There was a time when most of my advertising budget was spent on some form of remarketing: website visitors, email list, followers, post engagement, etc. I’ve abandoned most of this in favor of Meta’s algorithmic positioning, but there are exceptions.
Sometimes, remarketing still makes good and smart sense.
Don’t misunderstand my intentions. I still think advertisers use remarketing too often. Not only is it less effective than before (advertisers often misunderstand the effectiveness of their remarketing results), but it’s also often unnecessary.
Let me explain…
Why Remarketing Is Basically Unnecessary
Don’t mix up the message here. There’s still value in reaching out to the people closest to your business.
There’s basically no need for separate remarketing ad sets these days, one of the main reasons being that algorithmic targeting will prioritize these people anyway. When using Advantage+ Audience, Meta prioritizes conversion history, pixel data, and previous interactions with ads.
You can prove this with the help of audience segments. Many times I’ve seen Meta spend 25% to 35% of my budget on my existing customers and engaged audience (those who are on my email list or have visited my website, but haven’t purchased from me yet) )superior.
Here’s an example using Advantage+ Audience without suggestions…
I’ve also seen this when using a broad original audience…
Here’s an example using two different ad sets: one using Advantage+ Audience (without suggestions) and one using just remarketing.
When using Advantage+ Audience without recommendations, Meta spent 45% of its budget on the same people I had specifically targeted in separate ad sets. By giving the algorithm more freedom, I found that it maintained a more reasonable frequency than when I only targeted remarketing groups.
Meta now combines remarketing and prospecting to create the best balance. Otherwise, it’s more expensive to reach your remarketing audience (who are also often the ones most likely to take the action you want), but the pool of potential customers is larger and cheaper.
Therefore, general remarketing (targeting a broad range of website visitors, email lists, and people who interact with your pages) is now rarely necessary. It happens automatically.
misunderstanding of results
I should also point out that one of the reasons some advertisers continue to insist on remarketing is a misunderstanding or misunderstanding of its results. Whenever I see someone share conversion results or ROAS that seem too good to be true, it’s usually because the results have been exaggerated.
To be clear, remarketing results Should be good. But they can also be exaggerated. This is a good opportunity to break down the results and test How good They actually are.
Use the Compare Attribution Settings feature and segment your results by attribution setting. It’s best to use first conversion reporting (or at least both first and all conversions).
When remarketing, you can expect the 1-day view column to be too concentrated. This is usually because of two different situations:
1. You send your users an email on the same day they see your ad.
2. Regular website visitors happen to visit the website on the same day they see your ad.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that advertising doesn’t have any effect. In some cases, these customers saw it and it contributed to their purchasing decision. But a very common scenario is that they don’t even see your ad. They will buy it no matter what.
View-through conversions are much more valuable when they come from new customers. They saw or were exposed to your ad but didn’t click on it. They remember the product or brand and then search for you on Google. Then they made the purchase.
But when it comes to remarketing, at least a significant portion of view-through conversions are useless.
When remarketing makes sense
While remarketing is usually unnecessary, there are some exceptions where it can still be relevant.
Here are some factors to consider…
1. Specific information targeted at specific groups of people.
The most common example is the abandoned shopping cart scenario. You want to show different ads to users who recently added your product to their shopping cart but haven’t purchased yet. You may want to offer discounts to stimulate sales.
Of course, whether this is necessary is up for debate. When determining who will see your ad, Meta should prioritize users who have added to their shopping cart. Isolating these people into separate ad sets would be more expensive. Worth testing.
I’m actually using a variation of it now. I have a special offer, but I only want it to be seen by a very specific segment of my email list. Although it is open to the public, I prefer this high value product to those who have purchased from me before.
In this case, I’m targeting the same people I emailed about this offer. I even quoted the email in the ad copy.
Through this approach, I understand that advertising is only part of the sales pitch. Since this is a high commitment, I hope this will help incentivize these people to close the sale.
I know that my ads will only have a partial impact on the conversions reported in Ads Manager. But my hope is to optimize the total number of registrations. Since the audience is smaller, the total ad spend will also be quite small. Since the price tag is around $1,000, this is a low-risk approach that makes sense.
2. Low budget, challenges in achieving results.
You’re trying to sell a high-priced product, but you’re only given a budget of $50 or less per day. You don’t have the option of building leads, you need to sell directly. Remarketing should be an option.
Yes, remarketing will happen naturally if your targeting is broader. But maybe the remarketing audience is relatively small. Regardless, you may struggle to achieve meaningful results.
Remarketing doesn’t guarantee results, but it’s at least a less expensive option.
3. Top of funnel optimization.
Optimizing for anything other than link clicks, landing page views, video views, post engagement, or conversions can be problematic. This is especially true when algorithmic positioning comes into play, as Meta will do whatever it takes to find you the cheapest operations you want. This often comes at the expense of quality. With remarketing, you can limit your audience to people you’ve determined have high affinity.
I do this when promoting my blog posts or reels. I know that if I allow the algorithm to search for anyone who interacts with it, I will get a lot of low-quality clicks or plays. But if my goal was to reach more people who have already proven to engage with my content, I would isolate them from Custom Audiences.
Beware of Soft Remarketing
While remarketing still has its place, there’s one specific tactic you should avoid, and it goes like this…
1. Run ads optimized for link clicks, landing page views, or video views.
2. Create an audience that engages with the first ad.
3. Target users who interacted with the first ad.
The reason for this question is that we have already discussed about top of funnel optimization. If you optimize for anything other than link clicks, landing page views, video views, or conversions, you’re likely to end up with low-quality campaigns. You are creating a custom audience of low-quality campaigns. Then you remarket to a lower-quality audience.
If you’re going to use remarketing, make sure you’re actually targeting a high-quality group of people. Start by investigating how these audiences are created. Naturally generated audiences or audiences created while optimizing for conversions are usually your best options.
Let algorithmic positioning do most of the work
Remarketing still has its place, but you should allow algorithmic targeting to do the heavy lifting—especially when optimizing for purchases. “Algorithmic targeting” includes more than just broadening your reach or using Advantage+ Audience. It includes any situation where your audience grows (which now covers a large portion of our investment).
Broader targeting should account for the bulk of your ad spend. While remarketing targets people you already have a close relationship with, the incremental lift is limited. You also want to attract new users who would never buy from you without your ads.
Remarketing is a good short-term, low-risk strategy. Broader targeting is a slow, long-term strategy that helps ensure you have remarketing audiences in the future.
now you
Are you still using remarketing strategies? What specific examples of remarketing successes or challenges can you share?
Let me know in the comments below!
