Do’s and Don’ts for Facebook Ad Retargeting Strategies

Retargeting is where the money is at. My name’s Jody, I’m the founder of Social Charlie, and we specialize in Facebook ads for high-ticket coaches and consultants.

I recently had a one-on-one call with a client who was wanting to take their launch model into more of an evergreen business model, which makes 100% sense. You do not want to just be doing launches here and there, having these kicks of revenue along the way, and then nothing in between. Setting up an evergreen system is such a valuable thing, and you can do it so effectively with Facebook these days.

However, where a lot of businesses and coaches and consultants in particular, with their webinar funnels and their application funnels are losing money is that they’re not retargeting effectively. That’s by having an evergreen system that is retargeting people long-term.

I was recently at a conference where a Facebook ad speaker was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. Incredible sums of money and a lot of us don’t all have that money to spend on Facebook ads. So the information that they actually give with their retargeting system wouldn’t actually apply or work very well for someone who’s not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Even if they’re spending $500 a day, depending on your cost per opt-in, if you’re only retargeting people who opt in, then if you’re spending $10 an opt-in, and you’re only spending $500 a day, let’s just say, on your top-of-funnel campaigns. Okay, $10 an opt-in in an entrepreneurial space, business opportunity or a webinar, then yes, you could well be spending $10 for a webinar registration. So at $10 for a webinar registration, spending $500 a day, that’s 50, okay? You’ll get 50 registrations.

So, if you were then following their typical systems of retargeting for three days, that’s 150 people in your audience that you would be retargeting to “come over and purchase this.” Remember, of that 150, not everybody is actually watching the webinar. You are going to actually want to segment that audience. You do not want to just be saying, “Hey, you registered for the webinar, now buy my stuff.” You’re going to want to send them the relevant message, so that if they didn’t watch the webinar, we segment. That’s in our Social Charlie system, we segment that audience, and we give them some other piece of content.

We’ll either send them the webinar directly there in their Facebook news feed as a video, or put it into an instant experience ad where they can watch it. The key is we want them to consume it. They registered, they’ve shown some interest. Let’s have them watch some of it before we send them the sales ad.

Of that 150 that may opt in over the last three days, you may only have 50 that have watched the webinar that you’re going to send a sales ad to. Now, that can be challenging. 50 people in your news feed. Typically, Facebook custom audiences, they need to be at least 20 to fill out.So if you’re not getting 20 people, then it could be very difficult for your ads to actually distribute.

DO: Use the Correct Type of Objective In Your Retargeting Ads

Now, a word on that, with our retargeting strategies, if you were retargeting, don’t retarget an audience like that with a conversion campaign. It’s just not going to work for you. Better options for you would be a traffic campaign that’s optimized for landing page views, or a reach campaign could work, or an engagement campaign. They would be the best ones. While you may actually want people to be purchasing, and you go, “I need to do a conversion ad and optimize for purchases,” in that case, no, don’t do a conversion campaign. They’re best top-of-funnel.

When you’ve got small audiences that you’re retargeting, one of those other campaigns, traffic, engagement, or reach, would be best for you. Little side note there. So you can see that the traditional models that a lot of people are still teaching from years ago of getting people to opt in, retarget them for three days or seven days, is really difficult for you with rising ad costs. Rising ad costs mean you get less people opting in, which means you get less people that you can retarget to.

So, what we do with our Social Charlie system is that we keep, one, the top of the funnel wide. So, as well as having people opting in for our lead magnet, registering for our webinar, we’re also bringing them in through other streams, through video views, through engage with page, through our website traffic. So they are more cost-effective options.

Instead of spending $30 for a CPM, which means it’s $30 to reach a thousand people, to get people to opt in, you could spend $3 per CPM for a video view campaign or an engagement campaign to that same audience, right? So if you’re targeting Tony Robbins and it’s costing your $30 for a CPM in a conversion campaign, that same Tony Robbins audience may just cause you $3 in a video view campaign, okay, to reach a thousand people. And you can get a massive reach with that, with people watching 100% of a one-minute video, to be building your audience.

