4 Creative Ways to Attract More Visitors to Your Website

“How can I get more website visitors?”

This is one of the most common questions I hear from clients, frustrated at the lack of business their website brings them.

Often, there isn’t much wrong with the site iteslf — it’s professionally designed, and the portfolio is full of gorgeous work. But it just sits there, in an obscure corner of the Internet, being quietly ignored.Taking a website from zero to a few hundred or even a few thousand visitors a month is not easy, but it’s eminently doable — as long as you recognize a harsh truth about the Internet:

The online world is an attention economy. Attention is finite, and therefore scarce. So if you want people to pay attention to you, you need to earn it.

You can’t expect your work to speak for itself. Most of the time, it won’t. You need to accept that marketing is part of your job, just as much as making.

But the game changes when you start applying your creativity to your marketing — it becomes more fun as well as more effective. Here are four ways to use your creativity to attract the right kind of visitors to your website.

1. Create an amazing blog.

Note the word ‘amazing’. I’m not talking about a blog you only update when you’ve got a new client or exhibition, or something new to sell. I’m not talking about a personal diary where you to post your musings on art, life, and the universe. I mean the kind of blog that grabs people’s attention by delivering outstandingly valuable, useful, or entertaining material — consistently.

Instead of writing, ‘here’s my latest work’, write about:

• “Here’s how I made it” – with pictures and/or video. Like this or this or this.
• “Here’s what inspired it” – if you like it, chances are your audience will like it too. Like this or this.
• “Here’s how you can make one like it.” Like this or this.
• “Here’s a gadget that makes my work better (and could help  you too).” Likethis.

Instead of burying your opinions in long paragraphs of diary-style ‘musings’, put them out there loud and clear:

• Devote an entire blog post to nailing ONE idea.
• Start with a compelling headline.
• Ask yourself ‘So what? Why should anyone care?’ — and make that the start of the post.
• Give concrete examples.
• Invite comments by ending with a question.
• For example: I’m a designer. Use me better.

And don’t forget to ask for the subscription! Repeat visitors are the best visitors, so one of your goals is to build an audience of loyal subscribers. Ask people to subscribe and offer an email option to make it easy.

2. Give (some of) your best work away for free.

Just so we’re clear: I’m not one of those internet hippies who tells you “information wants to be free”, so you should give away all your best work and forget about being paid. (Have you noticed those guys tend to have a comfortable salary or professorship?)

But as Tim O’Reilly has pointed out, for most creatives obscurity is a greater threat than piracy. If no one’s ever heard of you, they won’t even bother to rip you off, let alone pay for your work.

So take advantage of the spreadability of digital content by giving away something valuable and encouraging people to share it with their contacts:

• the first chapter of your novel (or even an entire novella)
• a free report or e-book, full of insanely useful information
• one of the best tracks from your album
• a design template
• high-resolution images
• a series of tutorials
• videos that anyone can embed in their site

Use a Creative Commons license to make it clear what people are allowed to do with the work. And make sure it’s something genuinely valuable. If you feel slightly uncomfortable about giving away something so good, you’re on the right track. Otherwise, why would anyone get excited enough to tell their friends?But don’t give away the farm. Make sure you have plenty in reserve — products, services, artworks — for the folks who want to take things further and buy from you.

3. Borrow someone else’s audience.

Why build an audience from scratch when you can borrow one that someone else has spent months or years assembling? No, it’s not unethical — in fact, the ‘someone’ in question will love you for it.

Writing high-quality guest posts for popular blogs in your niche is one of the most effective ways to get yourself on the radar of the people you want to reach. Your ‘payment’ is a link back to your site — make a great offer and you could land hundreds of new subscribers with every guest post you write.

And make sure it’s your best work. This is your chance to make a big impression — don’t blow it by sending out second-rate articles and keeping the best stuff for your own site.

4. Get your content into circulation.

Have you noticed that of the three tips so far, only one of them is centered around your site? (No. 2 may start on your site, but the real magic happens when people start sharing it with their friends.) If you really want more visitors, you have to go out and find them.

Social networking sites are not just for networking — they are ideal places to get your content (blog posts, videos, free reports, etc) in front of other people. Use Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to share links to your content. Make use of portfolio sites like Behance to showcase your work in places where people go to look for it.

