Facebook retargeting has a lot in common with retargeting on Google AdWords.

It also has some things in common with Nintendo’s latest Super Mario game.

The more you spend time on creating Remarketing campaigns on Facebook, the better you’ll get.

That’s the beauty of the game: you start out with a couple of Facebook Custom Audiences and the next time you notice, you’ve become a pro gamer.
 

 
But what are the first steps you need to take in order to get started with Facebook remarketing?

Who should you retarget with your Facebook ads?

What are the best Facebook retargeting tactics?

How does the remarketing audience setup work?

That’s exactly what we’re going to uncover in this complete guide to Facebook retargeting campaigns.
 

Do You Even Need Facebook Retargeting?

Let’s start with the basics. Facebook retargeting is a tactic where you target the people who have already engaged with your brand on Facebook or visited your website.

Depending on whether a website visitor converted or did not, you can retarget them with relevant offers to nudge them to complete their purchase or another type of conversion.

You can also use remarketing on Facebook to upsell and cross-sell products to past purchasers, increasing your sales revenue even further.
 

 
If done right, retargeting could potentially outperform all your other digital advertising channels.

Don’t believe me?

• According to eMarketer, 30% of consumers show a positive reaction to retargeted ads, while only 11% feel negative about retargeting campaigns.
• Retargeted visitors are 70% more likely to convert on a website compared to ones who aren’t targeted for the second time.
• A comScore study with ValueClick Media shows that retargeting generated the highest lift in trademark search behavior at 1,046%, compared to other targeting strategies.

 

 
Moreover, 46% of search engine marketers believe remarketing is the most underused online remarketing tactic.

However, not all remarketing is good remarketing.

You need to know when and whom to target as well as what to include in your Facebook retargeting ads.

Bundling all your website visitors into one huge remarketing audience is not going to cut it.

People in your Facebook marketing funnel have all different expectations and interests, and you’re going to need various Facebook ad strategies to make all of them convert.
 

 
When developing your Facebook remarketing strategy, create a separate Facebook advertising campaign for every stage of your marketing funnel.

This way, you’ll know how to best reach specific retargeting audiences and what’s the most relevant offer to make.
 

Facebook Retargeting Ideas for Beginners and Pros

Imagine you set up a PPC campaign on AdWords or Facebook, and visitors start coming to your website.

Let’s say you get 5,000 ad clicks per month, on avg. $1.20 each. This means that you’ll be paying around $6,000 to get 5k visitors on your website.

If you adjust this number to your visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rate, you may end up turning only a handful of those 5k visitors into clients.
 

 
But you know what? You could significantly increase your visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates by introducing Facebook remarketing to your PPC strategy.

This way, you’ve done your best to bring the first-time visitors back to your website and turn them into paying customers.
 

 
To give you some ideas and Facebook ad examples from cool brands, we’ve listed 12 Facebook remarketing ideas, starting from the easiest ones and moving towards more advanced options.

If you’re interested in learning more about creating Facebook remarketing audiences, scroll down to read the step-by-step guide on Facebook Custom Audiences and installing the Facebook Pixel.
 

Facebook Retargeting Idea #1: All Website Visitors

Probably the most widely used Facebook remarketing audience is the easiest one to create – it includes all your past website visitors.

Retargeting all the website visitors works well if you’re advertising a newly created brand and have few daily website visitors.

If you’re already seeing thousands of daily web visits, you may want to get more specific with your remarketing audience segmentation.

Here’s an example of a simple Facebook brand awareness campaign by MindTitan, reminding people of the brand and asking them to get in contact.
 

 
When remarketing to past website visitors, pay attention to your Facebook ad design – does it match with your website?

People could be more likely to click on your Facebook ads if they recognize the design language they already saw on your website.

For example, Asana’s Facebook ad matches with their colorful website design.

