Expand Your Retargeting Audience and Boost Conversions
Want to get better results from your Facebook ads? If your retargeting strategy isn’t delivering the expected conversions, it’s time to rethink your approach. Understanding how to effectively retarget your audience can significantly improve your return on ad spend and ensure that no potential customer slips through the cracks.
Most advertisers get Facebook retargeting wrong by limiting their audience too much. Instead of focusing only on the most recent website visitors or those who abandoned their cart in the last few days, take a broader approach. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes engagement recency on its own, so by expanding your retargeting audience, you give Meta more data to work with while still capturing high-intent users.
How to Set Up a High-Performing Retargeting Campaign
- Use a Manual Leads Campaign
Start by setting up a manual leads campaign in Facebook Ads Manager. This approach gives you full control over audience targeting and settings, ensuring your retargeting efforts are structured effectively. Within the ad set level, navigate to the targeting section and begin adding your custom audiences. The key is to consolidate all possible retargeting audiences into a single ad set to maximize reach. - Expand Your Retargeting Audience
- Include all website visitors from the past 180 days (the longest duration allowed). Many advertisers mistakenly shorten this window, excluding potential leads.
- Upload your email list, including both customers and non-customers. Facebook will attempt to match these addresses with user profiles.
- Add video viewers who have watched any of your Facebook or Instagram videos within the last 365 days.
- Include Facebook and Instagram page engagers—anyone who has interacted with your brand’s content.
- If you’re running lead generation ads with instant forms, create a custom audience that includes users who have engaged with those forms.
A broader retargeting strategy allows Facebook to identify high-potential users based on behavioral signals. For instance, someone who visited your website five months ago but has recently interacted with similar content might still be a strong lead. Facebook’s AI will naturally prioritize showing ads to the most engaged users first, so there’s no need to manually narrow your audience.
- Maximize Audience Coverage
- Email list matches aren’t always perfect, and website visitor tracking can be affected by privacy settings and iOS updates.
- By incorporating engagement-based audiences, you capture users who might otherwise be missed.
- This ensures your ads reach as many warm leads as possible.
Optimizing for Best Results
When setting up Advantage Plus Audience, remember that Facebook treats your custom audiences as suggestions rather than strict targeting criteria. This means Facebook may extend beyond your retargeting audience to find other potential converters. If you want to limit your campaign strictly to warm audiences, switch to original audience settings and disable Advantage Custom Audience to prevent Facebook from expanding targeting.
Keeping other targeting criteria, such as age, gender, and detailed targeting, open is generally best practice. Facebook’s algorithm performs best when it has more flexibility to find the right users. However, you can narrow by location if your business serves specific regions.
Key Takeaway
Whether you’re running an omnipresent content strategy or using retargeting for promotions and discounts, the main takeaway is the same: build the largest possible retargeting audience. Give Facebook more data to work with, and let its algorithm do the heavy lifting to prioritize high-intent users.
By refining your retargeting strategy and leveraging Facebook’s AI-driven ad delivery, you’ll maximize ad efficiency and drive better results. Start implementing these changes today and watch your campaigns improve!