The Power of Retargeting with Meta Ads

In today’s digital landscape, the customer journey is rarely a straight line. Shoppers browse, compare, and sometimes leave without buying — often several times before they make a purchase decision.

Retargeting with Meta Ads is an invaluable strategy for gently guiding these prospective customers back to complete their purchase. By setting up a retargeting campaign on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), you can stay visible in front of interested audiences, increasing conversions and making the most of your ad budget.

In this article, we’ll dive into the power of retargeting with Meta Ads — and how it works.

What Is Retargeting and How Does It Work on Meta?

Retargeting, sometimes called re-marketing, is a digital advertising technique where you serve ads to users who have already interacted with your brand. Essentially, Meta tracks visitors’ actions on your website or social media profile (like viewing a product, adding an item to their cart, or viewing a post) and allows you to serve them targeted ads afterward.

Because these users have already shown interest, retargeting ads are a powerful way to keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage them to take further action.

They should always be run alongside ‘top of funnel’ campaigns, which we call Prospecting ads. This works like an automatoin; Prospecting campaign will direct the audience to your website, then those same people can be singled out again with your retargeting ads.

Key Benefits of Retargeting with Meta Ads

Retargeting ads are shown to people who already know your brand, making them more likely to convert than completely new audiences. This is especially true for products or services where a customer might need several touchpoints (or interactions) with a brand before purchasing e.g. more expensive items or services requiring a big commitment. Studies have shown that retargeted customers are 70% more likely to complete a purchase than those who haven’t been retargeted.

Retargeting also requires less ad spend than a top of funnel campaign (where your audience is first-time customers). Meta uses your budget to target a smaller, more qualified audience that has already shown purchase intent in the brand, making conversions more likely. This pre-qualified audience results in a higher ROI, as you don’t need to generate initial awareness but rather nurture existing interest to convert it into action. Generally, retargeting campaigns should comprise no more than 20% of your ad spend, while top of funnel gets the rest.

In a competitive digital market, brand recall is everything. By showing ads consistently to interested users, you stay front of mind, and when they’re ready to purchase your brand is likely the first they’ll consider.

Meta allows you to set up audience segments and tailor your ad content to their behaviour. This is especially important when encouraging repeat purchases. The ads you serve an existing buyer will be very different from ads you serve someone who’s still at the consideratoin phase of the marketing funnel. This is why it’s recommended to set up an entirely seperate post-purchase campaign.

Types of Retargeting Ads on Meta

There are two ad set-ups we use for retargeting:

Dynamic Catalog Ads: These ads pull from your product catalog to show specific items that users viewed or added to their cart. This means you don’t need to make your own creative; Meta will just use the product imagery on your website (so make sure if you choose this format, your E-Comm photoshoots are on point!). The main benefit of dynamic ads is that they display the exact products users interacted with, which can increase the likelihood of a purchase.

Manual Ads: In contrast, manual ads are designed and set up with fixed content by the advertiser — these ads do not change based on user behaviour like a dynamic catalog ad. They do not offer the personalised approach that dynamic ads do; however, if your audience didn’t convert in the first place, showing them the same product a second time via catalog targeting might not work. You need to test out a new angle.

Did you know that almost a large majority of all ad results are attributed to the creative? If you don’t think your product photography is going to cut it, you should test out some more engaging manual ads.

A Note on Hooks for Retargeting Ads

Some say that the secret to successful retargeting lies in finding the right hook. You know your products best, but here are some words of advice.

Retargeting ads differ from top-of-funnel content, as your audience is at a different stage of the customer journey; they already know who you are and are familiar with your product or service’s main features and/or benefits. You have to come up with new motivators for audiences that go beyond what they’ve already seen on your site or socials. Usually this means introducing a special discount, or making it known that you’re running a welcome offer.

Scarcity and urgency can also be powerful motivators, especially for customers who haven’t crossed the line into buyers yet. Tapping into FOMO or the fear of missing out can push hesitant users into action. Use phrases playing on time sensitivity an exclusivity e.g. “buy before it sells out”.

Last but not least, social proof is a big driver of trust and credibility. When potential customers see that others are loving your product or service, they’re more likely to take action. Showcase your product’s best reviews, ask previous clients for feedback, or advertise other big achievements i.e. an award, good press, recognition from a publication… Bonus points if you have a high-profile past customer to inspire future buyers — we’ve seen so many brands use a hook like “as seen on [insert celebrity]”.

Best Practices for Meta Retargeting Ads

To get the most from your retargeting efforts, keep these three best practices in mind:

Segment Your Audiences: Customise your ads for different stages in the customer journey — whether they just viewed a product, abandoned a cart, or completed a purchase. Relevant messaging makes your retargeting ads more effective. You can merge a few segments together, such as combining website visitors with social media engagers; but as a general rule of thumb, we like to run seperate ads for buyers (post-purchase) vs. non-buyers.

Cap Your Frequency: No one likes to be spammed. Set frequency caps on your retargeting ads to avoid overwhelming your audience and potentially turning them away. So what’s a good frequency cap? Experts all say something different; we take a more intuitive approach, and switch our creatives whenever the results are low and frequency is around 4-5. If the ads are performing, regardless of frequency we think it’s ok to keep them running. This is a very simplified explanation though!

Test Different Ad Formats: Experiment with various ad formats to see which resonates best with your retargeting audience. For example, try using dynamic/catalog and also making some of your own for manual set up. Try carousel ads to showcase multiple products or features, and video ads to demonstrate your product in action. After monitoring the results for the first 7-day window, you can see which delivery is most compelling for your audience, and keep replicating that.

Re-engage, Retarget, and Retain with Meta Ads

Retargeting with Meta Ads is a powerful strategy for converting more customers and building lasting relationships. Meta’s retargeting capabilities help you stay connected in a highly competitive market, maximising your ad spend and guiding customers through the marketing funnel to the all-important loyalty stage.