Learn how to Retarget Your Website’s Visitors with Social Media Ads
Remarketing is a well-utilized marketing strategy that allows marketers to reach potential customers that haven’t yet converted or to reach existing customers who could convert again.
It is often more profitable than other marketing techniques since you can target prospects who have already shown interest in your products or services. It also allows for unique messaging specific to what the potential customer has already shown interest in. Platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter all offer remarketing capabilities within their social media advertising platforms.
Though they all have similar capabilities, the target audience each one reaches is unique.
There are a few different options for remarketing with Facebook Ads. You can upload a list of names, email addresses, phone numbers, and/or addresses you’ve collected from your potential customers and target them using Facebook’s custom audiences tool. The other, more ideal, options are to use your Facebook pixel to remarket to users who have performed a specific action on your page(s) or to use Facebook’s collected data to remarket to those who have interacted with your Facebook page, lead form, event, and more.
If you choose to remarket using the Facebook pixel, you can limit your audience to certain pages on your website, such as a particular landing page, or use every page to which the pixel has access. Facebook allows you to choose any action you have set up for your pixel for an audience as well as a default website visitors option. For lead generation, you will likely want to retarget those who viewed your page(s) but exclude anyone who converted.
Best Practices for Remarketing on Facebook:
- If you have a product catalog, use dynamic ads to show people items they have already viewed on your website. Users can click on the item and be taken straight to the product page, creating a seamless user experience.
- Use messenger ads to reconnect with potential customers who have been to your website. This allows you to “personally” invite someone back to your website.
- Use a different call-to-action for your remarketing ads. If you typically use “Learn More” as your CTA, try a more direct CTA for remarketing, such as “Get Offer” or “Shop Now.”
- Consider segmenting your audience. If your audience is large enough, segmenting your audience by time since their last interaction can help you prioritize more recent site visitors, while still reaching those who visited your site with a longer look-back.
Found Search Marketing has seen varying levels of success with Facebook remarketing. We tested a new remarketing campaign for one education client earlier this year and saw an impressive 49% lower cost per enrollment compared to a campaign targeting a lookalike audience for similar degree programs. We also tested remarketing for a different client in 2019 and saw a higher cost per lead compared to the non-remarketing ad sets.
This goes to show that no targeting is one-size-fits-all. We recommend testing remarketing with a small budget, and make sure to let it run long enough to optimize. We like to allow a new campaign to run for at least 3-4 weeks. After your test period is over, use your KPIs to determine if it is a success!
LinkedIn’s remarketing options have been increasing this year. In June, LinkedIn announced that they would be offering retargeting from lead-generation forms and video ads in addition to uploaded audience lists and website retargeting using the LinkedIn Insight Tag.
Remarketing on LinkedIn is similar to remarketing on Facebook. You can limit your website retargeting to certain webpages. If you are retargeting video viewers, you can set a certain percentage of video completion to retarget. For retargeting ads using lead-generation forms, you can include those who opened the form and exclude those who submitted it.
Best Practices for Remarketing on LinkedIn:
- Include potential customers from at least one active campaign so the audience size does not decrease over time.
- Test different look-back windows to find the one that works best for your campaign.
- Allow 48 hours for your audience to populate, although they will continue building after that as there is more engagement.
LinkedIn’s members have 2x the buying power of the typical website audience and 80% of LinkedIn users help influence business decisions. Remarketing on this platform has tremendous potential to produce new sales.
Snapchat
Snapchat offers remarketing options similar to Facebook and LinkedIn. You can retarget based on an uploaded list, ad engagement, or website event. Snapchat automatically creates a retargeting audience based on their standard events when the pixel is placed and the events are set up. It is even recommended to start with remarketing if you are using Snap Ads for lead generation to unlock the Sign-Up goal event.
Best Practices for Remarketing on Snapchat:
- For lead generation, it is best to run a combination of snap ads, story ads, and/or collection ads.
- Your creative should fit with Snapchat’s unique style.
- Your creative should also be simple and not overwhelm the viewer.
Twitter also has similar remarketing targeting options as other social platforms. You can retarget from an uploaded list of potential customers, from engagement on your existing Twitter ads, or those who have visited your website using the Twitter pixel. Retargeting based on engagement includes those who saw your Tweet, those who Retweeted it, video viewers, link clicks, and more. The lookback window option is shorter than other platforms at only 15 days for organic impressions and up to 90 days for promoted engagements.
Best Practices for Remarketing on Twitter:
- Personalize remarketing ads to encourage your audience to convert.
- Implement advanced conversion tracking on your remarketing campaigns.
- Watch your Twitter Ads dashboard carefully to track what is successful and what needs to be changed.
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Remarketing campaigns can help boost your return on ad spend when used wisely. Although the audience is likely to be of higher quality than other audiences, it is still important to watch performance just as closely as any other campaign. Each social network has its own reporting capabilities, as well as the additional data you can collect from your CRM, Google Analytics, and other platforms. Although each social platform has its similarities and differences, there is no one right platform to use for your remarketing campaigns. When you consider data availability, privacy concerns, target audience, and budget, you can find one or more that is right for your company!
More Information
Retargeting on Facebook
Retargeting on LinkedIn
Snapchat Pixel Custom Audiences
Tweet Engager Targeting
Twitter Tailored Audiences
