How to Use Retargeting on Facebook to Get More Customers

By David Khandrius

We all know that Facebook likes and shares don’t pay the bills. For social media advertising to be profitable leads need to convert to customers. The biggest mistake we see from small business owners that have started running social ads is not properly utilizing retargeting ads. A proper retargeting campaign on social media can make all the difference between an advertising campaign that burns money and one that is profitable.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is the practice of tracking users that have previously visited your website and showing them ads to remind them to come back and convert. On Facebook and Instagram this is possible by using the Facebook pixel. The pixel is a small code snippet that is installed on your website that tracks users that come to your site and makes it easy to show these users ads in the future. Don’t worry – the information is safely tracked by Facebook and no personal user information is ever released. Facebook builds an audience of people that have visited your website and allows you to advertise to this audience – you are not able to see users’ information and the users’ site experience is unaffected.

How to create a retargeting campaign

If you’ve already started running ads for your website – that’s great! You now have traffic coming to your website – but what happens after a user checks out your site and doesn’t convert? This is where retargeting comes in. The first step to creating a successful retargeting campaign is to install the Facebook pixel on your website. After the pixel is installed you will need to allow a few days for it to track traffic that has visited your site and has populated the “website visitors” audience. Once the audience is populated, you can create a Facebook campaign selecting that audience as the “target audience” for your ads. Your ads will now be shown to users that have previously visited your website.

Click here to get RapNet’s list of best practices for increasing engagement on your website.

What makes a retargeting campaign successful?

It’s important to remember that ads for retargeting are talking to a very specific audience. This audience has already visited your website and has left for some reason. They are familiar with your brand now, but they were not ready to convert on their first visit. One of the best ways to create urgency and interest for a person to convert is to offer an incentive. Offering a coupon code for a discount or some other incentive (such as free shipping or BOGO) will create urgency and will push a user to convert.

When creating retargeting ads, keep in mind that you can use the ad copy to remind people to come back to your website and convert. One of the ways to do this is to use messaging along the lines of “did you forget something?” or “come back today to get [insert incentive here]. If you’re an e-commerce business, you can even upload your product catalog to Facebook and use Dynamic Product Ads to show users ads with the exact products that they’ve previously viewed on your website.

What’s next?

Retargeting is a key element of any digital marketing campaign. Many users are skeptical of converting on the first interaction – they could be looking for social proof, discounts, or other info – retargeting is the best way to get that information to your potential customers.

For a small business every ad dollar counts. Money spent on advertising can be used in other facets of the business so it’s imperative to make sure that there is sustainable ROI on digital marketing. Retargeting can turn a mediocre advertising campaign into a stellar one – allowing you to continue investing in paid acquisition on social media.

Is your website optimized to guide visitors to take action and make a purchase? Click here to see RapNet’s list of best practices and tips to help you increase engagement on your website and increase your sales.