Have you ever visited someone’s site or watched a video of theirs and suddenly you see them all over your Facebook news feed for the next few days?
This experience is growing more and more common for people and there is a reason for it. You’re being retargeted. Retargeting ads (sometimes called remarketing) are an important tool for Facebook advertisers because of how incredibly efficient they are.
Here are just a few reasons why Facebook Advertisers love remarketing ads:
-Retargeting has been shown to reduce cart abandonment by 6.5%.
-Approximately 97% of visitors that leave never return to a website.
-Retargeting beats all other ad placement strategies with a 1,046% efficiency rate.
-Website visitors who are shown retargeted ads are on average 43% more likely to convert.
Basically, if your business is running ads on Facebook with additional goals other than just reach - you should be using retargeting ads.
In this article we’re going to cover all the most important things you need to know about the how and why behind retargeting or remarketing ads on Facebook.
Why are remarketing ads so darn good?
Quick Review! In marketing (and sales) we often refer to funnels. In the standard marketing funnel we look to move people from never having heard about our business, to being aware of our business, to considering our business, and finally to converting and choosing our business for their needs.
The Power of Facebook Retargeting Ads Is Threefold:
- They let us target people further along the funnel who are “warmer” leads than we would find with conventional Facebook marketing. Because we KNOW that these people are engaged with our business in some way, we can safely assume that they have a higher chance of being interested in purchasing from us (on average) than a person that we are targeting based on interested or demographic information. This leads to better results for much less money than conventional ads targeting.
- Retargeting lets us reach people at different phases of the funnel. The old adage says “The right message to the right person at the right time.” Being able to serve an ad to someone based on an action they took on our website gives us the power to know what stage in the funnel they are in. Someone who has just found out about your business through a Facebook video is ready to be told about your products and services - but they might not be ready for a discount offer. Whereas someone who went to your site, put an item in the cart and left doesn’t need to see any more of your product catalog; BUT they might be very interested in getting a discount offer. This leads to better conversion rates for retargeted ads in general.
- Facebook is ubiquitous. With just under 2 billion daily active users in the world on Facebook and 500+ million on Instagram, it’s hard to find people who aren’t interacting with Facebook in some way and therefore able to be retargeted. Add to that Facebook’s audience network which has advertising real-estate on apps and other mobile websites and you have a massive potential audience. This means that you have access to a huge number of people.
Can anyone run Facebook remarketing ads?
Anyone with a Facebook ads account can run Facebook remarketing ads, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
Since Remarketing ads rely on data that is collected about users, by default you will only be able to retarget people for behavior they engage in on Facebook's network of apps. To retarget people for things they do on your website (or elsewhere outside of the Facebook Environment) you need to use a tracking tool called the Facebook Pixel.
What is the Facebook Pixel?
The Facebook Pixel is a short piece of code that you can insert in the Header section of your website to have it collect data about users that visit your webpage.
You will need to install and test your Facebook Pixel if you do not already have one installed on your web properties before you can run retargeting campaigns.
What about iOS 14?
In the fall of 2020 Apple released an update to their operating system for mobile devices that would require Facebook (and apps using Facebook tracking codes) to be more transparent about the data they were collecting with users.
This update forced apps to disclose to users if they were being tracked for Facebook and to offer users an option to opt-out the same way you see many websites have a pop-up asking if you’d like to be tracked using cookies or not.
When people opt-out it becomes difficult to track them and this impacts the effectiveness of retargeting ads.
So what’s the final verdict?
Despite taking more time and effort to set up, and the current setback of iOS 14 blocking some tracking - Remarketing ads continue to be an effective tool for advertising your business. The combination of controlling when people see certain ads as well as finding people who have recently shown interest in your business makes remarketing an asset.
Have you considered running remarketing ads for your business? Given what you know now, how would you plan your remarketing campaign? Would you target people who started a check out and then left? Would you target people who liked or commented on your Instagram posts? How would you engage your audience?
