Have you ever wondered how those Facebook ads know exactly what item you were looking at on your favorite e-commerce site or even what blog you read then see an invitation to join the email list? 

The answer is simple: Facebook Retargeting!

What is Facebook Retargeting?

Facebook Retargeting is a form of online advertising that finds and attempts to bring back Facebook users to your site. When done correctly, a Facebook retargeting campaign can entice more customers to follow through with their intent and ultimately increase your business’s bottom line. Jitesh Keswani, CEO of E-Intelligence, told us “It is one of the smartest techniques businesses can use to grow their business.”

For instance, if you are struggling with conversions(purchase event intent) and the ever-growing cart abandonment epidemic, you’re not alone in your struggles running an online business. The attention span of the daily visitor is diminishing every single day. 

In the same respect, most common e-commerce sales funnel struggles with cart abandonment rates(this is when somebody leaves your site after adding a product to the cart), checkout drop-off rates(when somebody doesn’t finish the transaction by not clicking buy after entering their credit card information), and purchase conversion rates(when you get to a thank you page that confirms your purchase) are on the rise as more visitors drop off for one reason or another.

Did you ever think that this was a problem for your business? 

In fact, here are some stunning numbers about why you should implement a retargeting strategy in your digital marketing campaigns: 

  • Only 2% of website visitors convert during their first visit.
  • That 72% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart and only 8% of those lost consumers return to complete the purchase
  • Retargeted ads are 76% more likely to get clicks on Facebook than regular ad campaigns. 

Through Facebook’s ever-powerful tracking pixel, you can identify site visitors who bounced, and then you can run a targeted ad based on which action they took(reading a certain blog post or cart abandonment). For example, you could offer a Facebook-exclusive coupon code or some sort of lead magnet/content upgrade to incentivize them to complete their necessary action on your site.

Did you know effective targeting starts with understanding how Custom Audiences work? The basics of Facebook retargeting are remarkably simple. You get an opportunity to re-engage with people who came to your e-commerce website but did not make a purchase. Maybe you offer them a discount, or free shipping (why not A/B test both and see which one works best?). Kyle Battis with NH Strategic Marketing explained how this works stating that “The reason it works so well is that it is very targeted advertising with ads showing only to people, who have demonstrated by their behavior, that they are interested in what our clients have to offer. Staying top of mind and getting them to come back to their site from Facebook often yields new leads and customers for the business.”

Whichever way it is that you choose to remarket to your potential customers on Facebook, you’ll need to start somewhere. Here’s a handy beginner guide to creating and understanding Facebook retargeting audiences that will get you on your way to creating stellar remarketing campaigns that will help your sales take off.

Ben Culpin with WakeUpData weighed in saying “In an ideal scenario, all of your site’s visitors would decide to purchase your products or sign up for your services the very first time they venture onto your website. But this will always be wishful thinking, because the truth is that only a small fraction of your website traffic will become your one-time, let alone lifetime customers. And that is exactly why remarketing should be a part of the digital marketing strategy for your business.”

6 Custom Audiences To Use For Facebook Retargeting

When you’re ready to set up your Facebook retargeting campaign, try to use these six custom audiences depending on your vertical. Note that these instructions assume that you already have a Facebook account for business ads.

1. Website Visitors

You’ll want to add an audience for website visitors for 180 days. This is best if you want traffic to come back to your site for any particular reason such as lead generation like taking traffic to contact us section on your page. The users are already familiar with your brand. 

2. Engaged With Facebook Page

Again, you’ll want to create an audience that is familiar with your brand but may have not been to your website at all but an audience that has liked, commented or shared any of your Facebook content. You can understand that this is a very important audience to create as it one of the warmest audiences that you will ever have. 

3. Email Lists

You have some great options here for retargeting, we’re going to focus on email lists and segmentation. At some point, a visitor submitted their email either to be contacted or perhaps a coupon but you have it with their permission to be used.

If you have more than one list to upload to Facebook that is even better since you can create multiple custom audiences based on your funnel like general email subscribers(perhaps a monthly newsletter), coupon subscribers, and past purchasers. As you see each list is warmer than its predecessor and you can use each list to target the other to move them further along your funnel. 

4. Watched Videos

The next Facebook retargeting audience you’ll be able to create is Facebook users who have watched videos on your page or in your ads regardless of what action they took by clicking to go to your site or not. Seen below, how to create certain segments that mean the most to your business. 

Just to show you how it looks, we set up a custom audience targeting people who have watched 25% of selected LSEO videos that are on our Facebook page(see what I did there(you’re now a part of the audience)). As you can see below, you can target a date range, give it a name, and you’re ready to get started.

5. Attended Events

Another potential audience for Facebook retargeting is to create an audience of those who have attended or who are interested in an event you created. You’ll be able to select multiple events similar to the videos watched. From there you choose the timeline and finally name your audience.

6. Sales Intent 

If you haven’t already figured it out the next audience is for those who have e-commerce sites. As mentioned earlier in this post you can retarget those who have progressed through your sales funnel but have not completed a purchase. You can really get granular when you segment those who have looked at an item vs those who have added to cart and so forth. The best part is when you create your ads you can tailor the message per segmentation to grab the user’s attention. 

Making Your Facebook Retargeting Campaigns Successful

If you are planning to get the most of your Facebook strategy and to have the best results you will have to make sure that you are getting the most attention from the audience you are targeting. To do so you will have to give them a very good and specific reason to come back into your sales funnel.

First of all things you will have meticulously plan your campaigns well ahead of time to fully penetrate your audience. You have to think about what exactly you want your audience to do, whether it be to retarget those who signed up for coupons, but didn’t purchase any products? Maybe someone checked out a blog on your website but didn’t subscribe to your email list. You could retarget these folks with an ad offering free shipping or an exclusive piece of content. James Jason with Mitrade told us that “Statistics show that a targeted ad has over 75% more likelihood of getting clicks than a regular campaign ad.”

Once you have that all set up you’ll know what to do, you’ll create a Facebook retargeting ad that will catch the attention of the user and then they’ll complete the action. This is just the basics, but you’ve got a great handle of the situation. 

And now you’re ready to go!