6 Retargeting campaigns for Facebook Ads to boost your earnings x40

It is essential when you want to sell on the Internet as there are many reasons why your prospects may not be converting right away: not convinced by your offer, no time to fill out a form, your website is not displaying correctly on their phone, need more time to think, etc.

Even if the person is actually interested, they may simply forget to come back to your website. It's up to you to remind them.

In this article, you will learn about our 6 tried and tested retargeting methods. They all complement each other, which gives you full coverage! We managed to achieve Returns on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 6 to 40 using these methods.

A - For Future Customers

Very simple, you create an audience of visitors or add to carts/checkout by excluding buyers over a slightly longer time period. 

To give you a better understanding of the techniques, we will take the example of an e-commerce website that sells teas, infusers and other related products.  

For this website, we take visitors within the past 30, 14 and 7 days (with different messaging each time). The retargeting time may need to be tested depending on the product that you are selling. 

Correct example of Facebook retargeting.

The more binding the offer (high price, participating in an event), the more time the person will take to think about it. You can expect retargeting timeframes of 45, 60 or even 90 days. Run some experiments.

In terms of format, you can choose between image, video and carousel. Again, test them out.

Understand that the more you refine your retargeting, the more chances you have of making an impact when your ads are displayed.  

Example: my website has multiple tabs offering teas: black tea, green tea, red tea, etc. 

I can create an audience with people that have visited the Black Tea tab in order to offer them black teas only. This will be more interesting than if you were to display teas of all categories. 

Simply use this tool to target a specific web page.

I’m using part of my URL to target people that visited the Black Tea product page.

This method also works when geography plays a part in your purchasing journey. 

We have a client in the event space that sells obstacle courses throughout Canada. 

Each major city has its race. It is therefore useless to show women in Toronto (English-speaking) ads for Montreal (French-speaking). 

That’s why we have two types of retargeting ads:

• Standard ads that can be seen by all visitors (by language)
• Highly targeted ads that can only be seen by female residents of a specific city 

By doing so, you are making your ad more relevant and bringing the prospect directly to the page that suits her (and not to a general page).

With this approach, our lifetime ROAS jumped from from 8 to 23 in the province of Quebec.

If you want to learn more about their ads, we have a case study available here.

B - For New Customers

We’re unveiling a real “hack” today. 

Facebook retargeting is not solely applicable to prospects; new buyers are also an interesting target.

In this example, we’re only targeting people that have just made a purchase. If you wait too long, you risk having them lose interest (or move on to be included in II.B retargeting below). 

This is even easier than the previous retargeting strategy; you simply have to thank your customers.

No more, no less!

We implemented this type of retargeting with a Reach objective for a client and with an Engagement objective for another. After 7 days, the ROAS was higher than 9 and 16! Here are the ads:

Example of Facebook retargeting for new customers

The second ad is different, as we ask new customers to tag their friends who have not yet purchased the product. This is another way of getting the customer involved, as we don’t have a complementary offer for them, but we hope that their purchase will make their still hesitant friends or relatives take action.

A - For Future Customers

More technical, it requires you to "connect" your e-commerce website with Facebook manager. For time-saving purposes, we will not be giving you a how-to in this article. 

Here, Facebook will set up unique ads according to the pages that the prospect has visited. 

In order to do so, it will use a Catalogue with which you can create retargeting scenarios.

Example of a catalogue with Product Sets that Facebook will be able to display according to your specifications.

In other words, you can choose upon which actions and with which products you want Facebook to display your ads.

In regards to format, we strongly recommend Carousel or Collection (see image below). It’s a powerful format that displays a video in addition to your products (only available on mobile).

This is a retargeting strategy that we use a lot for our clients, notably Mme & Co, a company that sells cloth diapers.

Since we launched DPA, the retargeting ROAS has jumped to over 40. 

Moreover, by using this retargeting strategy, you’re giving Facebook more freedom when it comes to ad delivery, which has been recommended since the launch of the Power5, on which we wrote an article.

B - For Existing Customers

We're no longer talking about standard Facebook retargeting, which was discussed in Section I.B., as we’re now looking to sell via multiple methods. 

This section of the article confirms the adage:

"Acquiring a new customer is more expensive than converting an existing customer."

