Facebook’s ad manager can sometimes feel like a maze of options, leaving marketers unsure which direction they should choose.
Facebook has so many great customization options which manifest in the form of complexity.
If you make one mistake, then the entire campaign might be flawed. You’ll burn through your budget and not maximize your conversions.
But you have to brave it and learn how to navigate it. Facebook remarketing is the gold standard of remarketing.
If you can figure out how to tap into the potential of Facebook remarketing, you can bet that conversions will be on their way.
Uncovering the best tactics on Facebook is only possible through trial and error. And thankfully for you, we’ve already done that.
In this guide, you will learn all of the Facebook remarketing options at your disposal, along with how you can take advantage of them today.
Facebook Remarketing: Your Secret Weapon
Facebook is undoubtedly better for remarketing than any other platform we’ve got right now.
Let me convince you if you’re skeptical or if you think that “Facebook ads don’t work.”
As of 2020, Facebook’s monthly active users have soared past 2.7 billion.
Currently, Facebook is the most popular social media in existence. It has more users than any other social or video-based platform.
It even outshines the world’s most popular messaging apps.
Simply put, it’s the go-to place when it comes to reaching as many people as possible.
Chances are, everyone is on it. Even your grandma probably has a few hundred friends.
All jokes aside, the sheer number of users on Facebook makes the platform incredibly valuable when it comes to remarketing.
But that’s not all.
You know all about banner blindness, where people are being spammed with ads online so much to the point that they subconsciously tune them out (or even take specific actions to prevent seeing them).
When users block ads out subconsciously, it looks something like this:
This is a huge reason why Facebook remarketing works and display remarketing doesn’t.
On Facebook, users will see your ads directly within their news feeds, like this:
Meanwhile, display ads appear on other websites, where people either use ad-blocking tools or simply tune them out as white noise.
To combat this large amount of ads, people have started implementing ad blockers. Currently, the use of ad blocking technology is on the rise.
With mobile and desktop users getting fed up with the number of display ads they see on a daily basis, those display ads you’re running on AdWords probably aren’t even reaching all of your targets.
Some of the main reasons why people block ads have to do with interruption and simply seeing too many ads:
But on Facebook, it’s different. AdBlock doesn’t work.
Why? Because Facebook doesn’t insert the ads into banners. They place them directly within your news feed, posing as natural content.
They aren’t intrusive or annoying (for the most part).
All of your ads will actually reach your intended target without pissing them off in the process.
Now that you know why Facebook is the best platform for remarketing, let’s dive into whether or not you’re at the point where a Facebook remarketing campaign makes sense for your company.
Facebook Remarketing: Is It Right For You?
Facebook remarketing is an effective campaign strategy, but when should you use it?
The magic of a Facebook remarketing campaign is that it continuously targets those who have visited your site. This allows you to deliver more descriptive messages to them, since they are already aware of your product or service.
If you’re looking to convert members of your target audience, consider launching a Facebook remarketing campaign. But when is the right moment to hit the launch button?
If your business is brand new, it might not be generating the traffic it needs in order for a remarketing campaign to be effective.
If so, you should start with an awareness-based campaign to get the word out about your business. This will generate website traffic for you, resulting in a nice foundation for a future custom audience to target with a remarketing campaign.
Your customers are on Facebook to connect with friends and even potentially discover your product and brand. More than 17% of consumers use Facebook to follow brands and companies.
Think about how you’re getting your message across and reaching them. Once they visit your site or are included in your retargeting list, they will continuously see ads for your company.
With Facebook remarketing campaigns, you can target your website visitors as well as your Facebook audience. This gives you a broader reach than other remarketing platforms such as the Google Display Network.
A Facebook remarketing campaign (sometimes referred to as a Facebook retargeting campaign) adopts a retargeting strategy that shows a Facebook ad to Facebook users who have visited your company’s website before.
By installing the Facebook retargeting pixel on your website, you can serve a retargeting ad through Facebook to a specific set of users or a website visitor.
This custom ad set can be created and served as a dynamic product ad that directs them to a personalized landing page designed to move them down the marketing funnel.
