Facebook is always coming up with brand new updates to improve and expand advertiser capabilities on the platform. From new tracking options, to new targeting capabilities, the latest 2020 Facebook update, in a long line of useful updates, comes in the form of Shopping Custom Audiences. 

What are shopping Custom Audiences?

Shopping Custom audiences is part of a new 2020 Facebook update that allows advertisers the ability to create a Custom Audience based on people who interact with their products in a shopping experience storefront on their Instagram and Facebook pages. This option can help you remarket to people who show an interest in your business or products by either viewing, adding, or purchasing items.

Why are Shopping Custom Audiences important?

The addition of shopping storefront experiences on Instagram and Facebook has removed a step from the sales process. Before this update, users would have to follow a series of steps to reach a business website. Some of these routes include “swiping up on a story” or clicking on a link in a page bio. Now, at one point this was still a great feature that made digital sales very effective, but as with everything, users are looking for an even more streamlined experience.

With this new update, companies and advertisers now have the ability to set up a storefront within their social platform that removes that second step in the sales process and allows Facebook and Instagram users to purchase items directly from a business page. The ability to create custom audiences based on these forms of traffic creates a new approach to retargeting Social Media traffic. Most importantly, it allows advertisers to distinguish between different levels of purchase intent from Social Media Engagers. Simply going to a website does not imply intent to purchase, but purchasing from the Social Media storefront certainly does.

You can use the following types of actions or events to create your shopping Custom Audience:

• People who viewed your products: This option is available globally. Checkout doesn’t need to be enabled.
• People who added your products to their cart: This is available in the US only and requires checkout to be enabled.
• People who purchased your products: This is available in the US only and requires checkout to be enabled. (You can also use this option to create a lookalike audience from people who have purchased your products. We discuss Lookalike audiences in more depth in another blog post within our blog)

The actions you choose create an audience that has already shown interest in your business that you can engage with.

For example, if you sell luxury bags as a shopping experience on Instagram and Facebook, you may want to reach audiences at different stages of a purchase flow (Viewed Content, add to Cart, or purchased). You can create a shopping Custom Audience, select which types of actions you want to include, then create ads that reach that particular audience. 

Note: Before you begin, you must enable checkout for your Facebook shop and/or Instagram Business account. This affects the Custom Audiences you can create.

Although this approach may not be right for every brand and every product line, it is worth considering. Although nothing is certain in the wild wild west of digital marketing, one thing we do know is that a more targeted approach that takes into consideration your audience behavior is very likely to get you better results and more conversions in the long run. The more you know about your audience, the more you can intercept them at the perfect time!