Facebook has developed and introduced a new custom audience feature that may be a ploy to win back audience and marketers after a rather dismal initial public offering performance. However, Facebook’s custom audience program is a distinct advantage to businesses and single proprietors marketing on Facebook.

What you get is a tailor made spreadsheet of customer and potential customer names, emails, and phone numbers based on your product offering, competition product offering, and demographics. You can tailor make a spreadsheet that is as specific to your product and area of the world as you chose or you can target the entire Facebook world.

Your present customer information as well as future potential customer information is protected by a standard piece of the program that deletes your request once you have downloaded the spreadsheet so that no spammers or claim jumpers can get what you just worked for. Since the possibility that any two given marketers of the same product are going to have the same request, the odds are extremely small that you will be getting useless information.

There are six basic ways to use the Facebook’s custom audience feature:

Brand interaction allows you to target and market to people and businesses that are not directly connected to your Facebook marketing program. This is basically a way to involve and re-involve customers with new products or simply grow your Facebook fans.

Multiple access client nurturing is a very useful addition. You have a variety of methods available to reach out to a present customer with a new offering or information about new products. If the customer does not respond to your first email or call then you get several other shots at getting their interest through phone or email advertisement or messages with an information packet. The idea is to get customers to either look at your new products or call a sales person.

Expanded Targeting Capabilities – You can now target “friends” of customers and if that “friend” responds you get to market to that person’s friend. This may sound like a shotgun approach and it does have some of those characteristics but the more people that see your offering the more potential sales you have. This part of the custom audiences set up should be used with some discretion unless you want to be named a spammer.

Maximize event attendance and profit from event costs. Using the new platform you can target existing and new customers that you want to attend an Internet or physical event. This allows you to pick and choose the most likely prospects that have either visited your website or responded to an email or a call. More event customers always mean more sales because emotion at an event can be manipulated to produce sales.

Tap into the host of customers who may have an account with you and may even have added one of your products their shopping cart. A little email or phone ad nudge may be all it takes to get this customer to go ahead and hit the buy button. Once that person buys you have a word-of-mouth advertisement for free.

Direct targets for mobile ads – Using the custom audiences program you can target people or businesses in the region where you have a market and a physical store. The idea is that a physical visit to your store may produce a purchase there or induce an online purchase later. You pick the most probable target market yourself.