A to Z Guide to Run High-Conversion Facebook Remarketing Campaign

Imagine this!
We’re in the summer and you’re planning for your next trip to the beach. You’ve just checked out some short pants from an online store. You like them, you added them to your cart, but you decide to hold off a while to search more and see if you find some other better pair.
The next day you scroll your Facebook timeline and there it is; the same short pants you’ve checked out before. What a coincidence! Then you visit your online news provider to stay up to date and you find it. Again?! The same would happen when you check a blog or open a YouTube video.
All that happened can be called a ‘Remarketing’; a pretty powerful way to increase sales for eCommerce business owners.

So now imagine how much money you can make after running your first Facebook remarketing campaign.

In this deep-dive guide, we will discuss how eCommerce business owners can leverage the opportunity of Facebook retargeting and remarketing advertising to boost traffic, leads, and overall sales of your eCommerce site.

Ready to get started?!

Let’s start with the contents of the guide…

• What Is Facebook Remarketing?
• Remarketing Vs. Retargeting: What’s the Difference?
• How Does Retargeting Work?
• Why Facebook Remarketing?
• Facebook Remarketing Examples That Actually Work
• How to Run a High-Conversion Facebook Retargeting Campaign (with screenshots)

Since we each have our own concept that reflects our understanding of words and terms. It’s important to firstly set definitions to stand on one rule.

What Is Facebook Remarketing?

To know exactly what is “Facebook Remarketing”, read first what is “Marketing” and what is “Remarketing”.

Marketing in its simplest sense is “the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service.”

As for remarketing, it is a form of digital ads that is used to re-engage with your customers to keep your brand in front of bounced traffic or abandoned carts after visitors leave your eCommerce website.

For most eCommerce websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting or remarketing is a way designed to help businesses reach 98% of users who don’t convert right away.

Concerning Facebook remarketing, it is a marketing strategy that consists of retargeting or re-engaging with customers who have shown some interest in your products or services by using the Facebook advertising platform.

Remarketing Vs. Retargeting: What’s the Difference?

Although remarketing and retargeting describe the act of advertising to the same person more than one time, they’re not the same. According to Neil Patel, “retargeting is a subset of remarketing.” Remarketing is like the umbrella that includes retargeting under it.

Yaniv Nava mentioned that the main difference between remarketing and retargeting is in the ‘strategy’ explaining that retargeting is mostly about serving digital ads to prospects based on cookies while remarketing is usually based on customer data like emails and customer activity like digital behaviors.

How Does Retargeting Work?

Without delving into complicated technical details, retargeting is a cookie-based technology that utilizes simple Javascript code to anonymously follow your customers and track their activities all over the web.

Here’s how this technology works:

• While developing and programming your eCommerce site, you include a small, unobtrusive code.  (This code is sometimes referred to as a Remarketing Pixel or Retargeting Pixel.)
• The code or pixel is unnoticeable to your eCommerce store visitors and will not affect your website’s performance.
• Every time a new customer visits your eCommerce website, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie.
• Later, when your tracked visitors browse the internet, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to showcase your ads, ensuring that your social ads are served only to people who have previously visited your eCommerce website.

In short, Facebook retargeting or e-commerce remarketing all starts first when your customer visits an e-commerce store.

Why Facebook Remarketing?

Firstly, there are two main players in the remarketing game, Google ads remarketing and Facebook ads remarketing.

In Google ads remarketing (aka dynamic remarketing), your ads will be shown on YouTube videos, websites, blogs, and third-party mobile apps that the prospect may visit after visiting your eCommerce website.

As for Facebook ads remarketing, ads will be shown on the users’ Facebook timelines.

In this guide, we focus mainly on Facebook remarketing campaigns.

Why?

Because despite the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the whole world, Facebook is still booming!

With a 12% year-over-year growth, Facebook’s daily active users reached 1.79 billion on average and monthly active users reached 2.70 billion on average for June 2020. Moreover, Facebook advertising revenue achieved a 10% YoY growth as well.

Facebook is a social media giant; so, there’s no room to ignore it. ?

As an eCommerce store owner, Facebook is the best social media platform that gives you opportunities to display your products to the world, showcase the additional value you can bring to someone’s life, reach existing customers and reconnect with them, start new relationships with new customers, and eventually increase sales.

Let’s assume that you managed to do all the above mentioned successfully. The question now is how can you bring your previous cart abandoners and entice them to visit your online store again and make a purchase?

The short answer is by using “Facebook Remarketing Campaigns”…

What You’ll Gain from Using Facebook Remarketing?

