Do you ever feel like someone’s following you… on the internet?
You’re browsing for some shoes on Amazon, then you suddenly see shoe advertisements.
You look for a good restaurant to eat at and find another ad for the best restaurants in your area.
Or, you might be researching your next getaway and start seeing deals on flights and hotels pop up on Facebook and Instagram!
It seems like these days, retargeting ads are everywhere.
And for good reason, because they work really well.
Have you ever wondered why people use retargeting ads?
Before we jump into retargeting ads… Ensure you also watch this video on generating more leads and sales appointments using social media every month.
Why do people use retargeting ads?
Statistics show that most people visiting your website leave and don’t return.
Retargeting allows you to bring those people back to your website.
Retargeting allows you to generate leads with those who already know you.
Retargeting allows you to turn your leads and prospects into buyers.
What is retargeting? Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a way of targeting people who have interacted with you in the past (by visiting your website, filling in a form online, etc).
What is the best social media channel for retargeting ads?
You can retarget people on all primary social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn).
Although we’ve seen decent results on LinkedIn and Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the best channels for retargeting people.
Facebook and Instagram work particularly well because they have a large user base. Chances are very high that the people you’re looking to retarget are personally on Facebook and/or Instagram.
Even if you’re B2B, Facebook and Instagram still beat LinkedIn in terms of active users. And business owners ARE using Facebook & Instagram (often more than LinkedIn).
How do you retarget people on social media in your business?
The most common way to retarget people is to install a tracking code on your website. For example, by installing the Facebook Pixel on your website, you can track what pages people visit, how long they spend on those pages and so on.
The Facebook Pixel allows you to create smart retargeting campaigns that don’t just target people who visit your website but retarget people based on their behavior on your website.
Watch the video below to learn the best way to retarget people on Facebook & Instagram ads:
You can also do something similar with a LinkedIn or Google tracking code to retarget people there.
How to retarget an email list of leads or clients
Another effective way to retarget people is through your email database. For example, on Facebook and LinkedIn, you can sync or upload a list of your leads or customers to retarget them.
Facebook and LinkedIn will try to match the email addresses (or other contact info) from the excel CSV file you upload and match it with users on their social media channels.
What is the best way to retarget people using social media?
Once you’ve started growing an audience and building traffic on your website through content and social media strategies, retargeting can be a very powerful way to turn visitors into leads, leads into customers and customers into repeat customers.
This is process is also known as social media lead generation.
To keep things simple, I’m going to divide the types of people you can retarget into three main classes: your warm audience, your hot audience, and your existing customers.
- Warm audience: People who have heard about you before but are not yet customers or leads. For example, they read your blogs, watch your videos, etc.
- Hot Audience: People that are leads and have given you their contact information but haven’t actually bought anything yet.
- Existing Clients: Customers who have bought something from you in the past, but they could sill pse more stuff.
How to retarget your warm audience
The goal of retargeting your warm audience (people who read your content) is to make sure they become your leads and give you their contact information.
The best way to do this is by retargeting them with more content, but this time, ask for their name and email to access it.
You can use webinars, videos, blogs and free guides as content in exchange for your potential customer’s contact info.
Once you’ve got their contact info – you’ve converted them into a new lead and they are now one step closer to buying something from you!
How to retarget your hot leads
Once you start generating social media leads, the next step is to convert those leads into paying clients. That should ultimately be your goal when retargeting hot leads.
The key to converting leads into paying clients is to build trust.
So when retargeting your warm leads, ask yourself: ‘how can I build trust in what it is I do and what I’m selling?’
The best way you can do that is by sending them to a video sales letter.
Depending on how engaged your hot lead is with your business (for example, do they read all your blogs, open all your emails, watch all your videos, etc.) you can send them to the most relevant step to take them into a paying customer.
How to retarget your existing customers
If you have a group of customers who have bought something from you, but they could still purchase more stuff, it’s your job to take them to that next stage and become a repeat customer.
You can retarget your existing customers by uploading a database for their names and emails to Facebook or, one of my favorite methods, send them to a specific landing page on your website which only specific customers can see.
You can then create an audience on Facebook based on the people who visit that landing page on your website and retarget them with the next service you provide.
Top tip: It’s much easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to sell something to someone who has never bought anything from you before.
How to retarget people everywhere
Don’t just limit yourself to retargeting people on social media. You can also retarget people that visit your website on thousands of different websites on the internet.
Check out this video to see how to do this:
How much does retargeting on social media cost?
It depends on the size of your audience, but with most of our clients who don’t have huge audiences, the cost can be very small. A good rule of thumb is to spend $5/day for every 1,000 website visitors you get each month on your website.
Like most things in marketing, start small and test it out. You can always increase your budget and scale up in the future.
If you want to learn how to generate leads, appointments and clients each month, then please watch this video here.
How to retarget website visitors (tutorial)
Time needed: 1 day
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to retarget website visitors
- Install a website tracking code
Any channel you want to retarget website visitors on will require you to install a tracking code on all pages of your website. The tracking code allows the advertising channel to know who visits your website so you can retarget them later.
Install the Facebook pixel tracking code to retarget people on Facebook, Instagram and many mobile apps
Install the Adroll tracking code to retarget people on thousands of non-social media websites (such as Forbes, Yahoo, MSN, etc)
Install the LinkedIn tracking code to retarget people on LinkedIn
Install the Google tracking code to retarget people on YouTube, Google and other Google properties
- Set up a retargeting audience
Once you have the tracking code installed on your website, you need to create a retargeting audience.
For example, in Facebook you can create a custom audience to retarget people that visit specific web pages. Most other advertising channels allow you to do the same thing.
- Create a retargeting ad
Once your tracking code has started to collect data for a few days, you can advertise to people who visit your website with a retargeting ad. For best results, it’s a good idea to create multiple ads to split test which one works best for your audience.
What is an example of a retargeting ad?
If you’ve visited this website and you’re based in the USA, chances are you’ll see some of our retargeting ads, which we’ve included here to give you a real-life example of what they look like.
In general, effective retargeting ads will:
- Build trust (e.g. testimonials )
- Provide value (e.g. give free educational content)
It’s important that the messaging in your retargeting ads solve a big painful problem that your potential clients have.
To learn how to do this in more detail, watch this video here.
Is it possible to retarget too often?
Repetition in digital marketing campaigns is good, but there is a point where it can get annoying if someone keeps seeing the same ad campaign from you repeatedly.
Fortunately, most advertising channels (including Facebook retargeting campaigns) will automatically limit how many times people can see your ads before they get annoyed.
In fact, if Facebook does not believe your ad will convert with the people who see it, it will automatically stop showing ads to them (even if they are still in your retargeting audience).
Facebook retargeting campaigns also have something called “Frequency cap”.
You can go to your Facebook ads manager and look at your ad “frequency” to see how many times the same person has seen your social ads. You can even set limits so that someone doesn’t see your ad more than “x” number of times.
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, Ash has been helping business owners with lead generation. Ash specializes in helping businesses get high-quality leads, appointments and clients each month with automated digital marketing strategies. Learn more about the author here.