And be generous — share more of other people’s content than your own. That way, you not only help others (good digital karma!) you also position yourself as a go-to authority, a source of cool stuff who people want to follow.

***

None of these methods is a quick fix. They require time, effort, and persistence. But the good news is the benefits are cumulative – as your blog attracts links and subscribers, as your free content gets into circulation, and as you get known as a rising star in your niche, you’ll find yourself attracting more and more new visitors for every hour you spend on marketing.And no, website visitors don’t necessarily equal customers — otherwise there’d be a lot more Internet millionaires! Read my next article on turning visitors into buyers here.

-

Over To You

Which of these methods is most appealing to you?

What have been your best sources of web visitors?

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7 Tips for Driving Targeted Traffic With Twitter

Social media has many uses—from making contacts to performing customer service—but driving quality traffic to your site is Twitter’s secret weapon.  The big question is this: How can we get more of that lovely attention we crave?

As my recent poll shows, generating incoming traffic is the number-one need that people have right now, and for good reason. Traffic translates into:

• Attention, engagement, conversation and recognition
• Spreading your message far and wide
• Prospects and subscriber opt-ins
• Customers, increased sales and leads
• Media and interviews, which lead to more attention

… and last but not least, an ego boost.

In a previous article here I mentioned the many benefits of Twitter for your business. Now here are seven key points you need to know if you want to get more targeted traffic from Twitter:

#1: Know your audience

Growing your traffic always starts with your audience if you want to do it right.Untargeted, uninterested “hits” are a waste of time and resources at worst, and at best just pure vanity.

• What does your audience want and need?
• How do they like it delivered?
• Which topics are on their minds right now?
• Are there trends that are growing in popularity?
• How do these folks speak? What words and phrases do they use?

This means that driving traffic starts with listening and observing. Get to know your target so you can most efficiently engage them.

Twitter has a tool for this. Use search.twitter.com to find what people in your niche are talking about and follow some of their conversations.

Once you get an idea of what people are interested in, join in those conversations and talk to people.

#2: Get the “right” followers

So much rubbish is thrown around about how to grow your follower count that it makes it seem that the number is all that matters. Wrong!

You need people to want to hear what you have to say. This means you do NOT want people who auto-follow because they are either:

1. Robots and not real human beings (e.g., spam software, people trying to inflate their follower count, scrapers)
2. Not actually reading your tweets and just following to allow you to DM them

The followers you most want are those who follow you because they are interested and think they will get value from your tweets. These people are most likely to find you via:

• People retweeting your stuff, either within Twitter or using a TweetMeme button
• Referrals from other Twitter users
• Your blog; for example, your articles that say “Follow me on Twitter at @chrisgarrett and tell me what you think,” or your sidebar Follow Me button
• Other people’s blogs, when you guest post or comment
• Clicking your forum signature when you participate in discussions, or your email signature

Unfortunately Twitter closed off a really nice way that people used to get targeted Twitter followers. It used to be that we could “listen in” to conversations that people we followed were having, but now you have to be following both parties. This means we can’t discover new people that way. If someone puts something before they mention your @name it can still work, and I still occasionally get followers through that.

Essentially the advice is, put your Twitter name where it will be seen and encourage people to share it!

#3: Build engagement

Talk to people.

Engage your followers. Don’t just see them as a passive list of eyeballs! Treat folks as human beings and you will do much better at this stuff. It is called social media for a reason.

• Ask questions
• Hold conversations
• Dip into others’ conversations
• Encourage feedback

#4: Get clicks

So now your followers are seeing you as an interesting person and not a robotic “feed,” which means they are more likely to take notice when you tweet out a link.

Tweet Valuable Links

Whatever you do, don’t just tweet your own stuff. That is both selfish and boring!

Get into the habit of sharing anything cool, regardless of who created it. Retweet good stuff and other people are going to be more willing to retweet yours. Tweet out fun and useful links your friends send you in email or from the news. Be known as a person who tweets good stuff.

