Have you ever been browsing the web, stumble across a page for a cool product somewhere, and then 30 minutes later see an advertisment pop up on your news feed for that same product? Congratulations, you have gotten your first taste of Facebook Advertising! This phenomena is known as retargeting in the online marketing world, and it has shown to produce conversions in the 40% and up range. Incredible, right?

But why is this important? Well, because only only less than 5% of small businesses are currently taking advantge of Facebook Advertising... and the rest are sorely missing out. You see, Facebook Ads are still relatively new, but marketers are quickly learning how to use them to get their clients massive ROIs with very little ad budget. How are they doing this though?

The Facebook Algorithm

Just like Google, Facebook has an algorithm for gathering data, analyzing that data, and then putting it to effective use for its users. Facebook is all about the user experience. This simply means that the more attractive and engaging your content is on social media, the more it gets pushed out in front of people. This is the main key point to take away in this post. MAKE ENGAGING CONTENT.

Back to the algorithm though. Think of this like a complex mathematical formula, where any variety of inputs give out a certain output. If you want your content to reach more people, whether this be posts on your page, ads you're running, etc. you need to make sure it effectively speaks to your target audience. 

If you notice, when you first make a new Facebook post it doesn't always get a lot of Likes, Shares, or Comments right away. That's because Facebook is "testing" it. It will normally push your post out to a small segement of your friend's list or followers first to see how it is recieved. If people engage and comment and enjoy the content, Facebook then puts it out in front of even more people. If it falls short, then barely anyone else will see it.

The reason why running Facebook Ads is so effective is because the algorithm is constantly working FOR you. It is optimzing, gathering data, cross checking, split testing, churning, and bubbling like a  cauldron, so that it gives you the best results for the money you are putting in. How does all of this happen exactly?

The Pixel

You may have heard of this little guy before: The Facebook Pixel. This is simply a small section of code that gets placed on the pages of your website, and anytime a visitor comes to this page the Pixel code "fires" and sends many, many data points on that user back to Facebook so you can use it later. Pretty cool, huh? Now, the crazy thing about all this is that Facebook is able to capture over a thousand data points on you, just based off of your internet activity. Websites you've visited, products you've purchased, surveys and reports you've filled out, offers you've taken, information you've entered, and many others. 

Don't worry too much though, this is all for strictly advertising purposes and Facebook does have it's limits on what it can use. The amazing thing here is that with this data, Facebook can build an "avatar" of the perfect user a business may want to attract with it's ads. 

Just as a quick rundown, here's how this would work:

Do you see the similarities between any of these personas? Person A and Person B are both within the same age range AND the same gender. Facebook sees these two data points and starts cross-checking all of their other info like interests, public information on Facebook, pages Liked, and much more. As more people enagge with your ad, Facebook has more data to section off and optimize for. After 10 or 50 or 100 or 1000 people come through, Facebook now has enough information to build out your perfect avatar. 

Once this initial data gathering is complete, your ads will now start showing to only these people who match all of this common data. Remember: data is king on any advertising platform, and Facebook is no different. 

What's Your Advantage?

The opportunities with running Facebook Ads for your business are limitless, especially as Facebook continues to optimize it's platform and gear it more towards giving users what they want. The simple truth behind why you see ads after visiting certain websites is due to the Pixel that we mentioned above. Retargeting is where a marketer for a business or product will capture your visit, send that data back to FB, and then setup additional advertisements to run to you based off the products you looked at. It's an amazing tool than ANY business can take advantage of, and like we said before it can produce massive returns like no other. 

Keep ahead of your competition. Don't let them be the ones that get all of the business simply because they are implementing Facebook Ads and you aren't. If this is something you want to use to grow your own business, reach out to us and schedule a call today!