How to Set Up a Facebook Retargeting Ads Campaign

When promoting a business, social media has become an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. From Instagram to Twitter, social platforms allow a company to increase brand awareness, directly connect with customers, and ultimately boost sales numbers.

This is particularly the case with Facebook. According to the latest statistics, over 2.6 billion people actively use Facebook each month. That means unless you are targeting the Amish community, pretty much your entire audience can be found on this platform. As a result, your business must have a strong Facebook presence.

There are, of course, several different approaches to take with Facebook-based marketing. Simply making regular posts on the platform and interacting with users can go a long way to positively promoting your brand. Yet one of the most effective approaches is to use Facebook Ads.

As with any other type of ad marketing approach, paid advertising can deliver instant results for your business. Although for this to happen, it requires plenty of work and savvy. You cannot expect to throw money at something and simply expect automatic results.

In that regard, one of the most practical approaches to take is with the use of Facebook retargeting ads. What are retargeting ads? What benefits do they supply? How can they be implemented? This comprehensive guide will provide the answers.

So, without further delay…

Remember the point about cookies from before? Well, this is where they come into play. When someone has visited your website during a set time frame, they will possess that all-important ‘cookie’, and you can retarget them with your ads.

For the magic to happen, it’s necessary to install a component known as a Facebook pixel. This is a snippet of code that is pasted within your site’s code, and it allows you to accurately track visitors – including what actions they take while browsing your online store or Facebook. These actions include what pages they visit on your website, the products they added to their basket yet failed to purchase, and the Facebook Ads they viewed before landing on your site.

With these types of details at your disposal, you have the option to truly customize your retargeting efforts. As an example, say your business is one that sells computers. Now instead of producing ads that advertise your store, on the whole, you only want to promote your laptop section. Well, you can set up a Website Traffic audience where it only targets the people that have previously visited your website pages with “laptop” in the URL. Ultimately, you can zone in on specific users and increase conversion rates in the process.

Sadly, this option is only available to those who have a dedicated app to represent their business. Although if you do have an established mobile app – or even game – this is a wise method for collecting user data and utilizing it for retargeting purposes.

As with Website Traffic, this type of Custom Audience is also great for targeting specific people based on their behavior. This data is captured by Facebook’s very own software development kit (SDK), which is essentially the app equivalent of the Facebook pixel, as mentioned above.

With this data, you can again go in various different routes with your ads campaign. For instance, say you have a consumer that places an item in their “wish list”. You can use ads that will promote the particular wish list product to the consumer, and you can drive engagement levels up by incorporating, say, a limited-time discount.

If you are not comfortable with setting up Facebook pixel or SDK, Facebook/Instagram Engagement could well be the Custom Audience option for you.

As the name implies, Facebook/Instagram Engagement only focuses on information collected directly from these social media platforms. Naturally, this means there are various ways in which you can reach users based on the way they have engaged with your Instagram or Facebook Page. If they have sent a message, watched one of your videos, simply viewed your Page, etc. – these are the people you can then focus on with your retargeting ads.

If you run a physical store or sell to customers’ in-person, you might only collect information via traditional means. Thankfully, even in this situation, you can still create a Custom Audience with the Offline Activity option.

As you would expect, there are a variety of advantages when it comes to utilizing Facebook retargeting ads. If you require any convincing, consider the following points:

As with any type of marketing strategy, you are ultimately aiming to boost brand awareness and visibility. This is no different with a Facebook retargeting ads campaign.

Now you might be wondering how this works. After all, these are retargeted customers you are aiming at. They have already been on your website, app, or Facebook page, which means they are aware of your business in some form.

However, retargeting ads assists with keeping your brand in the limelight. Consumers may have previously been aware of what you have to offer, but it only takes a few days for your business to escape from their consciousness. With these ads, your brand remains at the forefront of their minds

It is not uncommon for a business to waste their precious ad budget on campaigns that yield no results. After all, trying to run a successful ad strategy is far from easy – otherwise, every business would be throwing their money at this form of marketing.

If you are targeting those who have already shown a degree of interest, however, the chances of success go up a level or two. Your ads are not being directed to random people on the internet. They are being placed right in front of people who already know you exist, the type who may have already contemplated making a purchase in the past.

The result: your ads expenditure will generally convey a much better return on investment.

A generic ad is always going to struggle to grab any attention. These days, people are conditioned to simply ignore any digital advertisements – also known as banner blindness –so a by-the-numbers design is not going to turn impressions into conversions.

This is where retargeting can come in particularly handy. You can design ads which are explicitly created with a user in mind. This means you can display the right type of ads for the right people, and this type of customized content always produces results.

Plus, you do not have to put in the effort of creating ideal matches – Facebook will automatically identify the products a potential customer is likely to have the most interest in overall.

You have done it. After all the effort of tracking a user and retargeting them with a specialized ad, they have finally decided to part with their cash and purchase something from your store. While this is great, obviously, it also presents another opportunity to squeeze even more money out of a customer.

Did you know a repeat customer is likely to spend 300% more than a new customer? This is because a customer has a vested interest in your business. If they enjoy the products or services you serve up, they will likely be happy to come back to the table for seconds.

By placing a Facebook pixel on your ‘Thank You for Your Purchase’ page, you can quickly build up a list of customers for retargeting. This means that, instead of targeting them with a regular dose of ads that would be ineffective at this point (and cause a portion of your ad budget to go to waste), you can particularly focus on upselling and ways to entice them back for additional sales.

Thanks to the tools supplied by Facebook, this method of retargeting is made easy. Simply build up your audience, create the right type of ads, and let Facebook do the rest. Still not convinced it is straightforward to do. Just read the next section about getting a campaign up and running.