Timing

Not everyone is online at the same time. There is a whole world outside of your timezone, plus people have a different schedule than you. You know the feeling of confusion when you land in a foreign country. Not only have you got to adjust to local time, but also people seem to have their meals at a different time of day, shops open and close at strange hours, and business meetings seem to be held randomly. Twitter is like that, you can’t just look at a time zone converter and think people will be at their desk at a certain time.

1. Tweet the same thing a few times, a few hours apart, to give your message several chances to be seen.
2. Vary the times of day you tweet and monitor response.
3. Watch for the peaks and troughs of activity in YOUR stream (not just what works for others).

I tend to aim to catch the peak times for Aussies, the EU/Brits, East Coast USA, and West Coast USA, but it is far from an exact science!

Headlines

There are two main driving factors that affect your chances of getting a click:

1. Your reputation
2. The headline

Hopefully at this point #1 is taken care of, but #2 takes some work.

First of all, use my free download 102 Proven Headline Formulas as a starting point. There are 102 fill-in-the-blank templates which ought to give you a head start on writing a compelling caption.

If you use an interesting title and it matches your audience’s wants and needs, then you are going to get clicks.

Split test

You might not get it right the first time, so try another variation:

• Phrase it as a question
• Make it into a “How To” headline
• Use curiosity versus just the facts

A lot of this is about learning what your audience reacts to best.

#5: Measure performance

When you use a link-shortener with a built-in click-tracker such as bit.ly, you can see how well any of your links perform. This is useful for improving over time and to see which links get picked up virally.  As they say, what you measure you get more of!

With Twitter it’s not just the link clicks that YOU get, but the retweets and shares that really drive the real traffic. TweetMeme and bit.ly can give you vital reporting about how well you do, as well as your Google Analytics.

#6: Do more of what works, but test, test, test

When you find what works for you, do more of that. Keep in mind though that if you only do the same things you will either get the same results and not improve, or you will wear out that technique. Experiment, learn and mix it up.

Trends change, techniques improve, fads go out of fashion. Do not get stuck on rails, move and flow with your audience.

#7: Encourage sharing

Once you have your initial click, your job is not done!

Make sure your article has a TweetMeme button so that anyone who likes what you shared can easily share it too.

If you want to get really fancy, give people an incentive to share, such as a random prize drawing for anyone who tweets your message. Of course, the message will contain a link back to you …

Once in a while it doesn’t hurt to actually ask for retweets. Just don’t overdo it, as you will only annoy your followers. This will make them less responsive, rather than more.

Does it really work?

Here is a case study for you. For the last Social Media Success Summit in 2009, Mike Stelzner and I ran a competition on chrisg.com using all the advice mentioned here in this article.

The competition post was retweeted over 1,000 times

Using TweetMeme we can see that the competition post was retweeted over 1,000 times before it stopped tracking.

Social Media Success Summit 2009 Competition Clicks

Just the cli.gs link alone was clicked 12,753 times.

So yes, it does work.

Bottom line:

• Gather the correct audience
• Be awesome
• Share cool stuff
• Encourage other people to share it too

Does Twitter work to generate traffic for your stuff? Got any tips to share? Anything people do that annoys you? Please share—go ahead and comment below right now! 

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9 Killer Ways To Get Traffic Without SEO Or Social Media

You want traffic.

You want relevant, targeted traffic that will convert.

Yes, we all know you need to have great content, do SEO and share on Social Media.

But there other viable ways to get traffic.

Here are 9 killer ways you can get traffic without SEO or social media.

Side note: check out the resources page because there’re tools there that’ll get you fast traffic.

1. Find And Pull Method

This is perhaps one of the easiest ways to bring traffic to your blog. All you have to do is find popular blogs in your niche and bring the already existing traffic back to your blog. Sounds easy right? Well if you know how, it kind of is.

• For this method to work, you need to find out about relevant posts on high traffic blogs in your niche as soon as they are published. You can solve this problem using Google Alerts, which is a free Google service that sends you emails on new content across the web that may be of interest to you. Set up Google Alerts so that it sends you an email as soon as a popular blogger writes an article very closely related to a post you have previously published (We will get into how to set it up soon).
• For the second step go to the post as soon as it is published, actually read it, and write out a relevant and helpful comment after the post but instead of linking your name to your blog’s homepage, link to your post on related content. This way when they click through, they are immediately on a highly relevant page that they are interested in. And because they read your comment, which was useful and unique, they already think of you as an authority.

