Facebook is the largest social network that has over a billion users worldwide. It’s no secret that they have a treasure trove of data that marketers can use to make sure that they get the most out of their ad budgets.
From beginners to seasoned professionals, Facebook is an unmatched tool in every digital marketer’s arsenal.
So how does one utilize it to make sure the right people see your ads at the right place and the right time? The Facebook Pixel.
In a sea of strangers on the internet, the Facebook Pixel makes it possible to easily tag customers that have accessed information on your owned channels. Most importantly, it can do everything from building custom audiences, optimizing campaigns through dynamic ads to tracking how well your campaigns perform.
When used correctly, it can not only make your campaigns more efficient but also more effective. One powerful method that digital marketers can use Facebook Pixels to exceed their targets is through retargeting.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting is a reminder to your customers that you exist, even after they have left your online space. It is a strategy that marketers utilize to follow up on a potential lead either that did not convert upon the first touch or have already shown a history of purchase.
Often used interchangeably with remarketing, they are different in one particular way: channel. Retargeting uses cookies through a pixel on a website that helps determine whether or not a customer should see an ad. Often, it comes in the form of a native or display ads. Remarketing utilizes lead generation methods such as acquiring contact details from offers and creating segmented email lists.
4 Easy Steps to Step Up Your Retargeting Campaign
While it may seem overwhelming at first, the Facebook Pixel makes retargeting easy and achievable even for new marketers.
From integrated platforms to easy to use ad management, maximizing ad spend is only a few clicks away.
Here are four easy steps to set up your retargeting campaign for success:
- Install the Facebook Pixel
- Create a Custom Audience list
- Add your Custom Audience to your ad set
- Launch your campaign
Are you ready for your retargeting campaign to hit the ground running? Read on.
Install the Facebook Pixel
There are two main ways to install the Facebook Pixel into your website – one-click platform integration or adding a simple line of code to your site header.
We won’t cover the installation of the Pixel in depth in this post, as we’ve already written another post dedicated to it.
Platform Integration
Facebook has partnered with several platforms that can integrate your channels with Facebook Pixel easily. With just a few clicks, you can have your Facebook Pixel up and running in minutes.
At the time of this writing, Facebook has integrations which most major platforms – so it is highly unlikely yours isn’t included in the list.
If your web platform or CMS system is not above, do not worry. The second way can be just as convenient.
Manual Installation
In this method, a short Javascript code is added to your website header manually. This method does require some more advanced technical skills, and you might need a developer to help you out.
Despite having a little more steps than the previous way, it gives you the option to add event codes that can help Facebook keep track of specific user interactions.
From adding to cart to abandoning it, you can track and build specific campaigns around customers at every point of their customer journey. After you have used either option to install your Facebook Pixel, you can use the Facebook Pixel Helper extension to validate if the installation was successful.
Create Your Custom Audience List
Custom Audiences are at the heart of every successful retargeting campaign. By knowing exactly which customers already know and trust your brand, you can easily segment your audiences.
Serving customers a relevant content pipeline will make them feel remembered. By giving them exactly what they need throughout their particular stage in the sales, they are more likely to trust your offers and follow through into the next level.
Through marketing to people who already have shown a predisposition to purchase, you are likely to convert them into not just one time paying customers, but lifetime advocates of your brand.
What is a Custom Audience?
Custom Audiences are lists of customers you already know are part of sales pipeline. Whether they have given email addresses, phone numbers, or account details, Facebook will be able to find them and you’ll be able to remind them about your offers through ads, and why they are right for them.
How to Create a Custom Audience
From your Facebook Ad Manager, select Audiences.
From there, click “Create a Custom Audience.”
There are multiple ways to create a Custom Audience, depending on your source of traffic.
In case you wanted to create an audience of users who visited your website, you would click on “Website”…
Select the time window you wish to add users into your list (in this case users who visited in the last 30 days), and name your audience.
You can follow the same process for any of the other audience sources:
- Customer lists
- Website visitors
- Facebook or Instagram engagers
- Users who watched your videos
- And more
Let’s talk about how you can generate each one:
Set Up Your Retargeting Ads
When setting up a retargeting campaign, it’s important to choose the right campaign objective. If you want to get more sales, select “Conversions”.
If you want more traffic, select website traffic. It’s that simple.
Then, in the ad set section, you can select the Custom Audience that you have made in the previous section.
You can also segment your Ad set further into several key factors. Through including or excluding a specific kind of audience based on their geographic location, age, gender, or interests, you can narrow down your target customers who are most likely to convert.
However, when using custom audiences, we recommend to avoid narrowing down your audiences any further, as these are already very qualified users.
Lastly, you can choose the media and captions that you would like to go with your retargeting campaign.
Remember that if you are going to put text on photos, it can only use at most 20% of the image space. If not, this will affect your ad distribution and might prevent it from being seen.
It is always good to customize your selected photos, GIFs of videos based on the particular stage the customer you are targeting is in your sales pipeline.
Why Retargeting is Important
The goal of every marketing campaign is to find customers that will lead to sales. While there are millions of potential customers, only a fraction of them will be ripe for purchase at any given time. Previous marketing or sales qualified leads are like low hanging fruits that are definitely worth the effort.
As more and more competitors enter the online space every day, retargeting is one way to keep your relationship with your existing customers engaged; it is becoming increasingly necessary to continue nurturing customers even after the first sale.
Not only does retargeting maximize existing ad spend by making your campaigns more profitable, but they also make your campaigns smarter. Building a better understanding of your existing customers is necessary for you to know how to approach your new ones.
Closing Thoughts
Getting your retargeting campaigns right is one of the most basic steps to ensure your account’s profitability.
If you’re running most of your account through prospecting campaigns, you can expect that your ROAS will generally be lower. Retargeting can help mitigate that lower ROAS and take your account to a different level.
So how much should you be investing on retargeting campaigns?
Generally speaking – and this changes depending on each account – we usually go for 70%/20%/10% in terms of budget distribution for prospecting, retargeting, and bottom funnel retargeting campaigns.
You might also want to consider an additional budget left to remarket to previous buyers – this is usually a very profitable customer segment, too.
So how will you be setting up your retargeting campaigns?
Did you have any trouble with setting your custom audiences up?
Let us know in the comments below and let’s talk!
