Why Only Running Retargeting Ads on Facebook Can Hurt Your Returns

Facebook retargeting ads are a necessity in every ecommerce store owner’s marketing arsenal, and they’re great at recapturing the attention of people who have already made contact with your business. With these people you know you’re part way there, there’s something that brought them to your website and retargeting ads help to seal the deal.

Wait just a second though, just because retargeting ads are incredible doesn’t mean you can rely on them entirely. That’s where prospecting ads come in! Prospecting ads grow your audience base and increase your leads. They find new customers and drive them to your site. I mean, you need new customers in order to drive them back, right?

Retargeting Ads Turn Leads into Customers

Ah retargeting ads. They remind previous visitors about your products or services and encourage them to return to your site and jump back into the sales funnel. Retargeting ads are an absolute must to convert browsers into buyers! Here’s the thing though, if you focus on retargeting ads only, your pool of prospects would never grow, and eventually, it would run dry. Imagine, for instance, a kid with a lemonade stand who’s operating on a small cul-de-sac. There’s only so much money that child will ever make operating in that location with one product because there are only so many people coming by to purchase lemonade. Eventually, people are going to start saying “no thanks” because they’ve already bought four glasses and want something new.

Allow Me To Introduce…Prospecting Ads

A prospecting ad is just what it sounds like: it targets people who are prospective future customers. The main purpose of a prospecting ad is to introduce your brand to new people who haven’t heard about you before and to get those strangers to your site for the first time to turn them into leads. In the lemonade stand example, a prospecting ad is the equivalent of moving your lemonade stand over a block to find new customers who you know (or believe) haven’t had lemonade recently – or maybe even ever!

A great place to start? You can look at your ideal customer and target new prospects based on similar characteristics, such as Facebook Likes, behavior, demographic, location, interests, and so much more.

The ‘Prospecting à Retargeting Ad Cycle’

The purpose of prospecting is driving new traffic to your site, but because prospecting ads deal with first contact, they typically have a lower return on ad spend than retargeting ads. Don’t worry—it’s to be expected since the goal is to attract new visitors to your site so that you are able to retarget them.

So here’s a quick recap of how it goes: you start with a prospecting ad, attract new visitors to your store, then use a retargeting ad to drive that visitor back and ultimately convert into a customer.

Prospecting and retargeting ads should really be thought of as a pair, because if you just run prospecting ads, you’ll lose out on a lot of business, and if you just run retargeting ads, you’ll eventually tap out your existing customer base.

Both types of ads have a place in your marketing budget, and they should be used in conjunction to reach the largest possible audience, drive the most visitors, maximize conversions, and increase your revenue.