Here is how you set up Google Alerts. Where it says search query, type in a term related to one of your posts that you want to bring traffic to. 

Set results type to blogs. How often to once a day. How many to only the best results.

These settings will make sure that you only get relevant posts from popular blogs. If you don’t mind getting a lot of emails you can even set the How often setting to As-it-happens, which will give you a higher chance of getting there before anyone comments. You can go back and set up as many alerts as you want for as many of your posts as you like.

2. Viral Content Buzz Community

Viral Content Buzz is a place where you can earn points for sharing other people’s content and use those very points to get other people to share your content.

Yes, I realize this post isn’t supposed to have social media related methods for getting traffic, but Viral Content Buzz doesn’t really have to do as much with social media as it has to do with showing your content to a community. There is no crazysocial media tool, strategy or trick involved. You simply have to submit your content to the site and it will send traffic your way.

On some level it’s nothing more than a place where competent people from different niches gather to share quality content. Now, if you happen to like something shared by someone, you can help them out and Tweet it or Like it on Facebook. The more you participate in the community and share other people’s content, the more exposure you can get for your content.

Viral Content Buzz thoroughly checks your social media profiles to makes sure that your Facebook and Twitter profiles that you are using to promote other people’s content are real profiles with real followers and plenty of activity. This makes sure that none of the people joining the community are looking to take advantage of it. Because these are real people with real followings that are genuinely sharing your content, you get a lot of visibility and traffic.

Join Viral Content Buzz and submit your best content. Your content will be shared by people that would not have seen your articles otherwise and you will get traffic that is genuinely interested in reading what you have to say.

3. Derek Halpern’s Drafting Technique

This is a technique popularized Derek Halpern of Social Triggers. The drafting technique takes advantage of your competitors slip stream much like Nascar drivers do. What does that mean? Well, in Nascar (as well as bicycling and other racing sports) each competitor tends to stay right behind the one in front so that they have to deal with less air friction. As the first car spends more energy pushing through the air, it creates a slip stream right behind where there is less air density for the next car to push through. This means that the second car has to spend a lot less energy to achieve the same results.

Here is how you use the slip stream to your advantage. The idea is simple. You see your competitors somehow land an article on big sites and get huge coverage. Instead of feeling sad about it, you can use this to your advantage to get coverage for your own business or website as well.

When you see that someone in your niche has gotten a post on a huge site, you learn two things:

1. This particular site accepts guest posts.
2. The kind of topics they are looking for in their guest posts.

With this knowledge in hand you can contact the blog or main stream media site and pitch them a similar idea for a guest post you they will be happy to publish. They already published something similar so you know they would be happy to do so again. There is simply less friction. Just make sure it is not actually the same idea and that it is something similar that will add some value to their site.

Find blogs that are authorities in your niche and take a look at their posts that are guest posts. Make a list of similar ideas you can blog about and send them an outreach email pitching them a one or few of those ideas those ideas. Mention the similar posts already published on their site and tell them why you think your post will be just as good and maybe even better.

4. Link To Bloggers In Your Posts

Link to other bloggers in your post. That’s really all there is to it. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is never linking out. Link out to others in your posts and they will take notice of you, most of them will tweet about your post at the very least. Some of them will even link back to you. This is a easy and free way to get traffic. Just don’t forget about your readers and make sure that the links are relevant.

5. Use The Intro Method To Get Massive Forum Traffic

Using Forums to drive traffic is pretty well known. It’s also one of the easiest way to send traffic to your site.

Here is how you use forums to send massive traffic. This method was originally talked by Diggy at ProBlogger in much more detail. Go to a forum you participate in regularly and simply start a new thread mentioning your newest post like Diggy.

Think about it. If you were at your favorite forum and you saw a thread to a link that was actually interesting and full of useful information, wouldn’t you be inclined to check it out? Make sure your title is catchy and if your forum is in your niche and it has a high enough traffic, your results should look something like this:

Some forums have rules against this kind of thing so check the guidelines first. If this seems like something that’s in the grey area for a particular forum, you can start your thread with simply giving out free information or part of your post and end it with saying “you can find more tips on how to get traffic here”. If people liked what you had to say or found it useful, chances are they will check out the link.

