As more and more Facebook Business Page admins get used to the idea that Facebook is a pay to play platform, the challenge has moved on from trying to achieve (reasonable) organic reach, to trying to achieve fantastic results with Facebook ads (and affordably, too).

Facebook has some very powerful ad targeting capabilities that allow you to hone in on exactly the type of person you want to reach with your ad.

Facebook also gives you the ability for superior advertising targeting when you use its “retargeting pixel” to create a custom audience of people who have visited your website (while logged in to Facebook). Just by placing some tracking code on your website (which is free), you can steadily gather and grow your own website custom audience to later use in your ad campaign. You have nearly endless possibilities with your custom audiences, too, since you can build them for visitors to a specific page or group of pages on your site.

How to Create a Facebook Website Custom Audience

Before you can create any website custom audiences, you need to first create and install your Facebook pixel. You can access full instructions in this blog post.

Once your pixel is created and installed on your site, it’s time to start creating your website custom audiences.

1. From your Ads Manager, click on Audiences.

2. Click the blue “Create Audience” button on the upper left hand side. Choose “Custom Audience“.

3. On the next screen, choose “Website”.

4. Give your custom audience a name and determine the length of time that you want to collect the data. You can choose anywhere from 30 days to 180 days for Facebook custom audiences created based on website traffic..

5. We recommend starting with a website custom audience of all visitors, but also suggest you create more specific custom audiences, too. For example, you can choose specific pages on your site for one of your custom audiences. Read more here about creating custom audiences based on specific website pages visited.

6. Once Facebook has time to populate your custom audiences, you’ll see a green light.

When your custom audience has reached your desired size, you can use it when creating your own Facebook Ads in the Ads Manager. Simply choose your Custom Audience in the Custom Audience section, and go!

Keep in mind that if you’d like to use a website custom audience for a specific, time-sensitive campaign you are planning on in the future, you’ll need to add your Facebook pixel to your website far enough in advance to have a healthy custom audience size to use for your ad.

*Updated 4.20