Utilizing Facebook’s retargeting feature is an incredibly effective method for converting website visitors into active users who engage with your desired actions, whether it’s signing up, subscribing, downloading content, making purchases, or any other goal you’ve set for your website and marketing initiatives.

The general principle of retargeting is highly valuable because returning visitors demonstrate a stronger interest in your products or services. Consequently, they have a significantly higher likelihood of clicking on your ads and converting compared to first-time visitors. This probability increases with each instance of your target audience encountering your ad.

However, there’s a lot more to retargeting than simply presenting the same generic ads to all previous site visitors through a single retargeting ad set. I’ve discovered several strategies that are far more sophisticated and yield better outcomes.

Continue reading to uncover seven retargeting tactics that will significantly elevate your Facebook marketing efforts.

1. Tailor Ads to Specific Page Visitors

Your website and blog are made up of various pages with diverse content, attracting a range of visitors. So why display the same generic ad to everyone?

A key point to remember is that you have the ability to segment your retargeting audiences based on the different subjects of your pages and their corresponding visitors. In essence, this allows you to present your audience with specific ads that are more likely to resonate with their interests.

For instance, at CrazyLister, we categorize our blog based on the articles they read. So, if someone reads an article about improving eBay sales, they’ll see a retargeted ad focused on how CrazyLister can help them achieve that. Visitors who read about eBay templates will see an ad about, as you might have guessed, eBay templates. This strategy can be extended to all the topics covered on your blog. While it may seem like extra work, it’s surprisingly straightforward and undoubtedly worth the investment in the long run.

Naturally, this tactic can also be applied to your website’s product pages and landing pages.

Implementation

If you’re familiar with Facebook’s audience tool, this will be a breeze. You only need to create a custom audience of “People who visited specific web pages” and use the rules “URL” and “contains” to input a unique segment of the desired landing page URL(s). In the illustration below, I’ve generated an audience comprising individuals who have read our blog posts about eBay templates.

Now, I have an audience with defined interests, allowing me to deliver precisely targeted ads.

2. Prioritize Visitors Seeking More Information

Visitors who actively seek additional information about your offerings are closer to converting than those who briefly skim your homepage and leave.

Therefore, visitors seeking more information justify a higher bid and budget allocation. To do this, you need to isolate them into a distinct custom audience.

Implementation

Similar to the first example, it’s very simple. Create a custom audience and segment the visitors who explored your site’s “How it works,” “Features,” or “About” pages, as demonstrated below.

These are the users who are actively seeking information and deserve increased attention.

3. Target Visitors Who Explored Pricing

One of the most impactful Facebook retargeting tactics is creating a custom audience of visitors who visited your site’s pricing page.

The logic is that visitors who reach your pricing page are actively in the market and demonstrate a higher likelihood of becoming paying customers.

It’s crucial to prevent these users from slipping away by segmenting them and bidding competitively to ensure maximum reach.

Creating This Audience

As in the previous examples, establish a custom audience based on your pricing page URL.

4. Re-engage Almost-Converted Visitors

This tactic expands on the previous ones, focusing on visitors even closer to conversion – those who landed on your sign-up page but didn’t complete the process.

While it might not always be clear why someone would click a “signup” button and not follow through, it happens frequently for various reasons. Your role is to provide a gentle nudge, addressing any remaining concerns or uncertainties to encourage sign-up.

Creating This Audience

You’re likely getting the hang of this now. Create a custom audience using your sign-up page URL, excluding users who have already signed up.

5. Reconnect with Users Based on Search Queries

If you leverage Google and Bing Ads (a safe assumption given you’re reading this), there’s a clever retargeting trick you can implement on Facebook. You can utilize Facebook to retarget visitors directed to your website from a search ad, tailoring your message to their specific search terms.

While it might sound complex, it’s actually quite straightforward. I’ll illustrate this using a real retargeting ad we employ at CrazyLister. We target keywords like “eBay templates,” “eBay HTML templates,” “create eBay templates,” etc., in our search campaigns. However, our conversion rate from these keywords isn’t 100%. This is where retargeting comes in.

We segment our site visitors based on their search queries, providing an immediate “answer” to their search on Facebook.

For example, if someone searched for “eBay listings,” they’ll encounter an ad about eBay listings the next time they’re on Facebook. If their search was “sell more on eBay,” they’ll see an ad illustrating how CrazyLister can help them achieve that. This approach is applied across all our search terms and landing pages.

6. Utilize Time-Based Segmentation

Time segmenting, while fundamental, is a retargeting tactic often underutilized. Unlike previous segmentations based on visitor location on your website, this tactic focuses on when they visited.

The objective is to allocate more of your retargeting budget toward “hot” visitors who recently visited your site and less on those who have “cooled off” over time.

This tactic creates a “drip campaign” of ads for past visitors, maintaining the effectiveness of your retargeting campaigns.

7. Exclude Irrelevant Users

As highlighted earlier, retargeting goes beyond simply showing the same generic ads to all visitors. Let me share a different approach that often elicits a “How did I not think of that?” response.

The tactic: Instead of solely segmenting your visitors, exclude irrelevant audiences with a lower conversion likelihood.

Not everyone who lands on your website is genuinely interested in your offerings, making them a poor investment of your marketing budget. A prime example is excluding visitors to your career page. These individuals are unlikely interested in your product and shouldn’t be part of your retargeting audience (unless you’re targeting them with job ads!).

You can also exclude visitors who spend minimal time on your website. This operates inversely to the points about pricing or features page visitors. Short visits followed by immediate departures indicate a lower conversion likelihood, making these visitors potential candidates for exclusion from your remarketing lists.

Here’s how you can do this within your Facebook account.

Once this audience is defined, you can easily exclude it from your retargeting ad sets, ensuring you only reach relevant individuals. You can even segment these visitors out directly within other audiences by excluding the specific URL.

Conclusion

Effective retargeting can be transformative for your Facebook marketing. Segmenting your visitors into distinct custom audiences is crucial. You’ll be astounded by the positive impact a well-executed retargeting strategy can have on your marketing outcomes.