When you run a retargeting campaign on social media, you can expand your digital marketing efforts with the proper ad spend, optimization, and retargeting parameters.
Let’s take a look at exactly how you can accomplish that with Facebook’s custom audiences.
Facebook Remarketing: Custom Audiences
Currently, Facebook offers multiple types of remarketing settings that come in the form of custom audiences.
Custom audiences give you the ability to target ads to specifically-crafted audiences based on your goals.
For example, if you want to remarket to basic website visitors, you’d create a custom audience for that. If you wanted to remarket to mobile app download users, you would create a custom audience.
Essentially, custom audiences are the focal point of remarketing on Facebook.
Facebook offers four main forms of remarketing from your sources:
- Website visits
- Customer lists
- App activity
- Offline activity
In addition, you can remarket based on Facebook engagement metrics from videos, lead forms, instant experiences, shopping, Instagram accounts, events, Facebook Pages, and On-Facebook Listings.
The options are constantly growing. Some of the most common options, though, include those original four.
Here’s a quick overview of the (general) remarketing audiences you can create on Facebook.
- Customer List: Upload a list of your customer emails that Facebook will match to accounts for you to remarket to.
- Website Traffic: Create a remarketing audience based on previous website visits.
- App Activity: Remarketing list based on people who interacted with your app.
- Offline Activity: Remarketing audience based on offline actions, like phone calls and store visits.
All of these audiences have the same end goal in mind, but with different ways to achieve it. They all seek to bring back users who engaged with your brand in some way, shape, or form.
In addition, you could target based on engagement from the Facebook sources mentioned above. The engagement could have been via Instagram or Facebook likes, website traffic, application installs, or even phone calls.
All of these options are diverse ways of getting users back to your site for another shot at conversion.
The beauty of these remarketing tools is that each one packs a diverse toolset.
So, if someone interacts with your event on Facebook, you can remarket to them.
If they like a post of yours, you can remarket to them.
If they visit your Instagram account and don’t follow, you can remarket to them.
The options are almost limitless here.
If you like standard remarketing lists based on website visits, you can do that too:
The great thing about Facebook’s platform is that it allows you to get as detailed, specific, and sophisticated as you want (or don’t want).
If you like to keep it simple, you can do that too.
When you click on one of the sections of remarketing-based custom audiences, they will open up a plethora of subtypes to choose from based on your goals and what platforms you use.
In this next section, you’ll get a step-by-step guide on how to run multiple remarketing campaigns in just five minutes.
How To Run A Facebook Remarketing Campaign
If you’re ready to start a Facebook remarketing campaign on Facebook, you’ve come to the right place.
Here’s how you can set up two remarketing campaigns in just five minutes.
Remarketing website visits on Facebook
Remarketing website visits on Facebook is one of the most popular forms of Facebook remarketing.
It works just the same as typical display network ads. You can target specific sets of users based on how they’ve interacted with your site.
But instead of display ads, you’re delivering natural ads to their Facebook feeds.
To get started, open your Facebook Business Manager and navigate to the audiences section under the drop-down menu:
From here, select “Custom Audience” under the “Create Audience” drop-down:
Choose “Website Traffic” as your custom audience type:
This will allow you to customize your audiences based on website traffic.
You have multiple options to choose from at this point.
If you want to keep things simple and basic, Facebook offers their standard remarketing settings:
This base-level setting will target all of your website traffic/visitors within the last 30 days.
If you choose to use this feature, Facebook will create this as a new audience for you.
But, you can further customize it if you want more segmentation. Click the “All website visitors” drop-down to bring up more options:
You can now choose to refine your custom audience based on specific web page visits and time on site.
For example, let’s say that remarketing all your website visitors isn’t the best option. You will likely get tons of people who simply aren’t interested, so there’s no real point in remarketing to them.
If you want the best bang for your buck, you need to target warm, interested visitors.
Ones that have shown serious intent to purchase.
Not ones who come for the free coffee and donuts (yes, you), only to leave before you pitch the sale.
