Opinion

Can Facebook’s remarketing tools improve customer retention?

In this guest post, Joe Brown breaks down the targeting and remarketing advantages that Facebook offers brands, and why it's too soon to ditch the website.

Do you think a website is still necessary when Facebook is now practically a one-stop-shop for everything that you need in marketing?

joe-brown-media-junkiesWhile Facebook is now the most widely-used platform, frankly I believe that running a website is still super important.

Targeting website visitors, I believe, is still the best way to capture leads. However, not everybody has impressive traffic to their website; some don’t even have one.

It’s a good thing Facebook remarketing has come up with many options that can give advertisers the push they need, with or without a website.

When Facebook came up with Engagement on Facebook Custom Audiences, the targeting possibilities provided looked really impressive. Advertisers can now target those who engage with videos, Lead Ad Forms and Facebook Canvas. That’s just the tip of the iceberg because now there is Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audiences.

Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audiences allows advertisers to create audiences of people based on their engagement with their Facebook content:

  • Everyone who engaged with the page – This includes everyone who visited your Page or engaged with your Page’s content or ads.
  • Anyone who visited the page – This includes anyone who visited your Page, regardless of action.
  • People who engaged with any post or ad – This includes only the people who engaged with a post through reactions (‘like’, ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’, ‘angry’), shares, comments, link clicks or carousel swipes.
  • People who click any CTA button – This includes only the people who click CTAs like ‘contact us’ or ‘shop now’.
  • People who sent a message – This includes only the people who send a direct message to the page
  • People who saved the page or any post – This includes only the people who saved your Page or a post in your Page.

The duration can be from 1 to 365 days and this gives an impressive volume for remarketing.

facebook-remarketing-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

Remarketing Defined

Remarketing means targeting website visitors with an ad – particularly, a Facebook ad. Advertisers can show ads related to a visitor’s activity in Facebook – a post that was read, product that was viewed, video that was watched, search that was made and so on and so forth.

Remarketing can be done in two ways: manual creation of ads & website custom audiences and dynamic ads. What we will discuss is the manual creation of ads because this is what advertisers can use.

Why is Remarketing Important?

A Facebook ad can only go one of two ways; it can either succeed or fail. In my opinion, the critical factor in an ad’s performance is the targeting.

The ad that looks the best will still fail if it doesn’t reach its intended audience. Those who are new in Facebook advertising can be gung-ho in their approach by targeting interests or audiences that Facebook believes are interested in particular topics.

This may be a good strategy but they’re not necessarily the best.

Targeting an interest delivers a cold message wherein the recipient doesn’t know anything about you. If you are trying to sell a product or if you’re trying to get an email address, a cold message will not necessarily do the trick.

With remarketing, advertisers can now reach already warm audiences. These are users who have revealed a bit about themselves through their actions on the advertiser’s website or page.

Such actions can provide the advertiser information about the users’ needs and interests. Reaching a warm audience will most likely yield favourable responses.

How to Use Facebook Remarketing

These are the ways you can use Facebook remarketing in targeting warm audiences.

  1. Target those who have visited your website.

The intended targets of remarketing are audiences who know you and these are your website visitors. Facebook Pixel, a unique advertiser code that is placed on every website page, can generate a list of audiences based on the pages visited and when these visits happened.

Until recently, remarketing with website custom audiences can generate the following lists:

  • People who visit your website
  • People who visit specific web pages
  • People who visit specific web pages but not others
  • People who have not visited in a specific period of time.

Information generated from these lists is important because you can determine what type of action to take per group.

For those who have visited your website, you can promote content and expect to get a good response rate. In targeting people who visit specific web pages, you can send an opt-in to readers of specific posts.

These are just examples of customiSed actions you can make.

There are other ways to remarket to website visitors. There is a downside to this method, however and it is the difficulty to isolate the highest quality website visitors from everyone else. It cannot tell you who among the visitors visited the most and who stayed the longest.

Thankfully, Facebook added an Advanced Mode to custom combination targeting. With the Advanced Mode, advertisers can make a list of people who viewed at least 20 pages of their website during the past 180 day. Or completed registrations.faceboook-remarketing-2-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

Or made purchases.facebook-remarketing-3-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-edOr performed a search.

facebook-remarketing-4-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

If you want to target the audiences who spent the most time in your website the advances mode can show it to you.

facebook-remarketing-5-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

With this, you can give more attention to visitors who spend the most time engaging with your site

2. Target those who have viewed your video

Targeting those who have viewed your video, both organic and paid views, is the most inexpensive way to build a remarketing audience.

You can classify your list according to how much of the video has been viewed. Those who have watched it in its entirety are most likely more interested that those who watched just a portion of the video. Then you can act accordingly based on these data.

3. Target those who opened a lead ad form

Lead Ad Forms keep users on Facebook instead of sending them to an off-site landing page. This is friendly to users who can’t be bothered switching to another tab.

faceboook-remarketing-8-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

4. Target those who opened a Canvas

Facebook Canvas, like lead ads and instant articles, keep users on Facebook.

facebook-remarketing-phones-supplied-by-media-junkies-for-joe-brown-op-ed

In addition to sending users to your website, I recommend using Canvas. It will enable an advertiser to tell a story via a collection of images, videos, link, text and product feeds. To make it better, there is Canvas custom audiences that will allow advertisers to focus their remarketing efforts to those who opened the ads.

5. Target those who engaged with your page

There is a new thing in Facebook now that allows advertisers to target people who engage with their page. Audiences can be classified in many ways and you can generate lists of people who have engaged your page from as far as 365 days back.

For the purpose of remarketing, it may seem as if a website is no longer needed because advertisers can reach a relevant audience from their Page or content alone.

But I believe that a website is still important. A website that has good traffic is still good for optimal targeting.

Partner that with Facebook remarketing and your reach potential can be at a level you’ve never experienced before.

Joe Brown is the CEO at Media Junkies

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.