Using Facebook Web Site Custom Audiences to re-target site visitors

Second bit at the cherry.

If you have put any effort at all into promoting your site then this is a great tactic for maximizing your return from that effort.

If you are paying for traffic to come to your site using Google Adwords or through Search Engine Optimisation then this is  an absolute must for you.

The sad truth is that in most cases a visitor to a web site  will not take the action you want them to take on their first visit.

Even though these visitors did not buy or make that call you at least know they are interested in what you offer.

What do you do ?

What you do not do is just let them go and hope they will come back…. in most cases it will not happen and all that time , energy and money spent getting them to your site in the first place has been wasted.

What you do is try again to get them to buy by re-targeting them with ads.

Re-targeting is simply advertising again  to your site visitors who did not convert after they have visited your site. It works because you are advertising to people who already know you and have some understanding of what you do. They must have a need for your services or products.  That is why they were on your site.

Google Pay Per Click has been offering this for many years and now you can use Facebook  Advertising to deliver the re-targeted ads to your site visitors.

How effective is Re-targeting ?

Is this really worth it I hear you ask, is this more trouble that it is worth. Well here are some facts about the effectiveness of re-targeting.

1. Re-targeted marketing campaigns using ads show engagement rates 2.4 to 3 times higher than ad campaigns not using re-targeting among the same customer base.
2. Lead Generation involving   retargeting can lead to 149 percent higher conversion rates among some business sectors, according to a recent study. The combined techniques were most effective for customer service industries, with a 128% increase in conversions, and financial services, with a 147% improvement.
3. In a comScore study, re-targeting proved to be the best method of driving prospects back to a website. Re-targeting site visitors resulted in a 726% lift in site visitation within 4 weeks of first ad exposure.
4. Retargeting also has a massive impact in the increase of branded search: The same study found that re-targeting resulted in a 1046% lift in branded search in a 4 week period following initial exposure—again, the most effective results of any type of ad placement.
5. When shopping on-line, 72% of e-commerce shoppers abandon their shopping carts before making a purchase. Without re-targeting, just 8% of customers return to purchase the product—but with re-targeting and other forms of re-marketing, that percentage trebles to 26%.

You can check out this web site for the source of this data

So re-targeting works.

There are many places you can re-target visitors to your site and Facebook is one of them. As there is an excellent chance your site visitors spend a lot of time  on Facebook then it is actually one of the best places to re-target them with ads.

Web Site Custom Audiences

To re-target your site visitors on Facebook you need to set-up what are called web site custom audiences.

These are really lists of visitors to your site that Facebook has access to.

To set-up a Web Site Custom Audience you need to click on the Ads Manager tab in the right hand menu on your screen

 

 

 

Next you need to click on the Audiences Tab followed by Create Audience

Facebook has many options available here so select Create Web Site Custom Audience from the list in the box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will now be brought to the screen where you  define your Web Site Custom Audience.

Use What You Know

Lets think about this for a minute.  Not all site visitors want the same thing. You may sell different products and services.

People interesting in your  product or service A may have no interest in your product or service B.

It makes sense that when you re-market to this person you  focus on your product or service A. This will clearly make the ad more interesting to the viewer and so more likely to success.

So you have a shopping site with 100 different office products. Somebody came to your site and looked at  photocopier section. They did not buy.

You now want to promote ads about your photocopiers to them. As you know they are really interested you may put a discount voucher code in the ad or use some other way of convincing them to buy.

Facebook will allow you to do all of this.

Setting up your Website Custom Audience

Following on from the previous steps you have this screen to fill in to create your web site custom audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Give your audience a name, make it relevant to its purpose , if you are building a list of all site visitors then call it all site visitors, if it is only people who visit the photocopier section of your site then call it the photocopier list.
2. Add a description of the list , this is only to remind you later why you created this list.
3. This is where you refine your list , if you are targeting all visitors then select that radio button. If as in our example you are going to target visitors to a specific part of your site you select visitors visiting a specific page.
4. This only appears if you are targeting specific pages. In here you define the specific page or pages you wish to target. You have many ways to do this. For our photocopier example we may select Url containing Photocopier if the product pages for photocopiers all had the word photocopiers in the web address.
5. Select how long somebody stays on the list , the highest value is 180 days.
6. Click create and your list is created.
7. Your list will only start to build once you have installed the required code on your site. Click view custom audience pixel to see the code. This needs to go between the <head> and </head> on every page on your site. Get your developer to do this.

Once all of this has been done and the code installed on your site Facebook will start building your custom audience so you can use it for targeting ads to Facebook users.

Re-targeting works, it is   a conversion strategy that if implemented will add to your bottom line.