Retargeting in Facebook Marketing - does that work?

Retargeting sounds "dangerous" at first. But anyone who deals with Facebook Marketing is busy, there is no way around dealing with the topic.
And even if you are perhaps not (yet) familiar with the term, you have definitely already stumbled across retargeting.

How Retargeting Works

You have probably already experienced this. You visit a shop on the internet, look at a certain product and it follows you everywhere from then on. You are on a completely different website or on Facebook and suddenly see the product again - either directly in your timeline or on the side of the website. This is no coincidence.this type of advertising is called retargeting.
You have already shown that you are interested in this product and so the spreading loss is kept very low. This is stored on your computer in a harmless cookie, which is nothing more than a small text file. Since you have shown interest, it is also assumed that the advertisement does not annoy you but supports your purchase decision.

Should every website operator rely on retargeting?

If you own an online shop or sell another product on your website, it is a good idea to invest in online advertising. If you include a small pixel on your website in advance, which is nothing more than a bit of code, you can keep referring customers who have already been to your site. This makes sense, of course. After all, a customer often doesn't buy until the seventh contact with the Shop - whether online or offline.
Retargeting therefore helps you to convince your customers and bring them back to your website. Seen in this light, retargeting is also a form of customer retention.
By repeatedly displaying the advertisement, your potential customers will be told that you are the best address for this product and they will - probably - not look around on other websites.

Targeted advertising

Targeted advertising is in any case more cost-effective. Even if the price for the customer's actual click is higher, it can be assumed that the customer will be much more likely to buy the product when he gets in touch with it again than a completely new customer who may have the intention to inform himself about the product.
Retargeting helps to show the advertisement only to customers who have already expressed an interest.

Criticism of retargeting

Users can quickly feel "followed" by the retargeting. They get the impression that data about their suffolk behaviour is collected without their consent, so that they can be addressed again and again - without this being desired. This also puts data protectionists off against retargeting. From the point of view of an online shop operator, retargeting makes absolute sense, but from the user's point of view it should not be too much of a good thing. With so-called frequency capping, online marketers can determine the display frequency and take advantage of this. Because once you start thinking about yourself, it quickly becomes clear: nobody wants to see the same advertisement over and over again. If this happens during advertising blocks on television, we simply switch over. If this happens on the Internet, we could resort to an adblocker and switch off the advertising completely.
Once this has been done, you will not be able to retrieve customers who have already had the item(s) in their shopping cart and possibly only belong to the group of "shopping cart dropouts". This target group is already convinced of you, they only have to make the last click to complete the purchase. Annoying this target group refers the customer of your shop.
So if you decide to retarget, you should handle it carefully so as not to upset your potential customers.

Conclusion

For online retailers and online marketers in general, retargeting on Facebook, Google and the like is a blessing. After all, it ensures that the scattering loss of advertising is low and thus the costs do not shoot up to undreamt-of heights. Nevertheless, it should be handled sensitively. The saying "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." fits perfectly here. Every one of us is surrounded by tons of advertising every day and we also have a relatively high tolerance when it comes to advertising. However, when it gets too much, it upsets us and we go to a lot of trouble and invest our time to turn off what upsets us.
So if you use retargeting wisely, it will help you increase sales without upsetting your customers. On the contrary, your customers might even take your cautious advertising as a reminder and return to your website to finally close the sale.