The Power of Retargeting

Could you imagine how excited a clothing retailer would be if they could place a tracking device on every person that walked into their store? Furthermore, what if that tracking device could also report to the shop owner every product the person stopped to look at, touch, and try on?

Not only does this technology exist on the internet, it’s considered normal. Any business that does not use this will fall hopelessly behind and probably be out of business in short order.

The technology, of course, is general Retargeting, which we’ve all seen work. You visit a product page on an ecommerce website and then almost instantly you see that product plastered all over your News Feed for the next few days. This truth is well known: The bulk of your website’s visitors leave without ever engaging with you. They don’t fill out opt-in forms or buy anything.

A study by Marketo found that 98 percent of visitors to your website, on average, are anonymous; you don’t have any information about them at all. You won’t be able to reach them if they leave. That’s why Retargeting is important-so you can reach them, even if they leave.

In this chapter you are going to discover what Facebook Retargeting is and how you can leverage this technology in ways to enhance the profitability of every campaign you run on Facebook. In addition, you’ll learn how to set this up and use this technology in all of your campaigns.

THE POWER OF RETARGETING

Retargeting is one of the most important advancements in marketing in the last 150 years. It’s right up there with classified ads in newspapers and commercials on television.

This technology has removed the pressure from advertisers to “get that sale now.” In version 1.0 of web marketing, we used to agonise over the wasted opportunity of paying for a website visitor and having them leave without buying-or at least leaving us their email address.

It forced advertisers to painstakingly tune ads and web pages to “get responses now.” The smartest of marketers learned to split test ads, offers, and landing pages to get to the most optimal combination and maximise their response rate. All of this activity was good, and it forced advertisers to be very efficient, but it did a disservice to the visitor (and quite frankly the advertiser) because it removed the element of time from the equation.

It also perpetuated a mindset that there was an elusive “perfect” ad, offer, or landing page. Practically, you know that one size-fits-all doesn’t fit your customer base. You have people that buy from you for all kinds of reasons because they are wired differently.

It’s a fool’s game trying to squeeze every customer through a single portal. In reality, you need to have many doors for which to invite customers to walk through and begin a conversation with.

Retargeting technology gives you the gift of time and conversation. You now have time to relax and converse with your website visitors versus pushing them to an action.

Anyone that knows me (Bob) well (or has stepped into my office) knows I love sports. After being a high school basketball coach for over 30 years, my approaches to business and coaching bleed together, so much so that I will use business analogies with my players and sports analogies with my clients.

Retargeting is analogous with basketball. One of the mantras we have on my team is “next shot.” There has never been a player with any significant playing who has made every shot in a season. Most players have multiple opportunities in a game to make a shot, but even the best miss about 55 percent during a game.

Retargeting is the ultimate “next shot.” When you miss a shot, you get a chance to attempt another, perhaps even in the same possession, same half, same game, or the same season. Same goes with your visitors. You might miss a shot to make that sale on their first visit to your site, but you might make your shot on the next visit that day, or perhaps on a visit the next day, next week, or next month.

You know how this works because you’ve seen it in action. You’ll visit a web page and then ads for the product you just looked at will follow you around the web for days and weeks. For example, if you’re on the keto diet, would you rather see ads for steak or cookies? A steak ad would feel natural to you while a cookie ad would feel out of place.

A good way to tell if your Facebook Retargeting campaigns are creepy and annoying or if they’re acceptable is to ask yourself how they would work in real life. Let’s say you walked into a store in a mall. You pick up a cell phone case, look at the price, and set it down. If a salesperson came over and gave you a little more info about the case’s manufacturing in the U.S. and that it has a two-year guarantee, you would probably think that was helpful and wouldn’t mind. But if the salesperson then follows you around the store shouting, “You forgot to buy the case!” you’d be annoyed. The same is true of Facebook Retargeting ads. There’s a balance.

Have you ever thrown a rock into a lake? What happens when a rock penetrates the water? It makes a splash and you see ripples rolling outward from the point of entry. The ripples near the middle are the biggest, and as they extend outward, they get less and less noticeable until they eventually disappear.

Retargeting is like that. When a visitor hits your website, it’s like a rock hitting the surface of the water. The ripples extending outward represent time and interest toward your ad.

Therefore, time is important. Recency in relation to their visit is very important in Retargeting. When you build audiences to retarget, you define the amount of days from the visit you want Facebook to include.

As it goes, you understand that someone who visits today is more valuable than those who visit tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Just like the ripples in the lake, the further out from the last visit, the less likely that visitor will notice you.

While you can define Retargeting Audiences from 1 to 180 days in Facebook, we generally recommend you set your standard audience durations to 7, 14, and 30 days.

When creating Retargeting campaigns, ask yourself, “What’s the next step I’d like a visitor to do?” It’s not always to purchase. In your first Retargeting campaign, one strategy is to provide more information.