6. Do Interviews

Interviews are like video guest posts. Interviewing someone is also a bit like linking to someone except now they are much more likely to share and link to the interview. There are advantages to both being the interviewer and the one getting interviewed.

• Why Be Interviewed – Obviously this sends traffic, but more importantly this establishes you as an authority in your niche. Why would anyone waste time interviewing someone who isn’t important? Because you will be seen as an authority, people who come to check out your blog or website will be more likely to stick around and comeback.
• Why Interview – If you interview someone and post it on your blog, chances are the person you interviewed is going to share it in every way that he or she can think of and probably even link to you. Interviewing someone who is important makes you seem like a bit of an important figure in your field as well.You become an authority by association. Say for example you saw a post by some random blogger where he interviewed Sir Richard Branson on video. Wouldn’t you suddenly think that this blogger is someone important?

Use HARO to get interviews and be interviewed. HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is a service that used by news agencies like ABC and FOX. Here is how HARO works.

When you go to HARO, you can sign up as a reporter or a source.

If you sign up as a source, you will get emails with a list of people who are looking to interview experts in different fields. Each interviewer will give a summery as to what they are looking for in their interviewee, which looks something like this:

If you qualify, and would like to be interviewed, you can simply send them an email saying so, and you will almost always get a reply immediately. By using HARO, you may be able to land yourself an interview on a huge mainstream media outlet.

If you sign up as a reporter, you just have to fill out who you are looking to interview in what subject every time you want to do an interview and your request will be there in the next email.

7. Use Your Email Signature.

Let all those emails you send work harder for you. Place a link to your website in your email signature. People are lazy and don’t like to take time to find out what your site is or even bother typing it in the URL bar. So make it really easy for them. Make your site only a click away by placing a link to it after your name in your signature. If you use Gmail, there are plenty of other things you can do to use Gmail like a marketing machine.

This makes a bigger difference than you think. Steve Krug in Don’t Make Me Thinktalks about how every action you are asking people to take causes the number of people to go through with it to drop drastically. Why force people to take more actions than necessary?

8. Be A Case Study

Businesses and people always need testimonials saying that their product or service works. Be that testimonial. If you end up being a case study that they showcase on their site, it can end up sending you a good amount of reoccurring traffic as well as establish you as someone of importance. If you try a product or service in your niche and found that it was useful, send them an email saying that you use the product and it did this and that for you. Be detailed in how it helped you.

9. Take Advantage Of Communities like Bloggers.com

Bloggers is a huge community of bloggers from every niche. Participating here will send you the best kind of traffic because everyone here is capable of linking to you. Not only will you directly get traffic to your blog from Bloggers but you will also end up getting traffic from any of these visitors who end up linking to you.

Getting traffic from Bloggers is simple. Create a full profile like and just start exploring. Find people in your niche that interest you and comment and vote on their profiles or blogs. Most of the time they will vote you back and you will end up getting that much more exposure in the community.

How do you get traffic to your website?

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How to Retarget Content to Facebook Custom Audiences

Have you considered using Facebook to reach your existing customers or those who visit your website?

Have you tried Facebook’s custom audience options?

Retargeting to the right audience is a must if you want to see more conversions from your Facebook ads.

In this article you’ll discover four Facebook custom audiences you can create to retarget your content to the most relevant Facebook audience.

Retarget content to a your audience with Facebook Custom Audiences.

Why Retargeted Content?

The goal of retargeted content (also known as remarketing) is to place your brand top of mind. Common strategies remarket to people who have already visited your website.

Updates like this can show up in your news feed if you’ve ever visited the Plated website.

People rarely buy from you the first time they visit your site or see an offer. They would rather take their time, compare your pricing with competitors’ and visit your site a few more times before completing that valuable sale.

Here are four custom audiences you can use to retarget Facebook users with your content.

#1: Website Visitors

The most common remarketing tactic is targeting relevant ads at people who have already visited your website (usually a specific landing page).

