As a tool to move traffic through your sales funnel, advertising with Facebook can prove to be an invaluable component of your sales strategy. Research shows that the social network accounts for 80.4% of U.S. social referral share to ecommerce sites and that the average user of the site clicks on 11 ads per month. It’s relatively inexpensive and is a great way to elicit engagement. The problem is that many advertisers don’t understand how to optimize it. This leads to ineffective ad campaigns and wasted marketing dollars.
That’s why it’s critical you should develop ads that pursue the right leads with pinpoint precision. One of the reasons Facebook is so effective from an advertising standpoint is that it enables you to do this with a practice known as ad retargeting.
Retargeting is an online advertising tactic in which display ads are directed towards potential consumers based on their prior internet activity. In short, you’ll be sending your ads to the people who are most likely to buy from you based on how they’ve digitally behaved in the past.
So how do we do this? Let’s take a closer look at four Facebook ad tips that will ensure you get the highest ROI out of your retargeting ad budget:
1) Begin at the end (of the sales funnel)
If you think of every customer’s experience with you in terms of a sales funnel, consider how the customer’s mindset varies at each stage of the game. At the beginning of the funnel, your customer has the least amount of information and is still exploring options. As they move through the funnel, they’re receiving more data and therefore getting closer and closer to an eventual purchase.
When it comes to retargeting, the best place to start is with the customers who have moved through the majority of the funnel.
How do you do this? By retargeting visitors who visited your checkout page. These customers have gotten tantalizingly close to a sale. It might be that all they need is a gentle but persuasive reminder about how effective your offering is.
You’ll also want to first retarget ads to potential customers who abandoned their cart on your online store prior to checking out. From there you can move to category browsers who have partaken in some online window shopping.
Focusing on these end-of-funnel prospects helps you maximize your retargeting campaign. You dedicate your resources to customers who have already expressed an interest in what you have to offer. You’re zeroing in on the visitors who you have the highest chance of converting.
2) Be smart in who you retarget
The simplest move to make is to retarget anyone who has visited your website. This can prove to be a fool’s errand, however — not everyone who visits your site is necessarily motivated to buy. Some may have even happened across your site by accident. Either way, only retargeting this general demographic is a waste of your Facebook ad dollars.
A better idea is to apply segmentation to create a specified group of visitors who are likely to convert.
This can be done using analytical tools such as Google Analytics or HubSpot. These tools can inform you of what parts of your site people are most frequently visiting. They can also give you in-depth knowledge of that segment’s click path. You’ll be able to see first-hand how these users experienced your site. You can then use that information to determine the group of people you’ll need to retarget.
Here is where you can experiment. Aside from retargeting the obvious choices listed above, you can find other potential customers to pursue. For example, you can retarget users who visited your “About” page but failed to move to checkout or another conversion page.
3) Timing is everything
Effective retargeting relies on asking, “Who visited my site?” but that is hardly the only question you should consider. You’ll also want to include the follow up of, “…and when did they visit?”
Make sure you take into account the amount of time that’s passed since a visitor has gone to your website. If it’s been too long since a prospect visited your site, they may have either forgotten about your offering or moved onto another option.
Visitors who have recently viewed your site are more likely to buy. Your product or service, and therefore their interest in your brand, is still at top of mind. Time is of the essence, so it’s vital that you take advantage of this aspect.
That’s not to say you can’t convert users whose last visit occurred over a longer period of time. But the odds are higher if you retarget “fresh” visitors who haven’t had as much opportunity to forget about you.
4) Make it personal
What does your prospect really want? That’s a question you’ll need to ask yourself before you retarget a specific customer.
It can be tempting to make generalized, blanket offers to your retargeted visitors. But a more valuable tactic is to personalize your retargeted ads with offers that reflect what your prospect really wants. Ultimately, this leads to better results.
You may need to perform more research to determine what those potential customers want, but there are some assumptions you can make. For example, visitors who abandoned a full cart may be able to be pulled back with an offer of a discount on that same product. Conversely, a visitor to your “Contact” page is likely looking for more information. Perhaps they have a more analytical approach to buying, which means you should put reviews in front of them. This can give them the additional data they need to make a final decision.
The four keys of effective retargeting
In summary, there are four Facebook ad tips that stand out above the rest as keys for effective retargeting, including:
- Retarget visitors who were closest to making a purchase first
- Use analytics and segmentation to determine the right demographic to retarget
- Consider the timing of your last contact with the prospect
- Personalize your retargeted ads
These four tips are simple but not easy to execute. To get the most out of your retargeted Facebook ad campaigns, it helps to partner with a trusted provider who has experience coming up with solutions to these types of challenges.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how to get the most out of Facebook ad retargeting, let my agency, Design Extensions, help. We’re experts on developing strategic Facebook ad campaigns that convert leads into sales. For more on how we can do this for you, contact us today.