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A practical guide to Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences and ad campaigns built specifically for joinery businesses, furniture makers, kitchen fitters and bespoke woodworkers.
You don't need a big marketing budget to win new clients. What you need is to put your craftsmanship in front of the right people, homeowners planning a renovation, property developers fitting out a new build, or interior designers looking for a trusted maker to recommend to their clients.
Facebook gives you the tools to do exactly that. With over 40 million users in the UK alone, it's one of the most powerful platforms for reaching people at the precise moment they're thinking about improving their home or workspace and because it's visual, it's built for trades like yours.
This guide focuses on two of Facebook's most powerful and most underused targeting features: Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.
By the end of this guide you'll know how to:
Set up a strong Facebook Business Page to build trust and attract the right customers.
Before running any ads, you need a properly set-up a Facebook Business Page. This is your shopfront. When someone sees your ad and clicks through, your Page needs to do the job of converting curiosity into an enquiry.
Make sure your Page includes:
This is a small piece of code you install on your website. It runs in the background and tracks who visits your site and what pages they visit.
Once the Pixel is live, it will start collecting information and building audience data within days. The longer it runs, the more powerful your targeting becomes.
Without the Pixel, you can't retarget website visitors, you can't see how many enquiries your ads generate, and you can't build the audiences that make Facebook ads genuinely effective. Install it before you spend a single penny on advertising.
Use Ads Manager for precise targeting and results and avoid relying solely on Boosted Posts.
You've probably seen the blue 'Boost Post' button under your Facebook posts. It's tempting, it's quick and easy. Boosting Posts is a simplified tool with very limited targeting options. For the advanced audience features in this guide, you need Ads Manager.
Boost Post
Ads Manager
Access Ads Manager at adsmanager.facebook.com. If you haven't used it before, spend 10 minutes exploring the interface before you start building campaigns.
The more specific you are about your ideal client, the less you waste and the more you win.
Before you spend anything on ads, it's worth getting clear on who you're actually trying to reach. Trade businesses often assume their audience is 'anyone who wants nice furniture' but the more specific you can be, the better your results.
Your ideal customers typically fall into one or more of these categories:
Homeowners renovating kitchens or bathrooms are looking for bespoke fitted furniture, quality over flat-pack
Homeowners doing full property renovations are looking for multiple pieces: wardrobes, studies, utility rooms
Property developers (small to mid-scale) are looking for reliable trade partner for multiple units
Interior designers are looking for a trusted maker to recommend to their clients
Architects and contractors are looking for qauality joinery for commercial or residential projects
Commercial clients (offices, hospitality) are looking for custom reception desks, built-in storage, fit-out joinery
One of the most important concepts in Facebook advertising is the distinction between warm and cold audiences.
People who already know you. They've visited your website, watched one of your videos, liked your Facebook page, sent you a message, or been a customer in the past. These people are far more likely to enquire because they've already had some contact with your brand.
People who've never heard of you. They need to be introduced to your work before they'll consider making an enquiry. This is where Lookalike Audiences come in, they let you reach cold audiences who are statistically similar to your best customers.
Your customer list, your website visitors, your video viewers, or people who have interacted with your social media.
A Custom Audience is a group of people you define based on information you already have. Facebook matches this data to real user accounts so you can show ads specifically to those people.
Think of it like this: instead of putting a flyer through every door in a neighbourhood and hoping for the best, you're hand-delivering it to the specific homes of people who have already expressed interest in what you do.
Build these four audiences first and you'll have the foundation every effective Facebook campaign is built on.
Export your customer records from names, email addresses, phone numbers and even location address to a simple Excel or Google spreadsheet. Facebook matches these details to user accounts and creates an audience of your real past customers.
This is incredibly powerful for two reasons: you can run ads specifically to past clients to generate repeat business or referrals and more importantly you can use this list as the source for a Lookalike Audience.
Once your Pixel is installed, Facebook automatically tracks everyone who visits your website. You can then create audiences based on specific behaviour:
If you post videos of your workshop process, project walkthroughs, or finished installations on Facebook or Instagram, you can create audiences of people who watched them even if they've never been to your website.
Facebook lets you segment by how much of the video they watched: 25%, 50%, 75% or 95%. Someone who watched 75% of a 90-second project reveal video is clearly interested in your work.
This audience captures everyone who has interacted with your Facebook or Instagram presence in the last year. People who liked a post, commented, shared, clicked a link or sent you a direct message.
These are warm leads who have shown genuine interest. They may not have visited your website yet but they're already familiar with your brand and work.
Follow this process in Ads Manager and your Custom Audiences will be ready to use across every campaign you run.
Upload your customer list and let Facebook find thousands of people who match the same profile.
