The ONLY Facebook Ads Retargeting Strategy You Need
Retargeting is one of the most powerful tools in Facebook advertising, yet many advertisers get it wrong. It’s not your fault. There is a lot of bad information out there.
In this article, I’ll walk you through a simple yet highly effective Facebook ads retargeting strategy that can significantly improve your campaign results. Whether you’re running a leads campaign or a conversion campaign, these tips will help you get more out of your retargeting efforts.
Why Retargeting Matters
Retargeting allows you to reconnect with users who have already interacted with your brand, whether they’ve visited your website, engaged with your social media, or watched your videos.
These users are already familiar with your brand, making them more likely to convert. However, the key to successful retargeting lies in how you set up and manage your custom audiences. Get this wrong and your retargeting efforts won’t be very effective. Get it right and you’ll likely do well.
Setting Up Your Retargeting Campaign
To demonstrate this strategy, let’s start by setting up a leads campaign in Facebook Ads Manager. The principles here apply to other campaign types as well, but we’ll focus on leads for simplicity.
- Choose a Manual Leads Campaign: Always opt for a manual leads campaign over a tailored campaign. This gives you more control over your targeting and optimization, allowing you to implement the strategies we’ll discuss.
- Focus on Custom Audiences: Retargeting is all about custom audiences. At the ad set level, navigate to the targeting section where you can add your custom audiences. These are the audiences you’ll retarget, and setting them up correctly is crucial.
Pro Tip: If you’ve never made a custom audience here is a great article that can help you to build your first custom audience on Facebook.
Creating Custom Audiences
The effectiveness of your retargeting campaign hinges on how you build and use custom audiences. Here’s how to do it right:
- Website Visitors: Add all website visitors from the last 180 days. This is the maximum timeframe allowed, and it ensures that your audience is as large as possible. While some argue for shorter timeframes, including the full 180 days helps Meta’s AI to identify and target both recent visitors and those who may have renewed interest based on recent online activity.
- Email Lists: Upload your email list, including both previous customers and leads. Meta will match these emails to user profiles on Facebook and Instagram. Keep in mind that match rates can vary, so including multiple custom audiences helps cover gaps.
- Video Viewers: Target anyone who has watched your videos on Facebook or Instagram over the past 365 days. Like with website visitors, using the maximum timeframe increases your audience size.
- Social Media Engagers: Include people who have engaged with your Facebook page or Instagram profile in the past year. Engagements include likes, comments, shares, and any other interactions.
This broad approach to custom audiences allows Meta’s algorithm to work more effectively. By including everyone who has interacted with your brand in some way, you give Meta the data it needs to optimize your ad delivery.
Addressing Common Concerns
You might wonder whether it’s better to use smaller, more focused retargeting audiences, like only targeting people who added to cart in the last 7 days. While this approach has merit, it’s important to understand that Meta’s algorithm already prioritizes these high-intent users. By creating larger audiences, you allow Meta to identify other potential converters, such as users who visited your site months ago but have recently shown renewed interest.
Don’t underestimate the power of Meta’s learning algorithm. It’s really amazing how good it is and when you give it more room to maneuver, you almost always get better results.
The Power of Inclusion
It’s important to include various types of custom audiences in your retargeting campaign because not all users are matched with the same success rate. For example, when uploading an email list, Meta may only match a portion of those emails to user profiles. By also including website visitors, video viewers, and social media engagers, you ensure broader coverage and increase your chances of reaching your entire target audience.
Additionally, website visitors may not always be tracked accurately due to issues like iOS privacy settings. Including on-platform engagements (like Facebook and Instagram interactions) ensures that these users are still captured in your retargeting efforts.
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When you attend this webinar you’ll learn:
3 different Facebook ad strategies that we use every day. These strategies have generated millions of dollars in revenue and are tried and proven to work.
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How Facebook and Instagram have changed and how to adjust your ad strategy to what works in 2024
Keeping Targeting Open
Once you’ve added your custom audiences, it’s generally best to leave other targeting criteria (like age, gender, and detailed targeting) open. Meta’s algorithm is highly effective at optimizing who sees your ads, so additional constraints can actually limit your campaign’s potential.
This approach applies even to advanced retargeting strategies, like the omnipresent content strategy, which focuses on warming up audiences with consistent, valuable content. Even with such strategies, keeping your retargeting audience broad allows Meta to find the best prospects.
Advantage Plus Audience vs. Original Audience
When setting up your retargeting campaign, you have two main options: Advantage Plus Audience or Original Audience.
- Advantage Plus Audience: This option treats your targeting criteria as suggestions rather than strict boundaries. Meta will start with your custom audiences but may expand beyond them if it identifies other high-potential users.
- Original Audience: If you need to keep your retargeting strictly limited to warm audiences (such as when offering a special discount), you can use the Original Audience option. This allows you to set hard boundaries on who sees your ads
In most cases, Advantage Plus Audience works well, but if you have a specific offer for returning customers, you might prefer the Original Audience setup.
Should You Use Exclusions?
A common question is whether you should exclude users who have already purchased from seeing your retargeting ads. While it might seem logical to avoid showing ads to customers who have already bought your product, I generally recommend against using exclusions. Here’s why:
- Repeat Purchases: Many businesses offer products or services that can be purchased multiple times. Excluding previous customers could mean missing out on repeat sales.
- Brand Recall: Even if your product is a one-time purchase, retargeting previous customers can reinforce your brand in their minds, making them more likely to refer your business to others.
- Minimal Cost Impact: The audience of previous purchasers is typically small compared to your overall target audience. Therefore, the cost of retargeting them is minimal, while the potential benefits—like referrals and repeat purchases—are significant.
The only scenario where exclusions might make sense is if you’re offering a promotion to new customers that you don’t want previous customers to see. Even then, consider the potential downsides before implementing exclusions.
Getting Retargeting Right Is Important to the Success of Your Campaigns
A well-executed retargeting strategy can dramatically improve your Facebook ad results. By building large, inclusive custom audiences and leveraging Meta’s powerful algorithm, you can ensure your ads reach the right people at the right time. Avoid common pitfalls like unnecessary exclusions and overly narrow targeting, and you’ll be on your way to a more effective Facebook ad campaign.