Remarketing on Facebook is a powerful tactic that helps boost conversions and decreases the overall cost per customer acquisition. Facebook remarketing campaigns can effectively increase your marketing ROI.

The below points shows some of the advantages of Facebook remarketing campaigns and how it can help take your eCommerce business to the next level.

1. Improving Purchase Intent and Maximizing Sales

The first and most important benefit of using Facebook remarketing campaigns is that it improves your efficiency in such a way that makes your potential customers will always have the intent to purchase products from you so you can maximize your eCommerce sales.

Facebook remarketing also narrows down your customer base and targets only those people who are searching for the products you offer or only showing your ads to people who are really interested in your product.

2. Improving Conversion Rate

In most cases, converting first-time visitors into buyers takes time. People are more likely to browse various online stores to compare your prices with someone else’s before completing a purchase. When they’ve gone, some of them may lose their way back to your online store.

Website remarketing is a digital media strategy that helps you to reach those customers, and involve them in a conversion process before a sale happens. You can target customers who have visited a specific page on your website or looked for free services from you and filled out a form to download content from your website.

3. Expanding Your Brand Exposure and Market Reach

Facebook Remarketing is a great tool for customer acquisition to reach audiences who share characteristics with your remarketing audience.
It’s also a powerful way to remind your custom audiences about your brand to help them to recall the message that they viewed on your website and display reminder ads in their Facebook news feed and in the right-side ads.

4. Facebook Remarketing Is Cost-Effective

Facebook remarketing advertising usually has a lower price. It’s cost-effective because you only need to pay when your customers click on your ad and thus you will be able to know how much you need to spend on your Facebook remarketing campaign.

The reason for the lower cost per click is because your customers already know about your business and are familiar with your product and services so it’s supposed to be less targeted than search engine traffic.

5. Facebook Remarketing Is an Easy-To-Use Technique

The beauty of Facebook remarketing ads is that they can be run on an endless and continuous loop. Of course, you’ll have new people finding your eCommerce website and abandoning their cart every day, but when you use the ‘Facebook Remarketing Pixel’, you don’t have to update your Custom Audiences manually every day. They’ll simply filter their way into your existing remarketing audience — and therefore, see your remarketing campaign.

Facebook Remarketing Examples that Actually Work

Looking at the best Facebook remarketing ad examples is one of the best ways to get inspired and to learn about Facebook advertising best practices.

That’s a real treasure chest waiting to be uncovered. Let’s take a look.

1. Rareform

The maker of upcycled vinyl bags, Rareform, used strong targeting and value optimization based on Facebook custom audiences and lookalike audiences to create 30–60-second mobile video ads in order to increase sales.

The campaign achieved a 19% higher return on ad spend, 4X more purchases, 36% lower cost per action, and 46% lower cost per click.

2. Pinkboxcereal

The Malaysian online beauty retailer, Pinkboxcereal, set up its website and Facebook pixel and successfully ran remarketing ads to increasing online sales using dynamic ads and video ads across Facebook and Instagram. The campaign resulted in earning a 37X return on ad spend for website purchases from April to June 2020.

3. MyGlamm

The European beauty brand, MyGlamm, used Facebook dynamic ads to reach their custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and core audiences to encourage purchases and generate more sales.

By this Facebook campaign, MyGlamm managed to reach more potential customers and boost sales. In only five months, the campaign achieved a 51% lift in sales with dynamic ads and 92% incremental reach over ads that have been run 5 months previous this campaign.

4. Luca + Danni

The American handcrafted jewelry brand, Luca + Danni, wanted to elevate sales and brand recall for their custom audiences with mobile-first Facebook video ads.

The brand ran a campaign from January 31–March 2, 2019, that helped the small business delivering 4X lift in sales conversions
30-point lift in ad recall, 7.7-point lift in familiarity, 24-point lift in brand awareness, and 1.8X increase in return on ad spend.

5. Simplified by Emily Ley

The academic planner for busy women brand, Simplified by Emily Ley, ran a multi-part ad campaign using lead ads and Facebook Live from April 1–May 2, 2018, to generate sales by targetting their custom audience, lookalike audiences, and core audiences.

The campaign resulted in a 24X return on ad spend and a 3X increase in May 2018 revenue compared to the previous year.

6. D+AF

The Taiwanese shoe retailer, D+AF, used Facebook’s multi-language and multi-country dynamic ads and Facebook Pixel to reach broad audiences in four markets which are Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The campaign achieved a 53% increase in online purchases, a 57% higher return on ad spend, and a 26% higher conversion lift in “Add-to-Cart” actions.