Remarketing to these people isn’t worth your time or money.
Instead, try setting up a custom audience that targets visitors who have landed on your product or pricing pages:
More than likely, when someone visits these pages on your site, they are genuinely curious about how your product can help them.
You just need to help them realize it.
You can even refine this further by adding frequency measures to it:
Meaning that your remarketing audience will only consist of people who have visited either your product or pricing page two or more times.
This tells you one major thing:
People who’ve visited these pages are serious about your product.
They’ve checked it out — multiple times.
They did a double-take and spotted your gorgeous face from across the bar.
Remarketing social engagements
Remarketing social engagements is an incredible way to bring back brand-aware traffic.
Want to avoid the typical buyer’s journey or sales cycle?
This is the best way to do it.
Social media is an awesome tool for generating brand buzz, but that’s not all that it’s good for.
With Facebook’s updated engagement-style audiences, you can remarket to anyone who lands on your Instagram and Facebook profiles.
To get started, create another new custom audience, but this time, use one of the Facebook sources to remarket based on engagement:
This is where you’ll need to decide on your own what the best approach is.
For example, do you host tons of events? If not, then remarketing based on event interactions wouldn’t make sense.
Do you have Instagram for your business? If not, ignore it.
You get the gist. Choose the option or options that best suit your business needs.
If you aren’t sure where to start, select the “Facebook Page” option:
Then, you can customize what action exactly you want to target on your page.
You can select to target people who engaged with a post or ad, page visitors, fans who clicked a call-to-action button, people who sent a message to your page, and more.
That’s all you have to do to get a new remarketing audience created.
Now, head to your Ads Manager and create new ads on Facebook targeted to your newly-created remarketing lists.
Analyzing Your Facebook Remarketing Campaign
Once your campaign is launched, you need to optimize and analyze the results. This is critical to ensure that you aren’t burning through money reaching the wrong audience.
You’ll be able to see if your targeting is resonating with the custom audience you’ve selected. If you aren’t hitting your metrics, perhaps the targeting, messaging, or creating is missing the mark.
But what exactly are those metrics? What should you be measuring in your remarketing campaign?
There are many factors at play, and it ultimately depends on what your goals are for the specific campaign.
However, here are a few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to consider for your next Facebook remarketing campaign:
- Cost-per-click (CPC) – how much it costs to get a prospect to click on your ad
- Frequency – how many times the ad is shown
- Relevance Diagnostics (now broken down into 3 individual metrics)– how relevant is the ad to the audience who is seeing it?
- Conversions – What is the total number of transactions that have taken place?
- Conversion Value – What is the total amount from all the transactions that have taken place?
Since you’re remarketing to someone who is already aware of your product, conversions will likely be your ultimate metric to measure up against.
That doesn’t mean that you should ignore the others though. CPC, Frequency, and Relevance Diagnostics can all help indicate issues with your ad campaign.
Perhaps your Frequency is too high, and you need to broaden your targeting.
If you go beyond these numbers, you can even get granular with your Facebook ad creative to see how each asset is performing. You should examine which type of ad creative worked best—static images, videos, or long-form content.
PriceSpider’s Facebook remarketing ad guide is an example of remarketing to an audience with a long-form content asset:
You’ll quickly see what works and ultimately drives conversions for your company. Constant optimization is needed to ensure your campaigns are effective.
In addition, you might find that perhaps you need to pair your remarketing campaign with an awareness campaign to drive larger amounts of traffic to your site.
Conclusion
Facebook remarketing isn’t always fun. It can be boring, tedious, and time-consuming. Conversion rates might not always be wonderful.
But it’s cheap. And Facebook is the place to be when it comes to bringing back lost sales.
Facebook’s diverse custom audience options are an excellent tool for growing business and driving sales. Custom audiences allow you to create specific remarketing lists based on hundreds of factors.
No more targeting all website visitors. You can now target specific URLs, engagements, and more. Take advantage of these diverse audience tools and start your remarketing campaign on Facebook today.
It only takes a few minutes to get going, and you’ll be on your way to bringing back those lost sales for good.