Here’s Asana’s Facebook ad:
 

 
Now, take a look at their website:
 
 

 
In addition to increased brand awareness, remarketing to all past website visitors is also beneficial for:

• A/B testing several value propositions – see which offer or UVP (unique value proposition) makes people click on your Facebook ad.
• Driving additional traffic to your blog articles – you can retarget past website visitors with a Facebook ad offering helpful content.
• Building a more engaged audience – people who visit your website for the first time may not yet be ready to buy from you. Instead, you should remarket to them with the goal of warming up the relationship.

 
One more thing. When setting up a remarketing audience of website visitors, you might want to only target the visitors of the past 15 to 30 days. When targeting a longer time frame, people might have already forgotten about your brand and are less likely to engage with your ads.
 

Facebook Retargeting Idea #2: Retarget Your Blog Readers

Blog visitors find your website via search engines, paid promotions, email newsletters, referrals, and many additional marketing channels.

If your brand’s good at content marketing, you may get tens of thousands of blog visits a month. Unless you’ve got huge marketing budgets, you won’t be able to retarget all of those people.

So, how can you narrow down your remarketing audience to only reach the blog visitors with the highest potential of becoming a lead or customer?

Here are some hacks for reaching your high-ROI blog audience:

• Target people who have visited more than one blog article.
• Target people who have visited a blog article and a landing page.
• Target people who have visited a blog article and the Pricing page, indicating their interest in your product.

 

 
By filtering out the less-engaged blog visitors, you’ll be able to increase your Facebook ad campaign’s ROI.

What to advertise to your blog readers?

When remarketing to blog readers, you should focus on engaging them further by sharing valuable content.

For instance, HubSpot’s mobile Facebook ad is offering people the option to sign up for HubSpot’s latest marketing articles delivered via Facebook Messenger.
 

 
If you’ve narrowed down your blog readership to the people who also showed interest in specific landing pages, you could try to nudge them towards testing or even buying your product.

For example, Getsitecontrol’s Facebook ad is focused on getting people to sign up for a free product trial.
 

 
When remarketing to blog readers, remember these best practices:

• Segment your blog readers based on the landing pages they’ve visited, only targeting the highly potential audiences.
• When retargeting all past blog visitors, start with soft sells to increase their interest and engagement levels.
• You probably shouldn’t ask people to buy something right away.
• Make sure your ads are relevant to a specific article’s readers.
• Use Facebook Boosted Posts to amplify your blog’s reach.
• Exclude people who have already read/downloaded your promoted content.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #3: Gated Content Downloaders

Similarly to blog readers, e-book downloaders and webinar attendees have shown some interest in your branded content.

However, the e-book downloaders are one step further down inside your marketing funnel. After all, they were willing to share their contact information in exchange for receiving your gated content.

When remarketing to people who have shared with you their contact information, you can address them with a sales-oriented offer, e.g. a limited-time discount on your popular products.

Or why not even offer a discount on your entire product line to some leads, like MOO has done.
 

 
If you’re working with SaaS Facebook ads, you could target your e-book downloaders with a free trial offer to enter the warm leads into the next stage of your marketing funnel.

For example, Pipedrive’s Facebook ad is asking people to sign up for a free product trial.
 

 
Tips for remarketing to gated content downloaders:

• Make it your goal to convert the leads from one marketing funnel stage to the next.
• Offer a limited-time discount.
• Offer a free product trial.
• Test Facebook ads that are driving people to complete a purchase.
• Keep your branding aligned across your gated content landing pages and Facebook ads.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #4: Facebook Engagements

Did you know that you can retarget people based on how they interacted with your content on Facebook?

Currently, you can create Facebook Custom Audiences of people who have engaged with your videos, Canvas Ads, Lead Ads or Facebook Page posts.

For example, if I were to watch or click this ad by Workplace by Facebook, I could be retargeted with further Facebook ads.
 

