How Does Facebook Retargeting Work for My Business

Utilizing Facebook Pixels for Increased Sales

As a social media user, you have likely experienced the odd phenomenon of visiting a website or looking at a certain product on amazon or somewhere else then to all of the sudden be bombarded with ads for that same item or things extremely similar items all over your Facebook page. Well if you do not already know the reason behind this, it is the great work of Facebook retargeting. Now if you are a business owner, you probably have wondered, “how does Facebook retargeting work?” or, “how can I get MY products to do the same thing?” We want to share with you today a little insight into Facebook retargeting as well as the reasons it can be beneficial for your business and sales.

Before we get into the benefits of Facebook Retargeting, let’s get a basic understanding of how it works in terms of your business. The idea behind Facebook retargeting is obviously to re-target an audience of users who have already been to your website in the past. So, as I’m sure you are surprised to know, you have to have a Facebook business page in order to take part in Facebook retargeting. When you have a Facebook business page, you can set up a Business Manager account. This will be the account that will help you get started with your paid advertising ventures as you go forward. Within your Ad account, there is a small thing called the ‘Facebook Pixel’ this is a snippet of code that you can put into the backend of your website that captures information about your website’s traffic based on the various events that you set up. Have we lost you yet? Hopefully not. An event is an action that your website visitor takes while on your website, such as clicking a button, or taking a specific website path. Your Facebook pixel will capture all of that information that you have chosen to record through events and feeds it back to your ad account with Facebook. At that time, you will have the opportunity to set up ads specifically targeted for certain visitors to your site. Ok, so that is a pretty basic rundown of how a Facebook pixel works within retargeting, but we are sure that an example will be helpful as you try to understand the process better.

So let’s say that you own an online clothing store and you have already set up and installed your Facebook pixel onto your website. As the owner you set up multiple events including when people abandon their cart, when people make a purchase, when visitors click the contact button and more. But, for the sake of the example, let’s focus in on your abandoned cart visitors. After you have created a custom audience that encompasses the people who have abandoned their carts after doing some online shopping, you can now set up an ad specifically tailored for those users. After enough data is collected showing you the amount of website visitors that are abandoning their cart, you realize that you could be increasing your sales immensely even if you offer a 10% discount to each of those users. The next step will then be to create a custom ad focusing in on the people who have specifically abandoned their cart, your ad could be an exclusive 10% discount code that will ONLY pop up on the Facebooks of those who have abandoned their shopping cart on your site.

As you can see, Facebook retargeting can be a powerful tool when used correctly! You have the ability to very specifically create ads based on the data you collect from your website visitors. The options truly are endless when it comes to using this feature of Facebook ads. Not only are you allowed to retarget visitors who have previously been to your website, but Facebook also has a feature that focuses on ‘lookalike audiences’ these are audiences created by the data of your existing audience. For example, if you have an event on your website that is simply gathering the data of website visitors, you can take that data, and create an audience with Facebook of users who are alike, this could mean anything from common interests, to jobs, to location. Once you create an ad, with those audiences, you can target not only your previous website visitors but also people who “look” like them too!

Facebook advertising can be confusing, but hopefully by now you can see how powerful of a tool it can be for your business. Using Facebook retargeting can help you create better and more effective ads, it can increase your sales, and help you gain a much better insight into your website visitors. This is just a very basic overview answering the question “how does Facebook retargeting work,” and thankfully Facebook has various training courses to help you learn how to utilize each function that Facebook provides.

If you have questions about Facebook advertising or are interested in more information about our advertising services, contact us today. Our marketing team has years of experience with Facebook advertising, and we would love to help your business get started today!