A Lookalike Audience is Facebook's way of finding new potential customers who share the same characteristics and behaviours as your existing ones. You provide a 'source audience' which is your most up-to date customer list or your best website visitors and Facebook analyses that data to identify common traits: demographics, interests, online behaviours and purchase patterns.
It then searches its entire user base to find people who match that profile but have never heard of you. These are your most likely future customers.
Traditional interest-based targeting (e.g. targeting people who are "interested in interior design") relies on Facebook's broad category tags. Lookalike Audiences are superior as they are built from your actual customers making them far more precise and far more likely to convert into real enquiries.
The quality of your Lookalike Audience depends entirely on the quality of your source audience.
The best sources, in order of effectiveness:
If you can only do one thing: export your customer email list and use that as your source. Even a small list of past customers will generate a useful Lookalike Audience.
Before you upload your customer list to Facebook, note down how much each customer has spent with you in total.
When you export your customer list to upload to Facebook, most businesses do the bare minimum: name, email address, maybe a phone number. That's a good start. But there's a significantly more powerful way to build your Customer List Audience and almost nobody does it.
Before you upload your customer list to Facebook, add an extra column to your spreadsheet: total order value. Go back through your records, your invoicing software, spreadsheets or job management system and note down how much each customer has spent with you in total.
Your spreadsheet should look something like this:
| First Name | Last Name | Phone | Total Spend (£) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shay | Ali | shayekul@email.com | +447700000000 | £13,080 |
| James | Clarke | james@email.com | +447700900000 | £6,200 |
When uploading your customer list to Facebook, the more information you provide, the better the results you’re likely to see. At a minimum, you can upload email addresses, which is the most basic and commonly used identifier.
You don’t have to include both email addresses and phone numbers, but adding multiple data points can significantly improve how accurately Facebook matches your customers to user profiles. If you do include phone numbers, it is required to be formatted using the international dialling code (for example, +447980000000), as this helps ensure they are recognised and matched correctly.
Meta algorithms use this information to better understand and target audiences that are similar to your existing customers, helping you reach people who are more likely to be valuable to your business.
You can also include details like postcode, city and other relevant information. The more complete your dataset, the more effectively Facebook can match and optimise your audience for better targeting and campaign performance.
Facebook's algorithm doesn't just match your list to user accounts, it can use the value column to weight your audience. This is called a 'Value-Based Lookalike Audience'. Instead of finding people who simply look like your average customer, Facebook prioritises finding people who look like your highest-spending customers.
For a bespoke joinery or cabinetry business, that distinction is everything. A customer who spent £15,000 on a full kitchen fit-out is a fundamentally different prospect to someone who ordered a single shelf unit. With value data included, Facebook builds a Lookalike Audience skewed towards the clients who are worth the most to your business not just the most numerous.
When creating your Custom Audience in Ads Manager, choose 'Customer List' as your source. Facebook will ask whether your list includes a column for customer value. Select yes, map the value column accordingly, and Facebook will handle the rest.
If you don't have exact figures to hand, even an approximate value is better than nothing. Segment your customers into rough tiers for example, under £5,000, £5,000–£10,000 and £10,000+ and assign a representative number to each.
An imperfect value signal still outperforms no signal at all.
When you create a Lookalike Audience, Facebook will display a scale slider and asks you to choose between 1% and 10%.
1% Lookalike: the most similar to your current source audience. Smaller, but higher quality. Best for most trade businesses.
2–5% Lookalike: broader match, useful for scaling campaigns once you've proved the 1% works.
6–10% Lookalike: very broad. Useful for awareness campaigns to large geographic areas but lower precision.
Start with a 1% Lookalike and select to add location targeting. This gives you the highest quality match within your actual service area. A 1% Lookalike in the UK still represents around 400,000 people.
Quickly create a Lookalike Audience in Ads Manager to reach new users similar to your best customers.
Target within your service radius so every penny reaches someone you can actually work for.
This is critical for trade businesses. Most joinery and furniture making companies operate within a specific geographic radius and targetting clients 200 miles away is unproductive. When you use your Lookalike Audience in a campaign, always add location targeting on top.
In your Ad Set settings, under 'Audience', layer your Lookalike Audience with:
A cabinetry company based in Bristol might target their 1% Customer List Lookalike within a 40-mile radius, covering Bristol, Bath, Swindon, Gloucester and surrounding areas.
Layer your audiences together to eliminate wasted spend and make every campaign work harder.
Once you have a few Custom and Lookalike Audiences built, you can combine them to create more advance targeting:
You don't need to spend a fortune. Facebook advertising can generate real results on modest budgets particularly when your targeting is tight.
