Facebook remarketing campaigns are the hidden gem of the advertising world. 

While many advertisers use Facebook remarketing tactics, they’re often only targeting past website visitors and neglecting the wide range of other Facebook ad audiences.

That’s an unbelievable waste of potential.

You know what’s even crazier? People actually want to see your remarketing messages.

A survey of 3,000 shoppers in the US and UK by AgileOne found that 41% of people in the age group of 25-34 appreciate a follow-up cart abandonment email.

Have we convinced you to the point you wish to learn all the secrets of Facebook remarketing campaigns? They’re only one click away!

Basically, your customers are asking for you to send them additional offers and will thank you by making a purchase.

In case you’re wondering why retargeting campaigns work, here are the top reasons:

• With remarketing, people are already familiar with your brand and product – they’re not 100% cold leads anymore
• Remarketing campaigns allow you to segment your audience based on their behaviors – you can create more tailored and relevant ads
• Remarketing campaigns have smaller audiences, and every member of those audiences is a potential customer – there will be less guesswork of whom to target

Due to these reasons, Facebook remarketing campaigns tend to have a lower cost-per-acquisition than regular campaigns targeted on cold Facebook audiences.

Let’s go through the 9 rules of successful remarketing with Facebook ads then.

Rule #1: Set up an efficient tracking system

You can’t do remarketing without remarketing audiences.

To create new Facebook Custom Audiences of people who engaged with your website or content, you’ll need to set up a tracking system.

There are two ways to track your website visitors and create Custom Audiences:

• Add the Facebook Pixel to your website by following this guide by Facebook
• Use the Pixel Caffeine WordPress plugin to create remarketing audiences on the fly

Once you’ve set up the tracking system, it’s time for the fun part – creating new audiences and crafting the remarketing messages that speak to these new audiences.

Rule #2: Segment your Facebook remarketing audiences

One of the biggest mistakes we see companies doing is creating a single Facebook Custom Audience of all past website visitors and showing them all the same retargeting ad.

In fact, your website visitors all have different expectations and intents.

There are many types of remarketing audiences that you can create:

• Specific landing page visitors
• Your blog readers
• People who have visited the Pricing page
• People who abandoned their shopping cart
• Customers who have already purchased from you

Instead of bundling all your high-ROI Facebook retargeting audiences into one bucket and showing them the same ads and offers, create 3-10 remarketing audience segments, depending on the size of your website traffic.

Next, make sure that your ad offers match with the expectations and interests of the new remarketing segments.

Rule #3: Don’t forget to exclude converters

If you’ve even been part of an aggressive remarketing campaign, you may also know how annoying it is to see the same ad over and over again. Even after you surrender and click on the ad, the campaign still keeps popping up in your newsfeed.

Once you get a person click on your remarketing ads, they should be moved to the next stage of your marketing funnel and excluded from the current campaign.

When advertising your newest blog articles to a remarketing audience of blog visitors, make sure to exclude the people who have already read the particular article you’re promoting.

This rule also applies to the rest of your Facebook campaigns, not just remarketing.

Always remember to exclude the people who have already clicked on your ad or converted as a result of visiting your website.

Rule #4: Create a remarketing funnel

Successful remarketing happens in multiple stages.

A person who started as a one-time blog reader can be turned into a warm lead and then a customer. But only if you’re targeting them with the right offer at the right time.

Which is exactly why you need to set up a remarketing funnel.

The traditional conversion funnel has five stages:

• Awareness – people know your product exists
• Interest – people get curious about your product
• Desire – people start to want what you’re offering
• Conversion – people buy your product
• Re-engage – people buy additional products

There are different ways to interpret these stages, but the core idea remains the same throughout all the theories.

Every conversion stage demands a different set of offers and ads.

Once a person has converted in one stage, you can exclude them from the audience and include them in the next-stage remarketing audience.

Rule #5: Match your offers with audiences

Targeting all your Facebook audiences with the same offer is like throwing an empty fishing rod into the ocean and hoping something will catch.

