If you’ve ever been on social media, you’ve probably been the target of a retargeting campaign. Say you’re looking at coffee makers on Amazon. You’re just comparing your options, you’re not really ready to buy yet.
So you click over to Facebook, maybe to see how many views you’ve gotten on the live stream of your daughter’s soccer game. And there, right in the sidebar, is a picture of the exact coffee maker you were looking at not 30 seconds ago.
That’s retargeting. Amazon knew what you were looking at and offered it up again in an attempt to convince you to buy.
Through retargeting, you can market to someone who has already engaged with your business in some way. They might have watched your video, signed up for your email list, visited your website or taken some other trackable action.
Generally speaking, potential customers need to interact with your business an average of about 7 times before they buy, according to Salesforce. Retargeting video ads collapse the timeline for those interactions.
While doing this with pictures and text ads is pretty common, a video is the better choice.
Why choose video for retargeting ads
Internet users love video. Those in the U.S. spend an average of 15 hours per week watching digital video according to Deloitte.
That love for video is particularly apparent on Facebook. The platform’s 2.1 billion+ monthly active users watch more than 3.8 billion videos on Facebook each and every day according to mediakix reports.
That’s a huge potential audience. But there’s there’s a lot on the platform to distract them. Retargeting helps you make sure that you don’t get lost in the noise.
Retargeting ads are like a one-two punch. The customer just interacted with you and here you are again back in their face (book).
Since video is such a robust form of content, it’s a particularly powerful medium for retargeting.
The best part is, you can reuse videos you already have. You don’t have to create brand new content. Take a clip from a longer video and repackage it as an ad. Or just link directly to a longer-form video hosted on your site.
Build your Audience
Who are the best targets for your video ads? People who have already watched at least one of your videos of course. Those visitors have already shown that they like video, they’ve already shown that they’re interested in what you have to offer. All you need to do is seal the deal with some well-placed advertising.
By definition, targeting means that your focusing on something specific. So there are going to be some people that don’t fall within your target. While it’s tempting to just retarget everyone who ever interacted with your page, you’ll get better results if you stay focused.
Don’t waste money, and risk annoying customers, by running retargeting ads on people who have already bought what you’re selling. Make sure your list targets only people who watched but didn’t commit.
Of course, some services need to be purchased again and again. If you run a coffee company, for example, targeting someone who purchased coffee from you in the past is a great idea. Have you ever met a coffee lover who didn’t need more coffee?
On the other hand, if your video is encouraging someone to become a subscriber to your software as a service and they’ve already subscribed, showing them the video again is a waste of your time and theirs.
The key here is personalization. You want to run video ads based on the customer’s behavior. So, if someone is looking at coffee makers on your site, you might show him more coffee makers, or mugs, or your video “Making the Perfect Cup of Coffee in 8 Easy Steps.” You’re probably not going to show him teacups.
How do you ensure personalization? You clearly define your audience.
How to create a custom audience on Facebook
Facebook is always changing, so your best source for a step-by-step tutorial is probably their ads page. Even so, the guidelines for creating a custom audience are pretty simple.
Start by creating a new campaign from an existing campaign. This will automatically narrow your focus to people who somehow engaged with your original campaign.
Out of this you can create a custom audience. Facebook gives you several criteria for defining your custom audience, but for retargeting, choose engagement. From there you can choose people who spent time watching your videos, people who interacted with your Facebook page, or any of several other options. You can even choose a list of people who have interacted with your Instagram profile.
If you choose people who spent time watching video, you can further narrow that audience based on the amount of time spent watching or percentage of video watched. What you select here depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you choose 3 seconds, you’ll capture everyone who so much as glanced at your video. That’s fine if your goal is to build engagement. While if you choose 50%, you’ll target people who have already invested a chunk of their time to watch your content. You might choose this if you’re looking to turn video views into sales.
Once you select an amount of time, you can dial-in your targeting even more by choosing the specific video or videos the user has watched.
One super powerful method is to serve up a series of interconnected videos that help move viewers through the sales funnel.
Retargeting based on user behavior on Facebook is just one method. You can also retarget using a Facebook Pixel on your website, mailing list addresses, or other opt-ins.
What is a FB pixel? How do they work?
You might know pixels better as “cookies.” Thes tiny pieces of JavaScript, not tasty baked goods. When someone visits your site the cookie or pixel is placed on their browser. The user doesn’t even know it’s there (except that GDPR now requires you to tell visitors that your site uses cookies). It doesn’t affect their browsing experience in anyway — at least, not while they’re on your site.
Once they leave your site, this tiny piece of code springs into action. When your future customer goes to a retargeting platform like Facebook, for example, the pixel acts as a signal that Facebook should show this user specific ads. Which ads they see is based on what they did on your site and how you’ve identified your custom audience.
To start using a Facebook Pixel first go to your Facebook Ads dashboard and create one. Then include the code Facebook provides in the header section of your website’s code. (You can also email instructions to your website developer directly from Facebook.)
Finally, you’ll need to configure the pixel to track the actions you’re most interested in.
Once everything is set up, you can use the data your Pixel collects to help build your custom audiences.
Other ways to identify targets
Pixels aren’t the only way to identify targets on Facebook. You can also use a mailing list or opt-in list. Basically, you add customer (or newsletter subscriber) emails to a database, and Facebook compares it with their database to determine if those emails are tied to accounts on their platform.
This isn’t a foolproof method because many people have more than one email account. They might have used one to purchase an item from your site and a different one to sign up for Facebook. In that case, they won’t see your ad.
Still, this can be a useful method if you already have a vibrant mailing list and want to make sure you’re engaging with them as much as possible.
Hit your targets
(Disclaimer: please don’t literally hit your customers. It’s bad for your conversion rates.)
Retargeting can’t be your only marketing tool, but it is a powerful one when integrated into a robust marketing funnel.
You can use retargeting at multiple stages throughout the buyer journey, from awareness building through to the final sale.
It’s important to remember that retargeting videos on Facebook begins and ends with quality videos. You need engaging, informative, entertaining videos or it won’t matter how many times they pop up in a user’s newsfeed. Epipheo can help. Contact our video experts today.
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