THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO: Retargeting Ads on Facebook - From the Disrupter School
Retargeting is an extremely divisive issue in digital marketing so here is the definitive guide to what you need to know
We’re going to cover several very important topics
How Facebook already does this for you even at Broad
How this can hurt incremental lift
The perspective on added cost and extended timeline of testing
The impact of lower data volume in a greater number of places
And some use cases where Retargeting can be extremely helpful
But 1st, I want to say thank you
You could be anywhere on the Internet right now and you’ve chosen to spend your time here. I want you to know that I value that, and intend on this being the most valuable allocation of your time that I can possibly make it right now.
If you would like even more information please feel free to sign up for my latest webinar at Apply.FacebookDisrupter.com
And if you wanna join the Facebook ads MBA program, please go to Submit.FacebookDisrupter.com to submit an application today!
OK let’s get started,
Retargeting with digital ads is an old strategy used initially in inventory and demand-based platforms like programmatic display, to blanket a user’s Internet experience with a very specific marketing message.
This was extremely valuable before the days of an optimized CPM environment, because there was previously no way to control for, and give preference to, an end users overall experience with your brand online.
Facebook at its core, is an intent creation device and market research tool. The average person has had a Facebook account for nearly a decade and Facebook has seen that user engage with thousands of pieces of content, thousands of webpages, and most users have millions of pixel events attached to their user profile in the Facebook database.
Facebook can see what you’re talking about, who you’re talking to, what content you engage with, and who’s ads you click on, plus how long you stay on those advertisers sites, what you view on those sites, and what behavior you’ve exhibited as a trend over years.
Facebook’s business model is built on machine learning, and maximizing a users experience in their suite of apps and sites. Because of all of this information, Facebook is able to deliver content to users in a way that not only engages them positively but can also deliver business objectives for advertisers at scale. 
Having dedicated Retargeting audiences, that are excluded from Prospecting audiences, makes those prospecting audiences dumber while also trying to force impressions on users because of a certain behavior. This not only weakens the strength of Facebook‘s ability to manage a customer journey across multiple platforms, but it also creates a less desirable experience for the end-user and increases the likelihood of multiple channels getting credit for delivering a conversion.
Also, the more competing objectives that you have live in any accounts, the greater the cost of testing all of those journeys will be. The more tests that you have to run, the longer it takes to get any test to statistical significance. Also, additional testing cost additional resources.
When we focus on trying to invest specifically on retargeting users throughout the customer journey, we also have less resources to bring new people in to our ecosystem. This has a direct and negative impact on incremental lift and slows net growth and scaling.
So when is Retargeting actually a good idea?
When it allows users you may not otherwise convert, to find the best offer for themselves.
Most often we see dynamic products ads, or catalog sales campaigns, used to allow a user who has entered into your ecosystem but is not like the majority of other users in what they are looking for, to find their best fit in offer and value.
Ideally, our primary full funnel advertising efforts should be focused on driving more users of improving quality to our greatest value customer journey.
However, that may be best fit for the majority but not all users. This is an opportunity to allow a typical customer journeys to also deliver conversions. Additionally, dynamic product ads, due to their customized experience for each user, tend to deliver extremely efficient conversions for these atypical users.
Lastly, the Rebuttal upsell or ReBupsell:
When a full price single product is not the right fit for a potential customer, many advertisers make the mistake of discounting their products. This sacrifice is perceived value and overall revenue. Instead, we have the option of offering a higher value choice alongside a primary offer.
If we can deliver the average customer LTV in a single transaction, all additional transactions improve our allowable CPA for our primary campaigns.
Example:
If our primary offer is $40
& our average LTV is $100
Offering a buy 3 get one 1 gives us a 20% lift in LTV, trading the COGs of one product as the acquisition cost of two additional sales, which are data tells us would be less likely to happen anyway.
I hope this helps
~ Charley T 
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