How to Create a Custom Audience
To create a custom audience, download the list from your RunSignup race dashboard under Promotion -> Facebook Custom Audiences, and select the report you wish to download. In this example, we will be using the Current Participants report.
Once you have downloaded this report, navigate to your Facebook Ads manager and select the Audiences option from the drop-down.
Then select the Custom Audience option from the top left of the page and select Custome Audience from that drop-down.
Facebook will then ask you how you want to create this audience. We will be using the file that we downloaded from RunSignup so we will select Customer File.
In this example, we are creating a simple custom Audience without a lifetime value (LTV) so we will select the option to Add customers from your own file or copy and paste data.
This will bring you to an import screen, select the Upload File option from this page and locate the file you’ve downloaded from RunSignup.
Once you have added the file to Facebook you can rename the audience with something more descriptive than the file name, and then click the Next button.
The next step in the process is matching your data to what Facebook is expecting. RunSignup has already done the heavy lifting here, so the columns should all automatically be matched to their corresponding data in Facebook and you can simply click on the Upload & Create button.
Facebook will then process your participant list and create a custom audience, and it will then give you a success message when it is finished processing.
Once the upload has finished processing, Facebook will take a couple of hours to match the information you uploaded to existing Facebook users. When the list is ready you can go through the Facebook Ad Creation process and create ads using your custom audiences to easily target your participants (or potential participants).
How to Create a Custom Audience with Lifetime Values
The process to create a customer audience including the lifetime value is very similar to creating a regular custom audience. The only differences are that you must download the “All Participants” custom audience report from RunSignup so we can accurately calculate the total value of a participant.
Then, after selecting that you are uploading a Customer File, select the option from the drop-down to Include LTV for better performing lookalikes.
Upload the file from RunSignup and rename the audience the same way that you do when creating a regular custom audience and select next. The next step of the process will ask you to map the Customer Value to the column in the file you’re uploading. Simply select the Value option from this column and select Next.
You will be prompted to do the column matching to import the file the same way you do with a regular import. Again, RunSignup has already mapped the columns so you can click on Upload & Create and you’ll have your new list.
You can either click Create Lookalike Audience button on the final prompt to create a new Lookalike Audience, or you can create one from your dashboard.
How to Create a Lookalike Audience
To create a Lookalike Audience, you must first have followed the previous steps to create a custom audience. Then you can select the Create Audience option from the Create Audience drop-down and select the Lookalike Audience option.
Facebook will then prompt you for the source it should use to create this new Lookalike audience, as well as the location and audience size to target. In this example, we will use our newly created custom audience with LTV values and select the United States as the country or region we wish to target. Finally, we will select the Audience Size of 1 to target users who most closely match our participant list. 
Finally, when we are finished, we will select the Create Audience button and Facebook will begin the process of creating a lookalike audience.
You will now have a list of users you can target that most closely matches your existing participants, and Facebook will prioritize its targeting to focus on the participants who have paid the highest total race fees for your race. In your Ad Creation, we recommend using location targeting (particularly if you have a race that draws mostly from a small regional area and is unlikely to attract travelers) and/or combining your audience with other interests that you know tend to match audiences that frequently convert for your event.
In our example, the event uploaded 4,445 participants and Facebook was able to match those participants to approximately 3,700 existing Facebook accounts.