How To Retarget Facebook Ads In 2023 (NEW Full Guide)

In this article, I’m going to reveal how to retarget with Facebook ads in 2023.

Specifically, I'm going to give a full guide on all the steps from understanding customer touch points, big picture strategies, the different types of retargeting campaigns, campaign structure, copy you should be writing and more.

Customer Touch Points

Now, when you’re running ads for retargeting sales, the truth is most people require multiple touch points before making a purchase.

And when you get cold traffic conversions these are rarer because of the number of touch points that are required.

Most people on average need at least 8 touch points before they purchase.

It could be lower or even higher this is just an average number of how many times someone needs to see your content and ads before they purchase anything.

The truth about what Retargeting

Now here are some truths about retargeting you need to know.

Some people think that retargeting is a lot cheaper.

However, the truth is, Retargeting doesn’t always give you a lower cost per acquisition(CPA).

Because of all the other touchpoints required to get your prospect at the retargeting phase.

So really it isn’t always cheaper because of how much you probably spent in the past.

You may have multiple cold ads running, Paid SEO on google to your page, other ads, or even take them through a long email funnel before you start retargeting.

another important truth is that retargeting is also about scale.

If you have a lot of campaigns running for cold traffic and scale, retargeting is another campaign that helps to expand your ads for scale.

But here’s the thing…

It’s Not going to be the biggest portion of your budget, and it's not about scaling the budget.

Retargeting is about showing up and being present and building a relationship with your prospect.

Giving them value and building goodwill.

And when you retarget them to make a purchase your ads are for overcoming the objections or barriers your prospect might have, that you're asking them to take an action on.

BIG PICTURE Retargeting Strategy

Now the overall big Picture of a retargeting strategy is that I build everything from my cold campaigns.

It all starts from cold campaigns and works itself down into retargeting.

Cold campaigns are by far the hardest part because taking someone who has from who never heard or seen you before to pulling out a credit card is very difficult.

That’s why using a retargeting strategy helps to keep you in front of your prospects and makes that buying cycle easier.

So before creating your strategy you need to ask yourself these 5 strategic questions:

1. what are all the steps required for your prospect to make a purchase?
2. Where in each of the steps are they dropping off?
3. what objections are in the prospect's mind that caused them to fall off or stop them from taking action?
4. What angle could you use to answer or overcome your prospects objections?
5. Where will you be sending them in the funnel?

Facebook retargeting ad steps and examples

Now let’s break down these questions with some examples...

1. what are all the steps required for your prospect to make a purchase?

Here are the steps for a basic funnel setup.

There’s the AD, the Opt-in, and the one Time Offer.

2. Where in each of the steps are they dropping off?

There are three steps of the process which anyone could drop off from.

Someone could see the ad and like it but not click through, they could get to the optin page, without actually opting in.

They could go all the way to the one-time offer without taking it.

Another example is:

You have a local business such as a dentist and the process example could be…

• The AD.
• Request for a booking.
• Call for a booking.
• Reminder.
• The Actual appointment.

Did they drop off at the request?

Did they drop off at the actual appointment?

But Once you have this Now you’ll want to understand…

3. what objections are in the prospect's mind that caused them to fall off or stop them from taking action?

There are so many objections that could have caused prospects to drop off.

The best way to find out is by finding out what questions your prospects have.

You should already understand your avatar and what kind of objections they have.

Common objections are:

• How much will it cost?
• Will it work for me?
• Why should I trust you?

Which leads to answering the next question.

4. What Angle Could You Use To Answer Or Overcome Your Prospects Objections?

Here you would take those questions, and come up with different ways you would answer and pass their objections.

Whether it’s through more content to educate your prospect, different angle and hooks that overcome any objections.

5. Where Will You Be Sending Them In The Funnel?

Here you’ll create a campaign that retargets people and sends them straight back to the sales page or one-time offer.

Taking that earlier example of the lead magnet, If someone dropped off after they got their lead magnet when putting their email in.

You’ll retarget them to click directly back to the sale page or One Time Offer.

