audience List on Facebook

Creating targeted audience lists on Facebook is the single most effective way to improve your ad performance and reach the right people with your organic content. Instead of broadcasting your message to everyone, you can focus your budget and creative energy on the users most likely to engage, convert, and become loyal customers. This guide breaks down exactly how to create the three main types of Facebook audiences: Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and Saved Audiences.

Why Your Facebook Audience Strategy Matters

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." A well-defined audience strategy transforms your social media efforts from a guessing game into a precision-guided operation. When you show your content to a highly relevant audience, you typically see:

• Better Ad Performance: Higher click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates because your message resonates deeply with the viewers.
• Lower Costs: Instead of paying for impressions wasted on disinterested users, your budget is spent reaching prospects who are already warm to your brand.
• Increased Brand Loyalty: By tailoring content to different segments (e.g., new visitors vs. loyal customers), you can build stronger relationships and guide people through the customer journey more effectively.

In short, creating audience lists is about talking to the right people at the right time. Let's get started.

Navigating to the Audiences Dashboard

All audience creation and management happen within your Meta Business Suite or Ads Manager. Finding it is simple:

1. Navigate to your Meta Ads Manager.
2. Click the "All Tools" hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top-left corner.
3. In the menu that appears, find and select "Audiences."

This is your command center for all things related to audience lists. Once you're there, you'll see a blue "Create Audience" button. This is where the process begins.

Part 1: Mastering Custom Audiences

Custom Audiences are the foundation of effective Facebook advertising. They are lists of people who have already interacted with your business in some way, either online or offline. This is your warmest audience because they already know who you are.

What is a Custom Audience?

Think of a Custom Audience as a retargeting list. You're grouping together users based on specific actions they've taken, such as visiting your website, subscribing to your newsletter, or watching one of your videos. Since they're already familiar with your brand, they are often much more receptive to your ads.

When you click "Create Audience" and select "Custom Audience," you'll see a menu of sources you can use. Let's cover the most important ones.

How to Create a Custom Audience from a Customer List

This is one of the most powerful options available. If you have an email list, a phone number list, or even physical addresses of your customers, you can upload it directly to Meta. Facebook will then hash the data and match it to user profiles on its platform.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Choose "Customer List" as your source.
2. Prepare your customer file. This should be a .CSV or .TXT file with columns for identifiers like email, phone number, first name, last name, city, state, and zip code. The more data points you provide, the higher your match rate will be.
3. Upload your file. Follow the on-screen prompts to map your data columns to the correct identifiers.
4. Name your audience (e.g., "Email Subscribers - [Date]") and create it. It can take a few hours for Facebook to finish matching and populating your list.

Pro Tip: To get the most mileage out of this, create separate lists for different customer segments. For example, a list of "VIP Customers" who have spent over a certain amount is incredibly valuable for creating high-performing Lookalike Audiences (more on that later).

How to Create a Custom Audience from Website Traffic (Meta Pixel)

If you have the Meta Pixel installed on your website, you can create audiences based on user activity. This allows you to retarget people with highly specific ads based on their on-site behavior.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Choose "Website" as your source.
2. Select your Meta Pixel from the dropdown menu.
3. Under "Events," choose the user group you want to target. You can start broad with "All website visitors" or get more specific with actions like "People who visited specific web pages" or "ViewContent."
4. Define the time window for the action. For instance, you could target people who have visited in the last 30, 60, or up to 180 days.
5. Name your audience descriptively (e.g., "Website Visitors - Last 30 Days" or "Viewed Product X - Last 14 Days") and create it.

Relatable Example: An e-commerce store could create a Custom Audience of users who added an item to their cart in the last 7 days but didn't complete the purchase. They could then run an ad campaign to this specific audience with a discount code to encourage them to finish checking out.

How to Create a Custom Audience from On-Platform Engagement

You don't need a website or a customer list to create powerful retargeting audiences. You can build lists of people who have engaged directly with your content on Facebook or Instagram.