1. Cross-Selling

I’ll use cross-selling when the customer has already made a purchase in order to offer them a complementary product. 

Let's go back to our tea e-commerce website. You’ve bought tea, therefore I can offer you tea infusers to complete your experience.

The offer is complementary to the initial purchase and the individual has already bought something on your website. Two elements that work in your favour! 

The method is very simple, you use Catalogue targeting to identify all individuals that have made a purchase in product category X and you show them product category Y (complementary). 

 2. Upselling

I have calculated that, on average, tea packets are empty after 2 months. 

This information is crucial to my business, as I will be able to reach out to my former customers at that time.

The goal is for them to order again, before they run out of tea. 

In order to do that, you use a targeting audience that includes all buyers over the past 90 days but excludes those that have ordered in the last 45 days. That way, you will reach buyers who placed their last order three months ago.  

That's what we're doing yet again for Homeo Animal.

Example of Facebook retargeting using Carousel and Collection.

Using this method, we’ve achieved a ROAS of 6 since its launch. 

You can also encourage your buyers to switch or upgrade to a more expensive offer now that they know and trust your brand.

We talk a lot about Lead Magnets at J7 (and rightfully so), both for cold acquisition and retargeting. You can read an article on the subject here.

It simply consists of offering high educational value content in exchange for an email address. You will have noticed that retargeting can be done over several days (or even months) so we would recommend having an emailing platform. 

When using it at this stage, you should ask yourself the following question: what is preventing my prospects from buying on my website?

Then: can I produce educational content that would change this perception?

If we take the tea website example, it could be a guide that would explain the difference between each type of tea as well as their respective benefits. 

This content already exists in guides that are on sale for 159 Euros!

Offer it for free to an audience interested in teas and there is a good chance that you will get email addresses for next to nothing!

Then, you need a sales page that makes an offer that’s hard to refuse. Here’s an offer from one of our clients who sells training courses related to diamonds, rubies and other precious stones.

And here is an example for our women-only sporting event.

The audience is made up of "non-sporty people" who are afraid to run 5 kilometres without any training. 

That’s why we’ve created a guide that teaches you how to get ready for your first obstacle course.

We then send a series of emails that push the lead to make a purchase. 

In terms of results, we’ve had an ROAS of over 23 since launch. 

With this guide, women understand that they have no reason to fear participating in the race and that they will be able to do so without any issue. 

The last type of retargeting campaign that you can set up is one that uses a Facebook Messenger objective.

We tend to think that people are used to buying instinctively on the Internet, but it’s now obvious that this is not always the case.

Especially when you have an offer that is expensive or difficult to make tangible on the Internet.

That’s why we often use it with clients that sell jewellery, training courses and weighted blankets!

The latter is a product that is still little known to the general public and therefore hard to sell without the person being able to try it before purchasing. 

Messenger retargeting has earned our client, Clinique Virtuelle, a ROAS of over 13 since its launch.

Example of Facebook Messenger Retargeting

However, Messenger requires more time from the community manager. It’s harder to scale because it will require you to be even more present in order to respond to enquiries.

It would be wiser to use it in the very last stage of the funnel for checkout abandonments, for example, and not for simple visitors.

With these six methods, we have covered:

• Large conversion windows (7 to 90 days)
• Unique situations (upselling, cross-selling)
• Complementary audiences (prospects and existing customers).
• Different Facebook objectives (traffic, conversion, reach, engagement and Messenger).

This should make you understand that solely retargeting Facebook visitors is not enough (or optimal). 

If your prospect is not buying, it's not always due to lack of time. He needs an offer, a good argument and a targeted sales pitch. 

If you let your customers leave and hope that they come back on their own, then you're missing out on A LOT of sales, and ones that would cost you a lot less (a simple Reach or Engagement campaign at $5/day can make the difference). For some of our clients, 100% of profit happens after a person has made a first purchase (thanks to upselling/cross-selling). Emailing also becomes a must for retargeting.

Lastly, you understood that the biggest ROAS was attributed to a DPA campaign. Two other Facebook retargeting strategies were also based on this technique. You cannot ignore Facebook and its algorithm by sticking to more "traditional/manual" retargeting. You have to implement it if you can.