Or if someone dropped off at the call for a booking, you’ll angle your ad differently and send them back to the call booking page.

The two types of retargeting campaigns

After you figure out your strategy it's important to understand the two times of retargeting campaigns which are...

The follow-up Campaigns and the One-Time Campaigns.

Follow-up Campaigns run all the time, they move people from one step to another.

So based on the actions of your prospect, you should have your Facebook set in a way for those people to be retargeted every time they go through your setup.

So for example:
If you have had people drop off after taking any action such as to cart.

You should have a follow-up campaign set to retarget those in the last 30 days.

And you would Exclude all buyers or anyone else you don’t want to retarget.

So if someone becomes a buyer they would automatically be taken out of the retargeting.

And anyone who continues to drop off within 30 days will keep receiving follow-up retargeting ads.

But here’s something to remember within creating these follow-up campaigns…

Every step should have its own campaign, don’t bundle any of them together or mess with any optimisations to avoid confusing Facebook.

Then the next type of retargeting is the…

The One Time campaigns

These are one-off campaigns, such as flash sales, promos, or when you have a special.

So let’s say you want to get more quick sales or you’re in a good season, you could give 20% off and retarget people who viewed your content, email subscribers, and even buyers if it’s a new product.

You don’t want to do these all the time, be genuine with your promos.

6 popular angles to use when retargeting

At this point, you should understand what your strategy will be, how you’ll be retargeting, and the types of retargeting campaigns you’ll be using.

Now it’s time to understand more deeply the elements required for retargeting.

Which starts with understanding retargeting Copy Ads.

This is different from how to write copy for a cold audience.

But with that said here are six different angles that are popular to use when retargeting:

#1 Remind them to take the next step

All you’re doing is reminding them of the last time you reached them on your ad.

Example
"Hey you didn’t get a chance to take up the free thing … or don’t forget your call is coming up…"

#2 Testimonials

Such as “hey check out what others are saying about X, or did you know john says x about y.”

#3 Overcome Objections

What are your top objections? Turn them into ad copy.

Example:
If a yoga studio is selling meditations the objection could be – I tend to have trouble focusing, and the angle could be, Do you find it difficult to focus on meditations?

That’s why its guided to talk to your subconscious so you don’t have to focus.

Another example:
It costs too much, if you have a low-end down-sell or offer you could display a cup of coffee and show them how cheap it really is.

#4 Discounts

Usually, you want to use this at the final part of the funnel.

#5 Upsell/Orderbumps

Help to increase overall profits.

#6 Giving Goodwill/Value

Giving goodwill and value means continuously giving content and re-engaging with your audience demonstrating different ways of giving information to help them with their problems.

I don’t want you to think these are the ONLY six out there angles, there's a lot more I've just narrowed it down to the six that I think are the best.

Retargeting campaign structure

1. Use 1 Ad set with whatever’s in your audience.
2. Use 1-2 ads in your ad set.
3. And you can have this in a CBO or ABO it doesn’t really matter.

With Budgeting – These are only my recommendations:

• 5k People - $10 p/d.
• 5-50k People - $30 p/d.
• 50-80k - $60 p/d.
• 80 – 120k - $80 p/d.
• And then 120k+ People - $100 + p/d

But again these are just my recommendations there is no set limit to this.

How to setup retargeting in the ads manager

To set up retargeting all you're doing is taking the audience you want and setting it up as a custom audience.

You have all the different options you can get your audience from such as, your emails or customer list, videos, app activity, Facebook page and more.

I like to select website, and then under events, I use either all website visitors or you can select the page on your website where your prospect dropped off, then keep it at 30 days if it’s set to that.

And create your audience, it’s as simple as that.

Then when creating your ad you can add that to your custom audience in the ad set level.

And that’s it, you should now know how to retarget on Facebook.

If you think I missed anything you can let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

However, you might benefit from learning about Facebook ad targeting, how  to deal with getting clicks but no conversions. Or a Facebook ad creative process that converts.