How to Retarget Website Visitors Using Facebook

It would be great if it were true, but unfortunately, not every person who visits your website is going to immediately convert and become a paying customer. They may like what they see, but be ‘stuck’ in their ways and not ready to convert from a break-fix IT model to managed services. Or, they may want to look at what their other options are in your local area.

To keep your company top of mind, many companies will turn to remarketing (retargeting) campaign efforts. A remarketing campaign targets people who have visited your website.

You’ve probably experienced ads like this in your own life: you visit a website after browsing it a bit, but leave without buying anything. Then, you head to another website and suddenly you’re seeing ads from the first website that you were on related to what you were looking at!

Ads like this are all too common. Lucky for you, this isn’t something that is only available to billion-dollar companies. Even small businesses can take advantage of this advertising tactic.

Remarketing Options

Pay-per-click advertisements through Google are a great tool to invest in. Many managed service providers will turn to Google to target website visitors because it is a well-known trusted resource and powerful advertising platform.

However, this can get quite expensive, and can be difficult to manage if you aren’t familiar with the way that Google Ads work. If you try to run one on your own for the first time without going through their lengthy training materials, you’re likely going to spend a LOT of money and have little to show for it.

Fortunately, you have other options. You could instead remarket through Facebook.

Remarketing Through Facebook

To use Facebook’s Remarketing tools, you first have to create an account through Facebook Ads Manager and make sure that your profile is connected to your business page through it.

Facebook remarketing works similar to how Google Ads remarketing works, but has a few advantages that are great for small-to-medium sized businesses:

• Your Audience is Here: Like it or not, Facebook is still one of the most powerful social media platforms out there, and one that the majority of the decision makers that you target are likely using on a regular basis.
• Simplicity: It may be a bit confusing when you’re getting things set up initially, but once you are, it’s not overly difficult to run a remarketing ad through Facebook.
• Free Data Collection: You can set up your Facebook Ads Manager account to track your website visitors for months, even years, and not spend a dime. It doesn’t cost you anything until you actually start running an ad.
• Additional Information: When remarketing through Facebook, you are marketing to Facebook users. Facebook has a lot of information on these users due to the amount of detail that people tie to their personal profiles. This includes detailed demographic information, interest tracking, and activity logs.
• Lookalike Audiences: When people convert, Facebook tracks that information. Once Facebook has collected enough information, Facebook can create a lookalike audience for you. This list will contain people who are similar to those who have converted.

Before you can do all of this, you have to install Facebook Pixel on your website.

What is Facebook Pixel?

Facebook Pixel is similar to the Google remarketing tag. In case you’re not familiar with either, it’s essentially a small snippet of code that you install in your website header. It uses JavaScript to track website visitors that are signed into their Facebook.

If you haven’t yet created and installed it, see Facebook’s step-by-step guide. If we manage your website, feel free to reach out to us if you’re having trouble and we’ll do it for you.

Getting Started with Facebook Remarketing

To start targeting your website visitors, first login to your Facebook Ad Manager Account and go to the Audience page so you can start creating a Custom Audience. 

When you click website traffic, you can start setting the parameters that the person who visits your website must meet for them to see remarketing ads. Parameters are set as to whether the person meets “any” or “all” of the criteria that you set. From there, you can select “All website visitors”, define specific pages (either set pages, or require the URL to contain one or more values”, or target by time spent (by percentile). You can then include more people in your audience by adding additional parameters.

Once you’ve finished setting those parameters, you name your audience, then click the “Create Audience” button. Now, you can start running advertisements to this specific audience.

Need Help? Then Turn to the Remarketing Experts

Not sure of what parameters will get you the results you are looking for? Then let us help! Whether you need help getting started or would like assistance actually running things, our team has experience with both. An effective way to use Facebook to develop leads is with our Facebook Like Campaign, visit the page to learn more.

Reach out to us to find out how we can help.