 
Here’s a quick overview of all the available engagements based on which you can create retargeting audiences:

• Video: 3-second video views, 10-second video views, 30-second video views, video watches at 25%, video watches at 50%, video watches at 75%, video watches at 95%, video watches at 100%
• Lead ads: opened form, opened form but didn’t submit (otherwise known as a “drop-off”), opened and submitted form
• Canvas ads: opened, opened and clicked on link
• Facebook page: visited your page, engaged with any post or ad, clicked a call-to-action button, sent a message to the page, saved a page or any post

 
We will explain step-by-step how to create engagement-based Facebook remarketing audiences later in this guide.

For now, let’s explore some ideas for remarketing to people who have engaged with your content on Facebook.

• Remarket to people who clicked on your Lead Ads, but didn’t complete the conversion – test advertising the same offer again, but use a different angle or value proposition.
• Remarket to people who watched 75% or more of your Facebook video – they’re more likely to be interested in your offer than non-video viewers.
• Remarket to people who frequently like or comment on your Facebook posts – their likes and clicks will help your posts distribute organically.

 
For example, when using Facebook advertising to promote our blog article, we could set up a remarketing audience of people who have liked and clicked on similar Facebook posts in the past.
 

 
Best practices for remarketing to engagement-based audiences:

• Make sure that the engagement you’re targeting indicates that the person has actually engaged (e.g. a 25% video view might not be enough to indicate a high level of engagement).
• Use the engagement-based retargeting to drive people to complete their abandoned conversions (e.g. complete an e-book download).
• Try to move leads to the next stage in your marketing funnel and turn them from prospect to a warm lead.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #5: App Installers

Retargeting the people who have installed your app is beneficial in several ways:

• You’ll be able to keep people more engaged with their newly downloaded app.
• You can help people get started with the new app.
• You can drive more in-app sales.

 
For example, Spotify is offering their app downloaders a Premium service at a discounted price. This way, they can show their app owners the full value of owning the app while using the paid service.
 

 
Here’s another brilliant example by QuickBooks.

First, they set up a Facebook ad campaign to get people downloading their app.
 

 
Later, they can remarket to app downloaders and share some helpful content to keep their audiences engaged.
 
 

 
Best practices when remarketing to app installers:

• Make sure your offers and links are mobile-compatible.
• Try to keep your app downloaders engaged by sharing helpful content or tips.
• Use Facebook advertising to bring back disengaged app users.
• Track a set of advanced in-app events to segment your app downloaders into multiple audiences. We’ll show you how later in this guide.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #6: Landing Page Visitors

You might be paying a high price for getting people to come to your landing pages via pay-per-click ads.

However, according to an article on the Kissmetrics blog, the majority of your website visitors leave after 8 seconds.

Retargeting these people with landing page-specific Facebook remarketing ads can help you bring them back for the second visit. And hopefully, you’ll also be able to convert them with a slightly different offer.

One way to re-engage your landing page visitors is to share with them relevant content, e.g. your blog posts on a topic related to the landing page a person visited.

For example, Infusionsoft could be retargeting their email marketing landing page visitors with a guide on email marketing.
 

 
When remarketing to landing page visitors, you can also test a more sales-oriented approach and promote a free product trial — or even ask people to purchase your product.

For example, Autopilot is promoting a free trial by using a Facebook newsfeed video ad.
 

 
Best practices for remarketing to landing page visitors:

• Remarket to the visitors of landing pages that show a high purchase intent.
• Make your offer specific to particular landing pages.
• Slightly alter your ads’ offer from the one on the landing page – if the person didn’t convert on the first offer, try a different one.
• Be clear about what you want the prospect to do – add a clear call-to-action both in your ads and on the landing page.
• Don’t forget to exclude the people who have already converted on your offer.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #7: Use Dynamic Product Ads

Facebook’s dynamic product ads are like remarketing display ads on steroids.

This Facebook ad type allows you to deliver remarketing ads that contain the exact product a person checked out on your website.

For example, if someone’s shopping on The Kooples’ online store and clicks on some specific products, they could be retargeted with a Facebook dynamic carousel ad showcasing the exact same products.
 

 
According to eMarketer, nearly three out of five U.S. online buyers say they notice ads for products they’ve previously looked up on websites.
 
