4 Easy Steps to Targeting High-Value Customers on Facebook

Recently, Facebook introduced a new option for custom Lookalike Audience creation.

You can now create audiences based on value — that is, the customers or clients with the highest ROI.

Using information about your current high-value customers, you can target similar users, helping you bring in more lucrative customers or clients for your business.

The algorithms behind this new feature use information that you give them about how much your highest-value customers are worth, in terms of their lifetime value (LTV).

This involves using a numeric value for each person, which is probably the hardest part of using this strategy.

If you're using CRM software, that's a great place to start looking at customers' purchase histories, and at who's spent the most money with your company.

In an AdEspresso blog post about value-based Lookalike Audiences, the authors recommend targeting these groups of people with offers that fit in the bottom of your sales funnel.

They've found that offers like free trials and discounts work well.

They also walk you through the step by step process of creating a custom audience based on lifetime customer value, which we've included below.

Step 1: Create a Custom Audience with a customer value data column

Go to your Facebook Audiences page

Click the “Create Audience” dropdown and select “Custom Audience”

Select “Add customers with current and predictive value attached

Accept Facebook’s Value-based Lookalikes Terms

[image source: AdEspresso]
Step 2: Upload your customer file

Choose whether you’ll upload your customer file as a file (.txt or .csv) or copy and paste it

If you choose to upload, click on “Upload File” and select your customer file. If you choose to copy and paste, do so in the “Paste your content here” field

Give your audience a name

Click “Next”

[image source: AdEspresso]
Step 3: Select the customer value column for your Custom Audience

Click on the “Select value” column dropdown

Select the column in your uploaded list that you want Facebook to use for customer value

Click on “Next”

[image source: AdEspresso]
Important! In order for Facebook to understand the data in your uploaded customer file, follow all the best practices explained in this guide by Facebook, including:

Include a full range of customers, from low to high value. This way, Facebook’s algorithms get more data to differentiate good customers from bad ones

Use dollar values only and avoid using other numeric values such as rankings or ratings

Don’t use negative values to signify undesirable customers as Facebook won’t count those

Use a single currency throughout your columns to avoid any confusion about your data

Once you’ve selected the customer value column and everything’s looking good, save the new Custom Audience.

Step 4: Create a Lookalike Audience out of your Custom Audience

Let’s slow down for a moment to explain how Facebook Lookalike Audiences work.

A Lookalike Audience is always based on a previously created Facebook Custom Audience. So in order to set up a new Lookalike Audience, you first need a Custom Audience that will become the “seed audience.”

[image source: AdEspresso]
Facebook’s algorithms will try to find the people who are most similar to the people in your Custom Audience.

To create a value-based Lookalike Audience:

Go to your Facebook Audiences page

Click the “Create Audience” drop-down

Select “Lookalike Audience”

For your source, choose the Custom Audience with a value column you created

Choose the country where you’d like to find a similar set of people

Choose your desired audience size with the slider

Click on “Create Audience”

[image source: AdEspresso]
Once you’ve created the new value-based Lookalike Audience, you can start using it in your Facebook ad campaigns to reach high-potential leads.