How to target phone numbers on Facebook Ads

Table of Contents

The product is too niche, and you don’t know how to target the right audience. So what do you think about target phone numbers on Facebook Ads – targeting directly at potential customers to multiply the advertising efficiency many times over. This is an advanced form of targeting, also known as remarketing to phone number data. This type of target is only used for business accounts on Facebook (Facebook Business). If you already have a business account, quickly try this targeting method right away.

Advantages and disadvantages when targeting phone numbers on Facebook Ads

Advantages: Target phone numbers on Facebook Ads Ads help you Advertise to the right potential customers. No more wasting your budget on an overly broad audience. Expand your quality audience with Lookalike (Lookalike Audiences).

Cons: Normally, phone number data will not be much. When uploaded, it will also be deducted many phone numbers without users on Facebook. So you will create a fairly small audience file, advertising in this file also makes the ad cost more expensive, but the better audience makes up for it.
To overcome this drawback, we can expand the similar customer file by creating a Lookalike.

How to have phone number data to run Facebook Ads

To run target phone numbers on Facebook Ads, we must first have a file. Here are a few ways I suggest to you.

Summarize customer data available in the system: Collect all customer data in the company’s entire system, classify customers who have purchased, have not purchased, and purchased how long ago. From there, you have a reasonable remarketing plan for phone number data with Facebook Ads.
Get phone number of Facebook user: This helps you to collect phone number data outside the company’s system. You can scan phone numbers on articles related to your product on other pages. This also helps you target competitors on Facebook.
Buy phone number data: Buy back phone number data, customer data sold on the internet. Although it is also a way, I do not recommend it because I am not sure of the right customers by the two methods above.

How to upload phone number data on Facebook Ads

Prepare a file containing phone number data

Step 1: You need to change all prefixes to +84. Facebook encourages you to always include the country code (Vietnam is +84) as part of your customer’s phone number, even if all your data comes from the same country.

Normally the phone number column in Excel will not display the number 0. Use this formula to change the prefix to +84 in Excel.

If your Excel uses commas in formulas:

=IF(LEFT(A1,2)="84","+"&A1,"+84"&A1)

If your Excel uses semicolons in formulas:

=IF(LEFT(A1;2)="84";"+"&A1;"+84"&A1)

Convert numbers to +84 . format — Convert numbers to +84 format

Step 2: You copy the changed phone number column to the prefix +84.

Copy the phone number column +84 just created from the formula

Step 3: You paste to another column as Values to have a column of numbers starting with +84 but not a formula.

Step 4: You delete the previous 2 columns; we only need a single phone number column.

Delete the original 2 columns, keep only the phone number column +84, not the formula

The final result will be a column of phone numbers starting with +84 like this.

Finished processing +84 for the phone number file to target

Step 5: You save the file as a CSV or TXT file. Because Facebook only accepts these two file types. There are too many CSV or TXT types, and you can choose whichever has UTF-18 (UTF-16).

Save the phone number file as a CSV file

Save the phone number file as a TXT file

Suppose a time when you want to remarket the phone number file of many CSV files created. Please refer to How to merge multiple Excel CSV files into one.

Upload phone number file to Facebook Ads

After creating the file containing the phone number file, we will push the file to Facebook Ads to create the object file.

Step 1: You access the ad audience section in the ads manager. Then you click the Create Audience button and select Custom Audience.

Go to Audiences page, click Create Audience, select Custom Audience tượng

Step 2: In the Create Custom Audience menu, select Customer List.

Step 3: At the section Prepare a customer list, click Next.

Step 4: In the section of your List, do you have a customer value column? Select No and then click the Next button (Continue).

If there is an agreement message when using custom audiences, click I accept.

Step 5: In the Add customer list section, click the Upload file button.

Upload phone number file to Facebook Ads

Step 6: You choose the correct CSV or TXT file containing the phone number we just created. Then you click Next.

Finished downloading the phone number file, click Next — I finished downloading the phone number file; click Next

Step 7: In the Identity Match Preview and Match section, Facebook recognizes this as phone number data. Click the Upload and Create button.

Correct phone number format, click Upload and generate — Correct phone number format, click Upload, and generate

Step 8: You have finished uploading the phone number file to Facebook and received the message Encrypted and uploaded customer list information. In this example, I have 2233 phone numbers. You click the Done button.

Uploaded audience file with phone number on Facebook Ads — Uploaded audience file with the phone number on Facebook Ads

Going back to the Audiences page, you will see a list of customers from the phone number file with the status “Loading”. It will take 1-2 hours to finish downloading.

List of customers from phone number file on Facebook Ads

You can already target the phone number file while creating a Facebook Ads ad. But the file is not big; let’s create a lookalike audience for more choice and expand the customer file like that.

Create a Lookalike file from a phone number file on Facebook Ads

To overcome the disadvantage that the phone number file is too small, making advertising costs expensive, we will expand the file by creating a Lookalike file.

Step 1: Also, on the Audience page, select the audience file from the phone number you just uploaded, then click the Create similar audience button above.

Select a list of customers from the phone number file, click the Create Lookalike Audience button

Step 2: Please select your Country, unless you are running to a foreign country, then choose your target country. The suggested audience size is 1-2% only. The less it is, the more it is, the higher it is, the thinner it is. You then click the Create Audience button.

And now you have both new audience files to target when creating ads. Once created, the file will have a “Loading” status. Wait about 2 hours, and it’s done. But you can create a campaign and target phone numbers on Facebook Ads right away without having to wait for it to finish loading.

Finished creating the Lookalike file from the customer phone number file

Chọn target phone numbers on Facebook Ads

You create the campaign as usual but edit the customer target section as follows. You just split it up to test.

Select only target phone number data.
Only target the Lookalike file of phone number data.
Choose both.

Chọn remarketing / target phone numbers on Facebook Ads

Epilogue

You should note that the larger the phone number data, the more effective it will be and the more accurate the Lookalike will be. Do you see how to target phone numbers on Facebook Ads? Would you mind sharing your experience below?