Common engagement sources include:

• Video: Target people based on how much of your video they watched (e.g., viewed at least 50%).
• Instagram Account: Group together everyone who visited your profile, sent you a message, or saved one of your posts.
• Facebook Page: Similar to Instagram, target users who have engaged with your page in some way.
• Lead Form: Retarget people who opened or submitted a lead form but didn't convert.

This is a fantastic starting point for any business. Targeting people who watched 75% of your latest video ad is a great way to find a highly engaged audience to show your next offer to.

Part 2: Finding New Customers with Lookalike Audiences

Once you've built high-quality Custom Audiences, you can unlock the power of Lookalikes. This is where you ask Facebook’s powerful algorithm to find new people who share similar characteristics with your existing customers.

What is a Lookalike Audience?

A Lookalike Audience is an audience created by Meta that "looks like" a source audience you provide. It analyzes the demographics, interests, and behaviors of the people in your Custom Audience and then finds millions of other users on its platform who match that profile.

How to Create a Lookalike Audience

1. From the Audiences dashboard, click "Create Audience" and select "Lookalike Audience."
2. Choose your source audience. This must be a Custom Audience you've already created. For best results, your source audience should contain at least 100 people from a single country.
3. Select the audience location (the country or region where you want to find new people).
4. Choose your audience size.

Choosing Your Audience Size: The 1% Rule

Facebook asks you to define your Lookalike size as a percentage of the total population of the country you're targeting. This ranges from 1% to 10%.

• A 1% Lookalike Audience will be the smallest but most similar to your source audience. This group has the highest potential for conversions and is the best place to start.
• A 10% Lookalike Audience will be much larger but less similar to your source audience. This is better for broad awareness campaigns where reach is more important than immediate conversions.

You can create multiple Lookalike audiences from the same source at different percentages (e.g., 0-1%, 1-2%, 2-5%) and test them against each other to see what performs best.

Pro Tip: Your Lookalike audience is only as good as its source. A Lookalike based on your "best customers" Custom Audience will almost always outperform a Lookalike based on "all website visitors."

Part 3: Building from Scratch with Saved Audiences

While Custom and Lookalike audiences are based on existing data, Saved Audiences are built manually using Facebook's extensive targeting options. This is a form of prospecting, where you define your ideal customer profile based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.

What is a Saved Audience?

A Saved Audience lets you hand-pick who you want to see your content. You select criteria to build an audience manually, and then save it for future use in your campaigns.

Key Targeting Options for Saved Audiences

• Location: Target by country, state, city, zip code, or even drop a pin and target within a specific mile radius.
• Demographics: Target by age, gender, language, education level, work industry, life events (e.g., "Newlywed"), and more.
• Interests: This is a massive category. You can target people based on the pages they've liked and the content they engage with, related to hobbies, entertainment, business, and just about anything else.
• Behaviors: Target based on purchase behavior, device usage, and other digitally-tracked activities. For example, you can target "Engaged Shoppers" or people who use a specific mobile device.

You can also use "Detailed Targeting Expansion," which allows Meta to show your ad to people outside your specified criteria if it thinks they are likely to convert.

Use Saved Audiences when you're looking to reach a completely new market segment or when you don't have enough data to create effective Custom or Lookalike Audiences yet.

Final Thoughts

Building high-quality audience lists is the line between wasting your advertising budget and generating a reliable return. By thoughtfully combining Custom Audiences for retargeting, Lookalike Audiences for prospecting, and Saved Audiences for reaching new markets, you give your content the best possible chance to connect with the right person.

Once you've nailed down who you're marketing to, the next step is managing your content workflow smartly. My team and I built Postbase to solve the everyday frustrations we faced with older social media tools that just weren't designed for today's content, especially short-form video. When you have a crystal-clear audience, we help you plan, schedule, and analyze your content across all platforms without the extra friction.

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