That almost never works.

Think about your Facebook remarketing audiences on the scale of cold and warm.

Cold leads first need to be warmed up with low-threat offers such as eBooks or fascinating blog articles. The same rule applies to your first-time blog readers – you need to earn their attention and trust by offering them something of value.

For example, Hootsuite’s offering an eBook on the latest social media trends.

In AdEspresso, we’ve also run experiments of retargeting our blog readers with Facebook Lead Ads, offering five eBooks instead of a single one.

However, when remarketing to shopping cart abandoners, it makes a lot more sense to show ads containing the exact product the person was interested in. For this purpose, you can set up Facebook Dynamic Ads.

For example, Amazon’s Facebook ad could be directly targeted on the people who viewed the product on their website.

Key takeaway: When remarketing to cold audiences, don’t ask them to buy something right away. However, warm leads can be targeted with “Sign Up” or “Show Now” offers as they’re more aware of your brand and have shown more interest in your products.

Rule #6: Increase your bids for high-ROI audiences

As you’ve learned by now, not all your remarketing audiences are equal.

Some audiences include lukewarm leads while others target people highly interested in your product and offers.

Depending on the buying potential of a remarketing audience, you can bid more aggressively to reach the audiences most likely to make a purchase.

For example, SaaS startups like Scoro could increase their Facebook ad bids when remarketing to warm leads who have already visited their Pricing page.

You’ll know a visitor is more interested in your business and products when they’ve visited particular landing pages or repeatedly returned to your website.

Key takeaway: Adjust your remarketing budgets so that you’ll assign larger sums to capture warm leads and to convert them into buyers.

Rule #7: Bid less, on non-converting page visitors

On the flip side, you may want to lower your Facebook remarketing budgets for audiences that have only visited your non-converting landing pages, including the blog and informational pages.

Don’t get us wrong. You should still focus some of your resources on nurturing the cold leads to becoming more interested in your product. However, don’t spend your entire budget on remarketing to your blog readers.

Looking at your conversion funnel, spend proportionally less on the early stage leads.

Rule #8: Don’t worry about high ad frequency

While it may seem counterintuitive, the efficiency of remarketing ads grows with the number of views.

With regular Facebook ads, it’s a best practice to keep your ad frequency between 1-3 points.

However, we’ve seen some Facebook remarketing campaigns deliver great results even when people have seen the ad for more than 10 times.

As you look at the graph of retargeting campaign’s CTR and CPC results, you’ll see that the cost-per-click only increased at the very end of the campaign, when the ad frequency reached well over 10 points.

WordStream has noticed similar results with their remarketing campaigns: the conversion rates increase as the number of ad views grows.

Key takeaway: Keep your remarketing ads running even as the ad frequency reaches over 5 points. Only pause your campaigns if the cost-per-conversion starts going up too rapidly. This tactic works especially well when remarketing to a small audience of high-potential warm leads.

Rule #9: A/B test different Facebook ad elements

Facebook ad A/B testing is a constant process that you can apply to every single Facebook campaign. This also includes all your remarketing campaigns.

Among other things, you can test your:

• Ad design
• Ad copy, especially the headline
• Unique value offer
• Ad placements
• Call-to-action buttons
• Bidding methods
• Campaign objectives

For example, MOO is testing various ad designs to see what works best.

We recommend that you start by testing your remarketing ads’ value proposition, creating different variations of call-to-actions and discount offers to see what makes people return to your website and make a purchase.

To create successful ad tests, you must know these five A/B testing rules:

• Test a single element at a time
• Test 3-5 highly differentiated ad variables
• Test the ad elements with the highest impact
• Place each variable in a separate ad set
• Ensure your A/B test results are statistically valid

Read more: 10 Burning Questions That You Can Answer by A/B Testing Your Facebook Ads

Over to you

What’s your secret sauce for winning Facebook remarketing campaigns? Maybe you need some advice? Let us know in the comments!