7. QUEENSHOP

Taiwan-based online women’s clothing and fashion accessories brand, QUEENSHOP, planned to reach cross-border customers, especially in Singapore and Malaysia with Facebook dynamic ads.

The brand launched a campaign for some month targeting their custom audiences and lookalike audiences. the campaign achieved a 41% increase in new online customers and an 82% increase in return on ad spend.

8. Hydro Flask

The award-winning US-based leader in insulated products company, Hydro Flask, ran a Facebook remarketing campaign that tested text overlays on video ads. The campaign saw 10% more purchases and a 29-point lift in ad recall when using ads with text overlay versus no text overlay.

9. GANT Norway

This all-American clothing brand, GANT Norway, tried to encourage online sales with eye-catching Facebook ads using custom audiences and Facebook Pixel.

The Facebook remarketing campaign launched from January–August 2019 and achieved a 2.5X increase in website conversions, 2.3X increase in revenue, 2.2X increase in link clicks, and 16X return on ad spend.

10. Nestlé Middle East

The food and beverage giant, Nestlé, aimed to drive brand awareness during Ramadan by creating a helpful bot for FB Messenger depending on their custom audiences.

The campaign resulted in people spending 2.9X more time on the Nestlé Middle East website compared to other social media marketing campaigns.

Hang in there – you’ve reached the last section of this deep-dive guide on how to run your first Facebook remarketing campaign.

Read on…

How to Run a High-Conversion Facebook Remarketing Campaign for eCommerce

There are 7 key steps you’ll need to follow to create your own Facebook remarketing campaign for your online store:

1. Create and Install Facebook Pixel on Your eCommerce Store
2. Create Your Facebook Custom Audience
3. Define Your Campaign Objective
4. Select Your Facebook Custom Audience
5. Pick Your Ad Placements on Facebook
6. Set Your Budget
7. Create Your Ads

Let’s take each step in more detail…

1. Create and Install Facebook Pixel on Your eCommerce Store

The initial step to start your social remarketing is to create and install your ‘Facebook Pixel‘ which is “A piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimize and build audiences for your advertising campaigns.” So, you must have an eCommerce website for your business and you must be able to update your website’s code.

The good news is that stores built on ExpandCart can easily activate Facebook pixel (and other pixels for other applications and engines, like Snapchat and Google) from their dashboard by toggling a button on and off and pick the actions they would like to track from their e-commerce store visitors ?

 

Still haven’t created a store yet? Create one now for free and retarget those cart abandoners and one-time visitors easily.

To create your Facebook Pixel and get the ID for your store, follow the below steps:

• Visit Events Manager.
• Click on ‘Connect Data Sources’ and select the ‘Web’ option.
• Add your Pixel Name and your eCommerce website URL
• Click Continue

Once you’ve done this step, Facebook will guide you through the process of installing Pixel on your website whether manually or by using partner integration.

You can also follow this step-by-step guide (with detailed screenshots) to create and activate a Facebook pixel on your online store.

2. Create Your Facebook Custom Audience

Custom audiences are the people you want to retarget and reach with your remarketing campaign.

Your Facebook Pixel creates a list of people who have visited your eCommerce website and the actions they’ve taken. The next step you’ll need to take is to create a list of ‘Custom Audience‘ to collect those actions together to be able to retarget them based on their shared behaviors.

To create your own, head over to Facebook’s Ad Manager, and then:

• Sign into Ads Manager
• Search for “Audiences” in your search bar
• Accept the Facebook policies
• Select “Create Audience” then hit “Custom Audience”

You’ll find four main behaviors you can create Custom Audiences for, which are:

a. Website Traffic

This option enables you to target people who have visited your eCommerce store or people who have visited a specific page by using this data from your Facebook Pixel.

You have the ability to control the timeframe based on your business goals. For example, if you target your eCommerce website visitors who’ve abandoned their carts, it’s better to serve your ads within 10-14 days because after two weeks customers won’t have the desire to purchase your product.

b. App Activity

Create a custom audience of people who’ve installed your store app or took a specific action while using it, such as purchasing an item. You can track customers who have added an item to their cart using your store mobile app, but not completed the checkout. You can also create a promotion campaign to retarget your app users who haven’t logged into your mobile app in 60 days by notifying them about your app’s new features.