 

 
Reminding potential buyers of the products they liked is a highly efficient way to turn the online store browsers into buyers.

According to Facebook, brands are seeing great results when using the Dynamic Product Ads:

• John Boris, CMO at Shutterfly, reported a 20%+ increase in click-through rates
• Kristi Argylian, Senior Vice President at Target, told Facebook that these ads resulted in a 20% increase in conversions compared to other types of Facebook ads.
• The Honest Company saw a 34% increase in CTRs and a 38% reduction in cost-per-purchase when using Dynamic Product Ads.

 

 
Read more about Dynamic Ads and their setup process in this guide by Facebook.
 

Facebook Retargeting Idea #8: Free Trial Users

If you’re selling a software solution or a subscription service that allows you to offer your prospects a free trial period, you should also think about what happens during and after the free trial.

Kissmetrics published an entire guide on remarketing to people after their free trial ends.

Here are a couple of good ideas they suggested:

• Remind people when the free trial is going to expire.
• Provide an early discount if they buy before the expiration.
• Encourage your prospects to take the next baby-step down the sales funnel.
• Allow the free trial user to extend their trial period.
• Make it easy for the customer to enter their credit card detail or make a purchase.

 
For example, The New York Times is offering a 4-week free subscription to all their stories.
 

 
Whenever a person’s free trial period is about to end, they could be targeted with another remarketing offer – a 60% discount for a 1-year subscription.
 
 

 
Another way to increase people’s interest in purchasing your product’s paid version is sharing case studies to communicate your product’s benefits.

Here’s an example from ConvertKit, showcasing a happy customer’s testimonial and introducing their product’s features.
 

 
Best practices for remarketing to free trial users on Facebook:

• Try to make people understand the full value of your product.
• Offer a small incentive (e.g. a limited-time discount) to get people to complete their purchase.
• Promote case studies to overcome possible objections.
• Offer a free call or demo with one of your salespeople.

 
Make sure you exclude the free trial users from your Facebook marketing campaigns targeting the cold leads – they’ve already converted on your top-of-the-funnel offers.
 

Facebook Retargeting Idea #9: Freemium Users

Your marketing goal when retargeting freemium users should be similar to the goal of marketing to free trial users – you need these people to convert into paying customers.

To do that, you need to convince the freemium users that the paid version of your product or service adds lots of value to their work or life. Lucky you, they may already be somewhat invested with the micro-commitment of taking time out of their day to engage the freemium version.

So, the best way to get your freemium users to buy in is to get them to try the paid version of your product.

Spotify does a great job of executing this tactic by offering new premium users a 90% discount on their first 3 months of service.
 

 
Once you’ve managed to get people to test the paid product features, you could convert them into customers by offering an additional discount or creating a sense of urgency. Let them know that the value or discount is ONLY offered to them and ONLY for a limited period of time.

Here’s why scarcity works:

When you give people too much time to make a decision, they’re likely going to postpone the conclusion and will likely forget about it.

Creative Tim, for instance, is offering a 20% limited-time discount on any premium product. Notice how they emphasize the fact that the offer is limited.
 

 
Applying scarcity and urgency on a website helped an entrepreneur increase sales by 332%.

As you apply the sense of urgency and scarcity to your Facebook ads, people will be more willing to complete a sign-up and purchase without giving it lots of thought.
 

Facebook Retargeting Idea #10: Past Purchasers

According to a study conducted by Adobe, in the U.S., 41% of overall revenue is from repeat customers.

The average revenue-per-visit for repeat purchasers in the U.S. is 497% higher compared to regular shoppers.
 

 
It would be a shame to leave this high-potential retargeting audience unused.

That’s why, you could set up regular Facebook advertising campaigns to:

• Remind the past purchasers of your brand.
• Share news about new products and services.
• Offer discounts to get past purchasers back to your website to buy another product.
• Promote upsell offers relevant to the purchasers of another product.

 
For example, Airbnb’s Facebook ad campaign could be targeted at people who have booked a vacation rental with them in the past.
 

