THE most common request we get in 2017 is about marketing, advertising, retargeting and re-marketing on Facebook. Seems like the entire world finds Facebook advertising confusing, particularly this pixel thing.
With all the many features offered up front, this makes it a very powerful advertising platform for any SME business, but they also add layers of technical complexity.
What the heck is retargeting?
You know when you go shopping on Amazon for a specific pair of pants or pair of shoes, you don;t buy them yet, and cruise away to do something else online. You then go to check your Gmail and then onto your Facebook page the day after, and up pops an advert at the side reminding you about that specific pair of pants or pair of shoes still available on the shopping site? THAT is re-marketing!
Remarketing is simply a very clever way to connect with visitors to your website who may not have made an immediate purchase or enquiry. It allows you to position targeted ads in front of them again – as they browse elsewhere around the internet.
Retargeting with Facebook
Retargeting with Facebook is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to reclaim lost clicks and conversions. It allows eCommerce website owners to directly reach shoppers who have visited their store, viewed specific pages, or abandoned their carts. And according to research, remarketing ads sport a response rate up to 400% higher than non-targeted advertising.
Is retargeting and remarketing the same?
The biggest classical difference between retargeting and remarketing is the method and strategy that’s used to reach your potential customers who have left your website without making a purchase. While retargeting typically relies on cookies dropping ads on other sites (Google or Facebook being most common), remarketing usually uses email.
However these classical definitions have kind of been swept aside and you’ll see retargeting and remarketing used interchangeably in many articles and discussions.
What are these pixels?
This is the most common thing that the Flying Monkeys get asked about and clients call particularly frustrated by is the elusively named PIXELS.
Pixels are actually very common across most advertising platforms, i.e. they were not invented by Facebook. Marketers use them to drop a cookie on your WordPress website visitors browser (after asking in some countries, especially in Europe) that will track visitors on your website so you can advertise to them later. This is called retargeting.
Once you advertise to past website visitors, pixels can then be used to track their browsing behaviour when they’re back on your WordPress website. This helps you enormously to measure the effectiveness of your ads.
The thing is, although the pixel system can seem confusing, they make advertising on Facebook much, much more effective, like by a massive multiplier, stats show this in data.
Not only do you know exactly who you’re advertising to, you also have a better understanding of how your ads are performing, allowing you to scrap the ones that are costing you money for no return, and tweak the ones that work.
All in all, you can make your marketing and messaging much, much more effective, leading to a better return on your advertising dollars.
The “new” Facebook Pixel way back in 2015
In 2015, Facebook took a huge step towards to simplifying the entire process by introducing the new Facebook Pixel. This one pixel is the only pixel you need. It has retargeting, optimization, and tracking all built in one.
(any how to guides before 2015 are completely obsolete, and there are still plenty of them out there, so be sure to ignore all them)
First things: you need Facebook Ads Manager for your Page
If you’ve never visited Facebook’s Ads Manager before, or set up a Facebook ad promoting your Page or website, you’ll need to start here. While logged into the Facebook account (yes your personal profile) you use to manage your Facebook Page, look for a link to “Ads Manager” on the left side of your Home screen, under “Apps.” You can also visit Ads Manager directly using this link.
Should you do Facebook Pixel Remarekting? Heck YES!!!
We’re not going to go through how to do it in this blog post, as this was really just to explain how the pixel thing works.
If you want more info, see this follow-up post here in the simple place to start:
Simple Steps to Create a Facebook Remarketing Campaign