DO: Keep it Wide at the Top of your Funnel

Okay, so with our Social Charlie system, we’re keeping it wide, and then we’ve got a much wider audience that we can then retarget to. And it’s not just retargeting for like three days or seven days. At certain points of the funnel, yes, so like if they have opted in for our webinar, then yes, we will retarget them for maybe 10 days. And then for those who didn’t watch, well, we will retarget them for another 10 days with another piece of content. For people that have visited our sales page, or the application page to book a call, or an add to cart page, again, retarget those audiences for like 10 days.

While the three-day windows are good, and you can have multiple campaigns, so that you could retarget just a three-day and have more urgency in your ads, saying, “Hey, time’s running out, you better sign up quick…” Better wording than that. You would complement that with another longer time frame, so that your ads can feed out, and it gets people a chance to actually notice you in their news feed as well.

DON’T: Expect People to Buy From you Immediately

But we also go beyond that with the Social Charlie system, right? We don’t just do “Here’s our seven days, buy or die, you’ve opted in, seven days, off you go.” We have long-term funnels, okay, where we’re nurturing our audience for 90 days at least. With the Facebook pixel, you can be tracking up to 180 days. If it’s a video view audience, you can now retarget for 365 days. So, having a 90-day window, a three-month window where you can actually nurture your audience is very powerful, especially in the high-ticket coaching space, okay? These people that are going to be spending $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 or more on working with you often need a bit more education. They need to get to know you a bit more.

So yes, while the old webinar to a sales call and they’re in in 48 hours does still work, it’s only a very, very, small percent of the audience that is actually doing it. So unless you are pumping in a lot of money, like thousands of dollars a day, to your top of funnel to get that lead gen flow through, to get those numbers you want for your sales, you need to scale out horizontally with other campaigns that you are then retargeting to, bringing people into your world.

And there will be people who will book a call with you who have never even opted in to your stuff. They may not have opted in for your webinar, they may not have opted in for a cheat sheet, but they are watching you and consuming the information that you’re putting out there on Facebook. You’re building up their trust. So that retargeting funnel pays for itself when they actually come to book a call, and they know what you’re all about, and you’re not having to push the sale on them. Sometimes, you might be going, “Yeah, actually, no, no, we’re not quite a good fit,” okay? But you’ve got people who are at that point where they know you, they like you, and they trust you.

DO: Retarget

So retargeting, my friend, is where it’s at. So keeping the top of the funnel wide, this is what I always talk about with the Social Charlie system, keep your top of funnel wide, and then be retargeting for the long term, okay? It’s so often, so often I will talk to a coach, and they get someone on board who’s been watching them for six months or so. I remember someone booked a call with me, and we first crossed paths like a year earlier, and then they booked a $500 strategy call like a year later. And then another six months later, they book another one.

It’s a long-term relationship.

And again, this is what our Social Charlie System is all about. It’s about building relationships, allowing those relationships to form online. Even though it’s kind of one-sided, these people who are watching your videos will be quite likely to send you a message. They’re going to say, “Hey, I was watching this. That was a great information. Can we book a call?” This is a win!

Start by nurturing.

Don’t just be caught up in, like, “here’s our ad, we’ve got to get them over the line, we want them to book and we want them to buy in 48 hours!”

DO: Educate People How You Can Help

Commit to the long-term nurturing of your potential clients, invest in giving them some information and great value, educate them more about what you do, and you will reap the rewards with your retargeting strategies that your competitors are not even doing. They’re in and out, and they’ve forgotten about them. They’ve moved on. They’re trying to keep chasing leads all the time. Keep nurturing those people that you’ve got in as leads, either if they’ve opted in for your email, but also, even if they haven’t opted in for email, make the most of the retargeting that’s available to us on Facebook. It’s the most powerful platform out there.

So, retargeting, my friends, that’s where it’s at. But if you want to know more about retargeting, I’ve got a ton of information over in my free Facebook group.

Just head over to http://jodymilward.com/group, and you’ll get that information there. There’s videos there that you’ll be able to dig into, and that’ll help you with your avatar and your copy and creating winning Facebook ads.

If you’ve got any questions about retargeting, I love retargeting, or the Social Charlie system, actually head over to my Facebook group. It’s a free Facebook group for coaches and consultants. It’s at jodymilward.com/group, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Until next time, bye.