 
Dell, on the other hand, could retarget their B2B clients with a Facebook post about their newest products.
 
 

 
Best practices for retargeting the past purchasers on Facebook:

• Find the perfect timing – think when the person’s most likely to make another purchase (e.g. for seasonal products’ it’s once or twice per year).
• Promote related items to the ones the person already purchased.
• Offer to buy more items at a discounted price – this could work extremely well on the people who are your product’s fans.
• Combine Facebook ads with other marketing channels for greater impact (e.g. run a display ad campaign).

Facebook Retargeting Idea #11: In-App Actions

If your brand has a mobile app, you can take your Facebook remarketing to a whole different level by creating action-triggered ad campaigns.

For example, when working with an Android app, you can track App Events such as:

• App Launched
• Added to Wishlist
• Added to Cart
• Added Payment Info
• Purchased
• Rated
• Unlocked Achievement
• Many More

 
For example, if an Amazon Audible app user browses different books and adds some of them to their wishlist, Amazon could set up a dynamic remarketing ad promoting the exact same book.
 

 
The in-app event tracking is also beneficial if you’re working with an online software product. You’ll be able to set up Facebook campaigns that target the app users who have taken specific steps inside your app (e.g. if someone completes an important step in the onboarding process).

For example, Shopify’s Facebook ad offers a free 45-minute webinar, which could be highly relevant to the less-experienced users of their software.
 

 
Best practices for retargeting people based on their in-app activities:

• Define the most important in-app events that indicate a high purchase intent.
• Use activity-triggered Facebook ad campaigns to make your app users more engaged.
• If you notice signs that some users are stuck with something inside your app, offer them helpful guides.
• Advertise on mobile and Instagram as people are already using their mobile devices and it will be easier for them to switch to your app.

Facebook Retargeting Idea #12: Inactive Users

Research by Management Consultancy firm Bain & Company has found that customer attrition rates could reach 50% if databases are left dormant over a five year period.

Companies lose inactive customers all the time.

The same study found that businesses which boosted customer retention rates by as little as 5% saw increases in their profits ranging from 5% to a whopping 95%.

Targeting inactive users on Facebook can be done by creating Custom Audiences based on inactive users’ emails or by targeting your app users that show no in-app activity.

But how can you reactivate the almost-lost customers?

Jill Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, explained in Harvard Business Review:

“If I’m interested in keeping customers, I’m interested in understanding how many leave and the underlying reasons why they are ending their relationship with me.”

In addition to sending re-activation email campaigns and push notifications, you could also set up a Facebook remarketing campaign reminding inactive users of your service or app.

For example, Dropbox is sharing tips that could potentially improve their users’ product experience.
 

 
Alternatively, you could introduce new product features that make your product more beneficial for the customers, like Grammarly has done.
 
 

 
Best practices for remarketing to inactive users and customers:

• Remind the inactive users of your product’s benefits.
• Send reactivation marketing emails and amplify the message by retargeting the inactive users on Facebook.
• Help your users keep pace with product updates by regularly informing them about the news.

 
Now that you’re aware of all the wide possibilities on remarketing on Facebook, let’s take a look at how you can set up the retargeting audiences.
 

Creating Facebook Retargeting Audiences

The core reason why remarketing is so crazy efficient are the audiences you’re targeting.

People who have been to your website or engaged your brand are already familiar with your product offer and more likely to be interested in buying from you. Even better if you’re able to remarket to shopping cart abandoners or free trial users that may be further along in the pipeline or funnel.

You can create several types of remarketing audiences on the Facebook Ads Manager, each being a different variation of a Facebook Custom Audience:

• Custom Audiences based on a customer file
• Custom Audiences based on website visits
• Custom Audiences based on in-app activity
• Custom Audiences based on engagement on Facebook
• Value-Based Custom Audiences (the latest addition by Facebook)

 
That’s an attractive set of options you’ve got there.
 

 
However, the wide array of options can also get confusing pretty fast.

To bring some clarity to the Facebook remarketing audiences, let’s have a closer look at each of them.
 