Using this option you can track the following information:

• Recent purchases
• Add to cart
• App launches
• Event tracking (e.g. achieved a specific level in a game)

The mobile app activity tracking works the same as Facebook Pixel for websites except that it focuses on mobile apps. It’s a little bit more technical, so it’ll be better to work with your developer to implement it.

c. Customer List

Audience list retargeting is another great option to target customers by simply uploading a list of customers’ information who’ve interacted with your business. Information in this list includes their names, phone numbers, email addresses, or information collected at offline events.

Applying this option is very easy, all you have to do is to upload a CSV file with the data you’ve collected and Facebook will map those data to Facebook profiles in order to retarget them with your promotional ads.

Also, If you’re using MailChimp, Facebook offers you a great option to import your data directly from your MailChimp or any other email platform.

d. Offline Activity

Offline activity is another option that enables you to retarget people who have engaged with your business in-store, over the phone or by other offline channels.

Offline activity tracking is similar to Customer Lists. The only difference is that Offline Activity requires more manual work. So, you need someone at your company to regularly upload data about the customers’ behaviors that are completing in-store.

After setting up your filters, name the group and click “Create Audience”. Then, you’ll be redirected to a page contains all your Custom Audiences.

Prepare yourself for this shock!

Facebook might hit you with this dreaded message “Your Pixel is Inactive”.

But don’t fret!

It’s because you’ve just recently installed your Pixel and Facebook requires at least twenty users to fit your criteria before running targeted advertising for a Custom Audience. All you have to do is to keep setting up your ad and it should fix itself as soon as more audiences start being tracked on your website.

3. Define Your Campaign Objective

Starting from this step, we’re talking about the actual campaign planning and creation of your Facebook retargeting campaign. It starts with identifying your goal or the reason you’re running these ads for.

How?

• Hit the “Create” button
• Select the objective that you want people to achieve,
• Name your campaign
• Hit “Continue”

The most two common objectives for Facebook retargeting campaigns are “Traffic” to make your remarketing audiences to head back to your website, and “Conversions” if you’re them towards a purchase.

4. Select Your Facebook Custom Audience

Let’s assume that for retargeting, we’re going to focus on website traffic or people who have reached your website during a specific period of time.

In this step, you’ll be taken to a screen that allows you to create your custom audience. The audience size of your remarketing audience will be shown along with the estimated daily results. If this isn’t as large as you expected, you might need to return back to your Custom Audience and make your edits on the timeframe.

You have some targeting options as follows:

• Anyone who visits your website
• People who visit specific pages on your website
• People visiting specific web pages but not others
• People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time
• Custom combination

What if you target people who have visited your eCommerce website within the past 30 days and they’ve also used your mobile app?! ?

Those people fall into two kinds of custom audiences and this may cause issues. They will swallow up your resources because you pay to target the same person twice. They may see so many retargeted ads from you, which could cause ad fatigue.

You can easily solve this issue by excluding Custom Audiences at this stage. Just hit the “Exclude” button under the Custom Audiences field to exclude people who might overlap with the audience group you’re retargeting with your campaign.

5. Pick Your Ad Placements on Facebook

It’s time to specify where your ad will be shown on Facebook. There are different locations that have different costs, audiences, traffic, conversion rates, and click-through.

For Facebook remarketing adverts, it’s good to let the platform recommend the best option for your different ad types because it’s most likely to result in meeting your campaign objectives.

6. Set Your Budget

It’s up to you whatever you set a daily or a lifetime budget for your Facebook retargeting ads using the “Cost Control” field. The amount of money you plan to spend will vary heavily from business to business.

Of course, you don’t want to waste your money. So, begin with a small budget and then raise it on your most profitable campaigns.

7. Create Your Ads

It’s time for creativity!

Spend your time to create a creative ad that grabs your audiences’ attention. Choose the ad format you want to use — images, videos, text, etc. —upload your visuals, and spend time crafting your ad copy.

Don’t miss including the webpage URL that you want your prospects to visit, using “UTM Parameters” to collect more insight on where audiences are visiting from.

When everything is done, launch your retargeting campaign and set back to see results.

Final Note

It may sound like setting up a high-converting Facebook remarketing campaign is simple. That being said, there are many aspects that must be worked out before you make your final ad copy and creative.

There are so many different goals and cool things you can achieve using Facebook Remarketing campaigns. First and before taking any step it’s important to figure out what do you actually want to achieve. It’s halfway down towards success.

Spend enough time to set your remarketing pixel, make your custom audiences lists, set goals and types of your remarketing campaigns, and effectively tie the whole conversion path together.

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