Recommended budget guidelines for Facebook Ads
For most joinery or cabinetry businesses, a practical starting point is a combined budget of £5–£15 per day, split across an awareness campaign (Lookalike Audience) and a retargeting campaign (website visitors). Run for 4 weeks, review results and then adjust.
Important: Avoid increasing any campaign budget by more than 20% at a time. Larger jumps can trigger Facebook’s algorithm to seek a broader audience, potentially leading to lower quality clicks.
Give each campaign at least 7–14 days before judging results. Facebook’s algorithm needs time to optimise who sees your ads. Turning campaigns off too early is one of the most common mistakes new advertisers make.
Tip: If a campaign is performing well, you don’t always need to adjust it. Instead, duplicate the campaign with the same ads and test a slightly larger budget to scale performance without disrupting the original campaign.
The best targeting in the world won't save a bad ad. Your work is inherently visual and visual content performs.
Nothing performs better for trade businesses than a well-photographed transformation. Show the empty room or tired kitchen, then reveal the finished result. Tip: Use consistent lighting and angles for before and after shots to make the transformation more striking. Adding a subtle “before/after slider” effect in social posts or stories can increase engagement even more.
Videos that showcase the installation process, craftsmanship details, or a final walkthrough consistently outperform static images in reach and engagement. You don’t need professional filming; a modern smartphone held steady is sufficient. For smoother results, consider a cheap gimbal or tripod. Ideas for videos:
Highlight the small details that demonstrate your skill and quality. A hand-cut dovetail joint, a perfectly mitred corner, or a bespoke cabinet handle communicates craftsmanship better than a wide room shot alone. Tip: Use natural light where possible and experiment with shallow depth-of-field to make details pop.
Short video testimonials from happy clients are highly effective, especially on Facebook, where social proof carries significant weight. Even a 30-second clip with a client saying, “We’ve had so many compliments on the kitchen!” can outperform polished brand ads. Additional ideas:
These strategies not only make your work stand out visually but also help potential clients instantly understand your quality, style and reliability.
Your copy should lead with the transformation or outcome, not the product.
Effective ad copy isn’t just about sounding good, it’s about guiding the reader toward action. Every word should have a purpose: to inform, intrigue, or persuade.
For audiences who don’t yet know your brand, stick to 1–2 concise sentences. Focus on capturing attention quickly with a compelling benefit or visual hook. Example:
For users who already know your brand, you can afford more detail. Highlight benefits, craftsmanship, or social proof:
End with a directive that tells your audience exactly what to do next. Examples:
Pro Tip: Always tailor your ad copy to the stage of the customer journey from awareness, consideration, or decision. Use short, attention-grabbing copy for new audiences and more detailed, benefit-driven messaging for those already familiar with your brand. The more specific and relatable your messaging, the higher your engagement and conversion rates.
Testing Tip: You can also run small ad campaigns to test different headlines and CTAs to see which performs best before scaling. When A/B testing copy, keep the image the same within the ad group so that results focus solely on the impact of the text. This ensures your insights are accurate and actionable.
☐ Facebook Business Page set up with logo and banner photo
☐ At least 10 posts showing your work published on your Page
☐ Facebook Pixel installed on every page of your website including if you have any subdomains
☐ Pixel verified as working using the Meta Business Center - Events Manager
☐ Access to Facebook Ads Manager confirmed
☐ Customer email/phone list exported and saved as CSV
☐ Customer List Custom Audience created in Ads Manager
☐ Website Visitors Custom Audience created (all visitors, last 90 days)
☐ Page/Instagram Engagers Custom Audience created
☐ 1% Lookalike Audience created from customer list
☐ Awareness campaign created targeting 1% Lookalike + location radius
☐ Retargeting campaign created targeting website visitors
☐ Customer project photos or video selected for ad creative
☐ Ad copy written with clear CTA
☐ Budget set and campaign launch date confirmed
☐ Calendar reminder set for 14-day review
Facebook Pixel
A snippet of code installed on your website that tracks visitor behaviour and feeds data back to Facebook for targeting and measurement.
Custom Audience
An audience you create from data you already have: customer lists, website visitors, video viewers, or social media engagers.
Lookalike Audience
A new audience Facebook creates by finding users who share the same characteristics as your Custom Audience source.
Retargeting
Showing ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your content.
Ad Set
The layer within a campaign where you define your audience, budget, placement and schedule.
Campaign Objective
The goal you set for a campaign e.g., awareness, traffic, lead generation, or conversions.
CPM
Cost Per 1,000 Impressions. How much you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown.
CPC
Cost Per Click. How much you pay each time someone clicks on your ad.
Learning Phase
The period (usually the first 7–14 days) when Facebook's algorithm is optimising who to show your ad to. Avoid making major changes during this time.
Audience Fatigue
When an audience has seen your ad too many times and stops responding usually time to refresh your creative.