Facebook Retargeting Audiences Based on Customer Files

This type of Facebook retargeting audience is based on your existing customer lists, e.g. files with email accounts, phone numbers or app IDs.

For example, you could remarket to your email list subscribers as you’re aware they’re slightly interested in your brand and content.

To create a list-based Facebook Custom Audience, follow these steps:

1. Go to Facebook Business Manager, and find Audiences (if you don’t have a Facebook Business Manager account yet, here’s how you can get it).
 

 
2. From the dropdown menu, select “Custom Audience” to set up a new remarketing audience.
 
 

 
3. Click on the “Customer File” option.
 
 

 
4. Choose whether you prefer to upload a customer file or import contacts from MailChimp.
 
 

 
5. If you selected the first option, you’ll be presented with all the possible options for creating a Facebook remarketing audience from a customer file.

There are 15 different audience identifiers to choose from, the most popular ones being:

1. Email
2. Phone number
3. Mobile advertiser ID

 

 
6. Upload your customer file to Facebook.

Choose whether you want to upload your customer file as a file (.txt or .csv) or copy and paste it. If you choose to upload, click “Upload File” and select the customer file from your computer. If you choose to copy and paste, do it in the “Paste your content here” field.

7. Give your audience a name and description to effortlessly find it later.

For a complete step-by-step technical guide on creating Facebook audiences from a customer file, see this article by Facebook.

You may need to clean up your customer data before the import. In this case, here’s Facebook’s guide to help you.
 

Facebook Retargeting Audiences Based on Website Traffic

This is the most popular audience type for creating Facebook remarketing campaigns.

Once you’ve got the Facebook Pixel installed on your website, it will leave a cookie every time someone visits your website, making it possible to retarget them later.

Website visits-based remarketing audiences let you target people who have visited specific web pages while excluding the visitors who’ve been on different pages you don’t wish to retarget.

How to create a Custom Audience based on website traffic:

1. Go to Facebook Business Manager and select Audiences.
2. Click on ”Create Audience” at the top left corner of the page.
3. Select “Custom Audience”.
 

 
4. Select the “Website Traffic” option from the list (second one from the top).
 
 

 
Now, you can set up a new remarketing audience based on your web pages people have visited.

5. Select the parameters to specify your Custom Audience.

You can choose between multiple options:

1. Target everyone who visited your domain
2. Target people who haven’t visited your website for a certain amount of time
3. Target people who visited specific web pages
4. Target people who visited specific web pages but not others
5. Other custom combinations

 

 
Under the Custom Combinations option, you can include and exclude specific web pages, getting super granular with your remarketing audiences.
 
 

 
6. Name your new Custom Audience a name and click on the “Create Audience” button.

Facebook Retargeting Audiences Based on In-App Traffic

Tracking the in-app activities of your prospects and customers is an essential part of every mobile app marketing strategy.

You can track the actions people take in your app by registering your app and setting up specific App Events by using Facebook Analytics.

App Events allow you to the in-app conversions associated with Facebook ads, and build remarketing audiences of your app users.

How to set up a Custom Audience based on app activity:

To set up in-app activity-based retargeting audiences, you’ll need to set up some App Events.
 

 
For example, when working with an Android app, you can track 14 predefined App Events.
 
 

 
To create Facebook remarketing audiences based on in-app tracking, follow these steps:

1. Register your app and set up App Events to reach specific users. Here’s Facebook’s guide to setting up App Events for an Android app.
2. Go to Facebook Business Manager and choose Audiences.
3. Click” Create Audience” in the top left corner.
4. Select “Custom Audience.”
5. Select “App Activity” from the list of targeting options..

 

 
6. Name your audience and select the app you want to create a Custom Audience from. Also, make sure you have the ad account rights to the app you want to use.
 
 

 
7. Next, you need to define the App Events to target people who have taken specific actions in your app.

8. Choose the time frame of in-app actions you’d like to retarget.

For example, you can target a Completed Tutorial event and specify “In The