A Facebook Custom Audience is a group of people you choose to show ads to, like past customers, or leads who downloaded a free guide. With Ontraport, you build those audiences from your own contact data and keep them current with automations. Facebook is part of Meta, and this feature is available on Plus and above. There are three steps: connect Facebook, create an audience, and add or remove contacts.
First, you'll need a Facebook Business Manager account. In Ontraport, click your profile icon, then Administration, then Advanced Features, and turn on Facebook Custom Audiences.
Next, go to Administration, then Social, then Facebook API. Click Continue with Facebook, follow the prompts to connect your account, and click Save. Connecting doesn't give Facebook access to your Ontraport account. Ontraport only sends contact data to Facebook through an automation or group action that you set up. If you ever want to disconnect, remove the Ontraport app from the Business Integrations menu in Facebook.
Facebook only lets Ontraport update audiences that were created in Ontraport. Audiences you made directly in Facebook, like website or customer list audiences, won't show up here. So create your audiences in Ontraport. Wherever you pick an audience, in the Facebook group action or the Facebook Custom Audiences element, click Add new audience at the top of the dropdown. Enter a name and a description, and click Save.
To update an audience by hand, go to Contacts, select the contacts you want, and click Facebook in the action bar. Choose your ad account, choose Add or Remove, pick the audience, and click Submit.
The recommended way is to let an automation do it for you. Go to Automations, then New Automation, or open an existing map. If you've turned on other objects, like Companies or Deals, you'll find Automations under Contacts instead. Where you want the step, click What Happens Next, then Advanced, then Facebook Custom Audiences. In the settings, choose your ad account and whether to add or remove contacts. Then click Add to pick an audience. Click Done, finish your map, and click Publish.
Here's an example from the Support Center. Start a map with a Landing Page is Visited trigger for your sales page. Below it, add a Purchases a Product goal for your product, and set the wait above the goal to one hour. Leads who don't buy in that hour take the other path. There, send your abandoned cart email, then add a Facebook Custom Audiences element. Now those leads get an email and also see ads for the product they left behind.
Removing people matters as much as adding them. Use a second Facebook Custom Audiences element set to Remove for people who no longer fit, like contacts who go on to buy, so they stop seeing that ad. Then, in Facebook Ads Manager, choose your audience as the targeting for your campaign.
So: turn on Facebook Custom Audiences and connect your account, create your audiences in Ontraport, and keep them up to date with automations, or by hand when you need to. Next up: video hosting.