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5 Simple Tips to Create Effective Facebook Retargeting Ads - Springbot

Written by Mark Konigsmark | Apr 4, 2017 1:07:40 PM

Why waste time chasing a cold prospect when you could be targeting a prospect that is already familiar with your business? That’s the idea behind an effective retargeting strategy.

Consider this: Retargeted customers are three times more likely to click on your ad than new customers, which means a better return on your ad expenditures and more relevant ads for users.

One of the best places to retarget customers right now is Facebook. As the most popular social media channel, it’s often where online shoppers end up after interacting with your business.  Retargeting on Facebook allows you to put your products back in front of these consumers and leads them back to the path to purchase.

What are you waiting for? Get started with Facebook retargeting ads with these five simple yet effective tips!

1. Bring Back Lost Customers
Did you know that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is at a whopping 69.23 percent?  Consumers abandon their carts for all sorts of different reasons, but occasionally it is simply a matter of being too distracted to complete the purchase.

With Facebook retargeting ads, you don’t have to let these warm prospects go to waste. Using Facebook’s Custom Audiences, you can segment customers based on their abandoned shopping carts and create an ad that shows the products they left behind.

Give them a discount like AHAVA does in this Facebook ad to entice them back to your eCommerce store:


You may not even need a discount to get a customer to convert. Simply putting your products back in front of consumers can be their helpful reminder to complete a purchase.

2. Cross-Sell and Upsell Your Existing Customers
Retargeting ads are known for giving online merchants a second chance to convert lost customers. However, Facebook retargeting ads aren’t limited to those who don’t complete their purchase.  You can create a Custom Audience of existing customers by the products they have previously purchased from your online store. Use this opportunity to upsell and cross-sell other products to them.

When cross-selling and upselling techniques are used properly, they can increase your revenue and even provide a better user experience to your customers. With sophisticated retargeting ads, you can cross-sell and upsell products that they will peak their interest.

3. Think About the Customer Journey
Some people use incognito browsers to limit companies’ ability to track them. One of the biggest benefits of Facebook retargeting ads is that they don’t rely on cookies to target consumers. Custom Audiences allows marketers to identify consumers with Facebook IDs who have viewed specific products and create a Custom Audience pixel to target to consumers across devices.

To take full advantage of this, it’s important that you map out the customer journey. By doing so, you can achieve a better understanding of a consumer’s path to purchase and create ads that move them through the sale’s funnel.

4. Automate When Possible
Automation makes things much easier. With the right automated marketing platform, you can easily keep track of all your customer data and update it so that your Facebook ads are relevant.

Automated marketing platforms can also help you launch your retargeting campaigns with AdRoll, making it easy to build dynamic ads based on data available within the Springbot dashboard. Using automation, you can also track your retargeting efforts and improve its performance as you go.

Another added benefit of marketing automation is that it helps keep your customer data updated.  Using outdated customer data will hurt your Facebook retargeting campaign by potentially placing irrelevant ads in front of audiences.

A word to the wise for marketers—Custom Audiences can only be made with customer data that you were given with consent. This means no data scraping from public websites and using it to build Custom Audiences on Facebook!

5. Test Everything!
Of course, the key to any effective retargeting strategy is testing your ads and adjusting your strategy based on the results. When it comes to your Facebook retargeting ads, don’t forget to run A/B tests on the size of your ads, your value propositions, and the type of content that you plan to show users.

It’s also a good idea to test your leads. If you have shown your ad repeatedly to specific consumers with no luck, get rid of these poor performing leads and focus on warmer prospects.  That way, you can stop wasting time and money on users that won’t convert.

Have a question about running retargeting ads on Facebook? Reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook!