Here’s how Facebook retargeting can be highly effective in converting interested consumers into paying customers.
Remember when that pair of shoes you gazed lovingly at on a website started following you around Facebook?
Or when you started googling caravan parks down the coast, only to have your Facebook newsfeed suddenly punctuated with ads for camping equipment?
And show me a woman who hasn’t been slightly unnerved when Facebook started delivering baby-related ads minutes after she has shared her good news.
It’s called Facebook retargeting – and it’s a digital marketing strategy proving highly effective in converting interested consumers into paying customers.
What is Facebook retargeting?
Retargeting refers to marketing aimed at potential customers who have interacted with your business in some way but have stopped short of making a purchase.
Perhaps they’ve clicked on a product description but not made it to the checkout; or maybe they’ve visited an event landing page but not booked tickets. This tells you that the customer is interested in what you have to offer, but needs a little more digital marketing to achieve conversion.
This is how Facebook retargeting works: every time a customer visits your website or landing page a cookie is planted in their browser. Facebook retargeting uses this information and funnels specific advertising into the customer’s Facebook feeds.
You might have heard the term Facebook remarketing, which can be slightly confusing. Although the outcomes of retargeting and remarketing are the same – to convert leads to sales – they are actually different. Basically, where Facebook retargeting moves a lead from social media feeds to purchase, remarketing tends to be more focused on email as a conversion tool.
How Facebook retargeting increases conversions
The reason Facebook retargeting is so successful is that the customer is already interested in what you have to offer.
Regular Facebook ads attract leads but much of the time they are cold and your digital marketing strategy has to work them right down the sales funnel, from awareness to research, to consideration to purchase.
Facebook retargeting needs to convert a customer from consideration to purchase.
Facebook retargeting also allows you to target particular behaviours. Say, for example, you are a sporting goods store that sells a wide range of goods from sports equipment to apparel. If someone has only looked at shoes, Facebook retargeting allows you to feed them ads focussed on shoes.
Facebook retargeting strategies to try
The Facebook retargeting marketing strategy that is best for you will depend on your business, your customer, and your desired outcome, but here are some popular ones:
Video starter: With Facebook retargeting, a staged approach works well. One popular strategy is to make the first ad a video, followed by more targeted follow-up ads pointed to those who watched more than 50 per cent of the video.
Specific products: Don’t be surprised if that one particular item you looked at on a website pops up in your Facebook feed time and time again. Often just seeing an item again is enough to move a customer to purchase.
Fading customers: Another great strategy is to target customers who have purchased from you in the past but haven’t made a purchase in a set amount of time, with ads featuring products similar to those previously purchased.
Abandoned carts: Oh, so close! Those customers who have placed items in their carts but not proceeded to checkout are the lowest of low hanging fruit and are the perfect candidates for retargeting.
Best practice guidelines for Facebook retargeting
If you’re keen to get onto Facebook targeting, the first thing your digital marketing professional needs to do is install the Facebook pixel into your website code. This will track the people who visit, and register the actions they take, the pages they visit, and the items they add to their baskets.
The next step is to create a Custom Audience that will allow the Facebook pixel data to specify the people you want to reach with your remarketing campaign.
Then you need to create dynamic ads that show your designated products or service. Dynamic ads automatically show each viewer the products specific to their action.
An important part of any marketing campaign is to analyse, analyse, analyse. One of the strengths of Facebook retargeting is that you can see how a particular strategy is performing. Based on those results, you can pivot your campaign, or redouble your efforts on what is working well.
Speak to the digital advertising experts
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne and we have the expertise and experience to develop Facebook retargeting ad campaigns that will convert those ‘oh, so close!’ consumers into paying customers.
To chat about Facebook retargeting for your business or any other aspect of digital marketing give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via the contact form below.