If you are not yet running any Facebook retargeting campaigns, you have missed out on a huge goldmine.
For instance, imagine people visiting your website and leaving without making a purchase. You don’t want to let them go that easy! Facebook retargeting can help. In fact, according to one study, retargeted users are 70% more likely to convert compared to cold audiences.
Don’t let your customers go
If you’re interested in setting up Facebook remarketing campaigns and getting a higher ROI (Return on Investment) on your PPC ad strategy, you’ve come to the right place.
This nifty guide will walk you through all the information you need to know about retargeting on Facebook. We’ll cover everything from the set-up basics to expert-level strategies.
As a disclaimer, the more you use Facebook retargeting, the better you’ll become with it. And there is just no substitute for experience.
What is Facebook retargeting?
First, let’s cover the basics — what exactly is Facebook retargeting?
Facebook retargeting is a PPC strategy where you show your ads to people who are familiar with your brand. They’ve either previously visited your website or interacted with your Facebook or Instagram page.
Simply put, retargeting shows your ads to people who already know about you. Its purpose is to try to get them to act.
To better understand remarketing use cases, let’s look at the traditional marketing funnel.
The Marketing Funnel
Traditional marketing funnel
An effective Facebook advertising strategy does more than promote the same ads and offers to everyone. Instead, create a streamlined campaign flow for each funnel step. Specifically:
Awareness: This funnel stage includes the people who are unfamiliar with your product. Your goal should be to educate and show them your offering.
Consideration: Includes people already engaged with your brand or product. Retargeting works great with consideration-stage audiences!
Decision: These are very warm leads or online shoppers; for instance, people who added something to their shopping cart but didn’t purchase. Retargeting them with unique ads significantly increases conversion rates.
Retention: Existing and past customers make up this funnel stage. Continue to engage and delight this group. In particular, show them unique Facebook ads that upsell and promote new products or additional services.
Make the best of each marketing funnel stage.
You can and should set up Facebook ad campaigns for each stage of the funnel. However, remember to approach the set up for each stage type differently.
For example, when a company pops up in your feed, and you’ve never heard of them. You’re unlikely to follow their ad and pull out your wallet.
Facebook retargeting enters the game in the later stages of the funnel. You can’t remarket to someone who’s never seen your ads before, right? Don’t worry. We’ll cover strategies to move them forward in your marketing funnel later in this article.
How does Facebook retargeting work?
Facebook retargeting helps you reach past website visitors (or other custom audiences) with ads. Namely, with ads across Facebook’s ad network, including Instagram.
Here’s remarketing explained in three easy steps:
- A person engages with your brand.
- Facebook algorithms identify that person’s Facebook account.
- The person will see your Facebook ads if they’re part of your retargeting audience.
For example, a person interested in learning a new foreign language online may use Google Search to find a language learning app.
Let’s say they decide to look up Babbel. When they click on the Google Search result, they land on Babbel’s website.
The first step is visiting a website.
However, the person isn’t ready to commit yet. They keep browsing to research other language learning apps. However, this user is a real person, and they forget about Babbel, postponing their language learning plans.
Until one day, they will see this Facebook ad!
Babbel’s Facebook ad
They see it because Babbel set up a retargeting campaign to reach all past website visitors.
The person interested in language learning will go back to Babbel’s website and sign up this time around because of the Facebook ad.
With this example in mind, we can understand why retargeting is one of the most effective (but overlooked) marketing strategies. People are much more likely to purchase from a company that they know than from a random company. This principle is true even when they’re offering the exact same product.
Why should you use Facebook retargeting?
In addition to reaching all the different audiences throughout your marketing funnel, there’s also a much more pragmatic reason for running Facebook retargeting ads: They have very high ROI.
For every dollar that you invest in your remarketing campaigns, you can earn back two or more.
Here are some more impressive remarketing statistics:
- Retargeting reduces cart abandonment by 6.5%.
- 68% of marketing agencies have a special budget for remarketing.
- Retargeting beats all other ad placement strategies with a 1,046% efficiency rate.
- The appeal of a product is the main reason for 37% of customers to click a retargeted ad.
- 67% of retargeters use Facebook Exchange for online advertising.
Furthermore, according to eMarketer, nearly three out of five online buyers in the U.S. notice ads for products they’ve previously looked up on websites.
Why let the opportunity go to waste?
58% of shoppers notice ads for familiar products
But should you use Facebook specifically as your go-to remarketing channel?
The main reason advertisers prefer Facebook as a remarketing channel is its wide reach: Facebook has 2.27 billion active monthly users. That’s a lot of people. Most likely, people who have visited your website also have a Facebook account.
Over half of those people log in every single day. Chances are that a good number of them also fit the first two categories.
Five new profiles are created every second. Additionally, Facebook grows 10% in users each year. The behemoth of a platform is certainly still growing. Is Facebook a valuable part of a marketing strategy? Certainly so!
And the picture looks just as good on Instagram. By combining both Facebook and Instagram ads, you can also reach a younger audience.
Facebook and Instagram have huge user pools
TOP 8 best practices for Facebook retargeting campaigns
While setting up remarketing ads is a fairly straightforward process, there are certain nuances and best practices that professional advertisers and ad agencies use.
And we’re going to share all of them with you as well!
- Keep at least one remarketing campaign live, always
- Test several high-value retargeting audiences
- Ensure a strong message and marketing funnel match
- Set up dynamic remarketing ads
- Include special offers for remarketing audiences
- Do not segment your audiences too much
- Exclude users who already converted
- Keep your eye on the ad frequency
Once you’ve learned all of these pro-level tips and hacks, you’ll be all set for creating your first Facebook retargeting campaign.