How do you retargeting using Facebook ads?

Retargeting with Facebook ads is a highly effective strategy for businesses to reconnect with website visitors or customers who have previously interacted with your brand. By showing relevant ads to people who have already expressed interest in your products or services, retargeting helps turn website visitors into paying customers.

What is Facebook Retargeting?

Facebook retargeting, also known as remarketing, allows you to show ads specifically to people who have already visited your website, shopped for your products, watched your videos, or taken other actions that indicate interest in your business. For example, if someone visits your website but leaves without making a purchase, you can show ads to that person around the web to remind them about your products and offer incentives to complete the purchase.

Retargeting works by placing Facebook pixels, conversion pixels, or other tracking code on your website. This allows Facebook to track and collect data on visitor actions. Then, Facebook uses this data to show your ads to the same visitors when they are on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or third-party sites and apps in the Facebook Audience Network.

Benefits of Facebook Retargeting

There are many benefits to using Facebook retargeting as part of your digital marketing strategy:

• Increased Conversion Rates – Retargeting leads to higher conversion rates because you are marketing to people who have already shown interest.
• Improved ROI – You can achieve a greater return on your advertising investment by focusing budgets on high-intent audiences.
• Brand Familiarity – Repeated exposure to your ads and brand through retargeting boosts familiarity and trust.
• Flexible Targeting – Facebook offers detailed targeting options to tailor your audience.
• Remarketing Across Devices – You can remarket across devices for a seamless experience.
• Detailed Analytics – Track conversions and optimize your campaigns.

How to Setup Facebook Retargeting

Here are the key steps to implement Facebook retargeting:

1. Install the Facebook pixel on your website – This allows Facebook to track visitors.
2. Create a Facebook Custom Audience – Build an audience of website visitors to target.
3. Design effective Facebook ads – Craft compelling creatives tailored to your goals.
4. Set up a campaign – Choose campaign objective, audience, placements, and budget.
5. Monitor and optimize – Analyze performance data to refine your approach.

Let’s explore each of these steps in more detail:

Install the Facebook Pixel

The first step is to install the Facebook pixel on your website. The Facebook pixel is a small snippet of JavaScript code that allows Facebook to track activity on your website. It should be installed on every page of your website that you want to collect data from.

Here are some key steps for implement Facebook pixel:

• Copy the Facebook pixel code from your Facebook Ads Manager account.
• Paste the code before the </head> tag on every page of your website.
• Make sure the code is implemented correctly across all pages and your website CMS platform.
• Test that the Facebook pixel is firing correctly using the Facebook Pixel Helper browser extension.

With the Facebook pixel implemented, you’ll be able to track page views, add to carts, purchases, and other conversion events.

Create a Facebook Custom Audience

Once your Facebook pixel is installed and collecting data, you can create a Custom Audience based on website traffic and engagement. Here are the steps:

1. In your Facebook Ads Manager account, go to the Audiences dashboard.
2. Click “+ Create Audience” and choose “Custom Audience”.
3. Select the data source as “Website Traffic”.
4. Choose the category that fits your goal, such as Purchase History or Add to Carts.
5. Set your desired audience specs such as date range, specific pages, frequency, etc.
6. Give your audience a name and click “Create Audience”.

Facebook will then build your audience and deliver your ads to the specific website visitors included in that audience. You can create multiple Custom Audiences for different parts of the sales funnel.

Design Effective Facebook Ads

Creating compelling, relevant ads tailored to your retargeting goals is crucial for success. Here are some tips for designing effective retargeting ads:

• Personalize your creative and messaging for the audience’s past site behavior.
• Use dynamic product ads to showcase specific products they viewed.
• Remind audiences of items left in their carts with incentives to purchase.
• Offer special discounts, promo codes, or free shipping for your remarketing audience.
• Keep ad copy concise, clear, and focused on the customer’s intent.
• Craft attention-grabbing headlines and visuals tailored for each audience.
• A/B test different images, copy, calls-to-action, and layouts.

Set Up Your Facebook Retargeting Campaign

When setting up your Facebook retargeting campaign, you’ll choose the campaign objective, budget, schedule, audiences, placements, and more. Follow these tips:

• Choose a conversion-focused objective like Traffic or Conversions.
• Start with a daily budget that aligns with your revenue goals and cost per conversion.
• Schedule your campaign to run continuously so it keeps remarketing.
• Target your custom audiences of previous site visitors.
• Place ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
• Set up conversion tracking so you can optimize for conversions.

Keeping campaign budgets, creatives, audiences, and placements aligned with your conversion goals will maximize your ROI.

Monitor and Optimize Your Campaigns

Analyzing the performance of your retargeting campaigns and refining your approach is crucial for improving results over time. Follow these tips:

• Regularly review campaign reporting and analytics in Ads Manager.
• Monitor conversion rates and costs per conversion.
• Identify best-performing audiences, creatives, and placements.
• Eliminate low-performing elements that are wasting budget.
• Set up A/B tests to trial new concepts.
• Adjust targeting, bids, budgets, and ad schedules as needed.
• Leverage Facebook’s automated optimization tools.

Continual testing, iteration, and optimization will ensure your remarketing strategy stays effective and drives the strongest return on ad spend over time.

Retargeting Creative Best Practices

Your visuals and copy have a major impact on the success of your retargeting ads. Here are some top creative best practices:

• Highlight discounts or promotions specifically for your remarketing audience.
• Use dynamic product ads to showcase products they viewed or added to cart.
• Remind audiences of items left in their carts.
• Featuring user-generated content like reviews or testimonials can boost confidence.
• Try pairing product images with lifestyle imagery to spur aspiration.
• Tie your branding clearly across creative elements for brand reinforcement.
• Ensure ads are consistent with the look and feel of your website and products.
• Adapt creatives, offers, and messaging for different customer segments.

Testing different images, videos, copy, layouts, colors, and more will reveal what resonates best with your audiences.

Measuring Your Retargeting ROI

Tracking key metrics is important for understanding the return on investment from your retargeting campaigns. Metrics to monitor include:

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – Average cost each time someone clicks your ad.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – Clicks divided by impressions.
• Cost Per Conversion – The average spend to achieve a conversion.
• Conversion Rate – Conversions divided by reach.
• Revenue – Total sales revenue achieved from conversions.

Compare these metrics to your baseline non-retargeted campaigns and prior retargeting performance to identify positive trends. Over time, tweaking your targeting, creatives, and placements to optimize these metrics will maximize your ROI.

Retargeting Do’s and Don’ts

Here are some key best practices to follow – and pitfalls to avoid – when setting up Facebook retargeting:

Do:

• Retarget audiences who have shown clear intent signals like visiting product pages.
• Offer audience-specific promotions and incentives.
• Ensure your ads are privacy compliant and follow Facebook policies.
• Test retargeting separately from prospecting campaigns.
• Measure incrementality to understand true performance lift.

Don’t:

• Don’t overly retarget audiences to the point of irritation.
• Don’t rely solely on default Facebook audiences, leverage your data.
• Don’t use broad targeting – precision is key.
• Don’t set-and-forget. Continually optimize for better performance.

By keeping these principles in mind, you can maximize the impact of your Facebook retargeting campaigns.

Conclusion

Retargeting with Facebook ads is a proven technique to increase engagement, conversions, and sales from high-intent website visitors. By installing the Facebook pixel, creating custom audiences, running tailored ads, and optimizing based on performance data, businesses can achieve a substantial lift in marketing ROI.

Just remember to track conversion metrics, continually test new concepts, provide audience-specific value, and refine your approach over time. With a strategic retargeting approach, you can turn more website visitors into satisfied, lifelong customers.