According to the International Business Times, Facebook’s stock price rose more than 30 percent in the last six months on quarterly revenue of $3.12 billion.
The revenue increase is largely due to user growth and mobile ads, but can at least partly be attributed to the success online advertisers are having with Facebook ad campaigns. And one of the top performing campaigns that typically yields the lowest cost per acquisition is Facebook’s retargeting feature.
In this post, we’re going to provide reasons why it’s critical to incorporate Facebook retargeting into your online marketing strategy for 2015. If you miss out on Facebook retargeting in the New Year, it will be your biggest regret since not buying Facebook’s stock when it was under $20 per share.
Let’s first start with a quick comparison between Facebook and Google retargeting.
A comparison between Facebook and Google retargeting
Marketers are always curious, if they’re familiar with the Google Display Network dashboard, whether or not they’ll be able to pick up Facebook retargeting. The good news is that the social networking giant actually makes it really easy to go through the entire process. So rest assured that starting a campaign won’t be that difficult to do.
For marketers who are more advanced when it comes to online advertising and are curious about the cost per acquisition on Facebook compared to Google, the social networking giant can yield some amazing results. For one of our clients who is an e-commerce based company, we’ve generated a cost per acquisition on the retargeting side for $11.50 on Facebook. To put this in comparison, on Google’s Display Network, the CPA is coming in above $17.00.
An apartment community, Mason Grand and Grand at Polaris, has also had success with a remarketing campaign on Facebook and have generated a cost per acquisition nearly 17% lower on the Facebook side than with Google. Our theory for the reason why is that their imagery is so compelling that it lures people on Facebook back to their website. While the graphics are nice on the Google Display Network, the size dimensions are smaller which mean’s there’s less to work with.
Regardless of the industry that you’re in, if you perfect your messaging, imagery, and targeting options on the re-marketing side, Facebook’s retargeting can be very helpful for your overall digital strategy and is very competitively priced as you’ve seen with the last two example campaigns.
There’s also the notion that retargeting on Facebook for B2B companies won’t work, but his couldn’t be further from the truth. Our agency, The Media Captain, has had a retargeting campaign on Facebook for the past 8 months. The cost per acquisition (which we classify as a lead from a contact form that’s filled out on our website) is coming in nearly identical to Google’s Display Network.
This means retargeting campaigns on Facebook will help you capture more leads from the visitors who have dropped off of your website. If there’s any chance the visitor to your website could be browsing Facebook, this would be a solid platform to have your retargeted advertisements placed on.
Why Facebook retargeting is a must for 2015
If you’re already getting solid results on Google’s Display Network, you might be asking yourself, “why should I even mess around with Facebook”?
The first reason is that advertisers need to think of Facebook as a completely different platform where they can expand their reach. Instead of appearing in the sidebar of a site like ESPN.com for GDN, appearing in the newsfeed provides a more organic feel with advertisements. Social Media Examiner says that, “Retargeting to the right audience is a must if you want to see more conversions from your Facebook ads.”
Facebook also provides the capability for advertisers to respond to potential customers when they leave a comment or interact on the advertisement. If people love your product or service, there’s a chance on Facebook that they’ll share your advertisement, which can increase your overall reach. Google does not have this kind of “social” capability with retargeting where you can answer questions and have a viral type of component.
One of the downsides of Facebook’s retargeting features, however, is that it does not provide the option to retarget videos. We’ve seen great success for video remarketing on the Google side. Another apartment community that we helped in West End Nashville was able to generate a low cost per acquisition using video retargeting on GDN, but we’re still waiting for this feature to be released on Facebook.
And we have seen the cost per acquisition come in lower on Facebook versus Google for various campaigns for e-commerce, B2B, and B2C campaigns. With that being said, sometimes Google’s Display Network will outperform Facebook. It comes down to testing both to see which has the better cost per acquisition, and often doing both is a good idea so you get an even larger reach for your campaigns.
When it comes to planning your 2015 marketing campaigns, if you master Facebook retargeting, you’ll get:
- An extremely competitive cost per acquisition compared to Google’s retargeting features.
- A better and more natural brand exposure with gorgeous photos in people’s newsfeeds. This provides a great outlet for businesses to get creative and really show off their product or services, and it also provides an excellent brand exposure.
- A vastly larger reach for your campaigns based on the massive user base Facebook has built up.
The real question is how you’ll make Facebook retargeting a part of a successful strategy for 2015, not whether or not you should be using it. Facebook retargeting provides marketers with an amazing outlet to target potential customers with strong messaging. Even if you’re skeptical that it won’t deliver the same results as Google’s display network, it’s too valuable not to at least give it a try in 2015.
Author
Jason Parks is the owner of The Media Captain, a Digital Marketing Agency based out of Columbus, Ohio, that offers online advertising, SEO, social media, web development, and video production services.
