Ever been to a website, perhaps to look for a new pair of shoes, and suddenly those shoes are following you around the internet forever? That’s the power of remarketing.
What is remarketing?
Remarketing is like magic. With a few little things in place, you can target customers with your ads who are primed to buy from you. Why? Because they’ve already been to your website.
Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a marketing strategy where ads are targeted at people who have previously interacted with your website.
This strategy aims to re-engage these individuals and remind them of your products or services.
It’s a way to reconnect with potential customers who might not have completed a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up, during their initial visit.
By continually showing ads to a customer who has expressed an interest in your brand, you can get them to buy much later down the line. Especially if you pair it with sales or discounts. And it has one of the highest returns on investment of any marketing activity.
Here’s how to get started with remarketing for your small business.
Step 1: Head to Ads Manager and start to make an ad
You can do remarketing through social media, by signing up to Facebook and getting an Advertising account through Ads Manager. Your advertising account should be under your business name, like a Business page.
Create your ad as normal, until you get to the audience section. This is where we’ll set up our customer audience for remarketing.
Step 2: Click Create Audience, then Custom Audience
In the audience section of your ad set, click create audience and select ‘custom audience’.
This will let you target people based on visiting your website.
Step 3: Choose the Website Traffic option
Here you have the choice of a few different options for how you will be selecting your audience.
The option we are choosing is Web Traffic, that is, people who have visited your website.
If you haven’t set up your Facebook pixel, you will be prompted to do so here. This pixel is a little bit of code that Facebook gives you to copy and paste onto your website. Find out more about installing your Facebook Pixel.
Step 4: Pick your target audience from the menu
You then have your choice of options based on how they visited your website. You can choose between:
- Anyone who visits your website
- People who visit specific pages
- People visiting specific web pages but not other pages
- People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time
- A Custom combination of these options
Using option one is great if you want to broadly promote your brand. If you want to target customers with specific products, select options two.
Set your date range for targeting, that is, the timeframe that someone has been to your website (e.g. in the latest 180 days). Then continue.
Step 5: Finish your ad
Once you’ve set up your custom audience, you can finish your ad.
If you are targeting customers who have seen a particular product, show them an ad that talks about buying that exact product (rather than your whole brand).
It can also be a good idea to include and sale or discount to your ad content. This can help increase sales to customers who want to buy from you – but are turned off by the price.
Final thoughts on remarketing
Remarketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy. By targeting people who have previously interacted with your website, you can reconnect with potential customers and guide them further along the conversion funnel.
Remarketing doesn’t have to be hard. By following these steps, you’re on your way to setting up a remarketing campaign for your small business.
