The Power of Retargeting

The Power of Retargeting

First, what IS retargeting or you might have heard it called 'remarketing'? Well, retargeting is when you see a pair of shoes on the Target website and those shoes follow you all.over.the.internet. until you buy them. It's partly due to that powerful Facebook pixel that we have placed on our websites, landing pages, etc. 

Retargeting is an amazing strategy to use when running Facebook ads and it should be included in your ad campaigns. There are many ways to retarget. You can retarget based on website visits, engagement and even your customer files (email lists).

Here are just a few ways you can retarget people:

• Retarget people who visit your landing page but don’t opt in

• Retarget people who visited your sales page

• Retarget people who have visited certain pages on your website

• Retarget people who have messaged your Facebook page

• Retarget people who have spent a certain amount of time on your website

• Retarget people who have engaged with your Facebook posts or ads

• Retarget people who have engaged with your Facebook page

• Retarget people who’ve watched your videos or FB lives

• Retarget people who have expressed interest or are going to an event

• Retarget people who have clicked a call to action button

So, how do you retarget?

Step 1: Make sure your Facebook pixel is placed on your website, landing pages and thank you pages. For some of these retargeting options you don’t need the pixel but get it on there anyway.  

Step 2: Create your audiences. Inside Ads Manager go to:

Ads Manager>3 lines (AKA the Hamburger)>All Tools>Audiences>Create Audience>Custom Audience

(If you use business manager it will bring you to your “Asset Library”)

Once you select custom audience you’ll have a few options:

My screen currently appears like this. I highlighted the ones I use frequently. 

Customer File: This is where you’ll upload an email list so you can run ads to your list (or create a Look-a-like audience of that list)

Website Traffic: This is where you’ll build audiences of website traffic (ie. People getting to your landing page, people visiting a blog post)

App Activity: I’ve never used this one but this would be for people who are developing or promoting apps

Offline Activity: This is more for those businesses who have instore purchases. What you do is upload a list of purchases you received in store and compare it to the data inside of facebook to see if any of your ads attributed to those sales. Again, more for local businesses.

Engagement: This is where you’ll see TONS of options like people who’ve engaged with your page, posts, ads, videos, lead forms, etc.

Step 3: Once you’ve built your audiences you’ll need to wait until they are large enough to retarget to. Generally, it must be more than 20. When you’re ready to retarget, place your custom audiences inside the Ad Set level (make sure to exclude people who you DON’T want to see the ad (like people who already purchased, maybe your list depending on your goal, etc) and you’re set.

That's it. Now you're ready to run your ads. Retargeting is really powerful because it keeps your ads front and center and reminds your warm audiences that they need to take action. 

PRO TIPS:

1) If your retargeting audience is small you don’t need more than $5-$10 to target them. You will reach them with that size budget.

2) If your retargeting audience is small also keep an eye on your frequency score. You don’t want to over saturate your audience and as it could annoy them and they might mark it as spam. If your frequency creeps up (around 3-4) change out the image and run a new ad to them.

3) Consider using the 'reach' ad objective when you retarget if the audience is small (under 50K) because your goal is to reach as many people in that audience as possible.