To create a targeted audience based on website visitors, you must have a Facebook website custom audience in place.

Overall, retargeting website visitors is a simple concept: When someone visits a page with your custom audience code (i.e., an offsite pixel), they’re added to your custom audience list in your Facebook Ads Manager.

You can include those visitors (and the custom audience they’re part of) as a target audience in a Facebook ad retargeting campaign.

Custom audiences are important to Facebook retargeting campaigns.

There may be a case where you want to retarget only a portion of the traffic that has visited a landing page on your website. No problem. You can do that by creating a personalized custom audience:

1. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager and choose Audience.

2. Click on Create a Custom Audience.

3. Under Website Traffic, select People Visiting Specific Pages.

3. Next to the Visited field, customize the URL elements to match the pages you want to retarget.

4. Click on Create.

You don’t have to retarget everyone who visits your website.

After you create your personalized custom audience, it’s ready to use. However, keep in mind that it may take a few hours for the new audience to have the final user count.

#2: Facebook Fans

Retargeting to existing Facebook fans is incredibly easy: When you set up your Facebook ad, choose to target people who are already fans of your page.

Narrow your retargeting audience to include only people who are fans of your page.

Does it seem odd to advertise to existing Facebook fans? Consider that acquiring sales from existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new leads (and many of your fans are probably customers). You can also upsell those existing customers with new or better products and services.

Additionally, your fans may not be seeing all of your Facebook updates. If youretarget your most important content to them via a Facebook ad, they’re more likely to see it.

#3: Email Subscribers

You can actually strengthen the power of your newsletter by serving Facebook ads to existing email subscribers.

To set up this custom audience, you need an Excel file with a column that includes all of your subscriber email addresses. Once you have that, go to Audiences in your Facebook Ads Manager, click Create Audience and choose Custom Audience.

Click on Data File Custom Audience and follow the instructions for the setup. Make sure to indicate that you’re updating email addresses.

Create a custom audience based on your email subscriber list.

Retargeting to email subscribers can increase the chance of conversion exponentially. It’s worth the extra effort to set it all up.

#4: Similar Audiences

Many of your users—whether website visitors, Facebook fans or list subscribers—have overlapping demographics, interests and behaviors. Wouldn’t it be great to find more people like them? Well, you can.

You can create a custom audience targeting people who share similar characteristics to your existing connections—people who are very likely to be interested in your products, services and content.

The custom audiences you create to retarget to by similarity are called lookalike audiences and they expose your ads to a more vast and relevant audience.

To create a custom audience based on similarities to website visitors, go to the Audience section of your Ads Manager and choose the custom audience installed on your website (see #1). Click Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page and choose the desired audience reach.

To create a custom audience based similarities to your current Facebook fans’ personal data (e.g., behavior, interests, etc.), go to the Audience section of your Ads Manager, click Create Audience and choose Lookalike Audience from the menu.

Create a lookalike target audience to find potential Facebook fans and customers.

Click Source and type your page name. Select the country you want to target and how similar your audience should to be to your current fans. Click Create Audience.

Choose the characteristics of your fan page lookalike target audience.

To create a custom audience based on similarity to your current email subscribers, go to your Audience menu, click on the name of the email list you loaded in #3 and click on Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page.

Once you have your custom lookalike audiences in place, you can select each as needed depending on the goal of your Facebook ads.

Wrapping Up

Retargeting via Facebook ads helps you stay top of mind while they’re considering their decision.

The trick is to retarget content to a precise audience rather than a generalized audience that may or may not be interested in learning more about your business, product or service.

Take advantage of Facebook’s extensive custom audience options to capture more conversions and meet your advertising goals.

What do you think? Have you retargeted content using Facebook custom audiences? Did you see more conversions? Leave your comments and questions below.

Have you considered using Facebook to reach your existing customers or those who visit your website?

Have you tried Facebook’s custom audience options?

Retargeting to the right audience is a must if you want to see more conversions from your Facebook ads.

In this article you’ll discover four Facebook custom audiences you can create to retarget your content to the most relevant Facebook audience.

Retarget content to a your audience with Facebook Custom Audiences.

Why Retargeted Content?

The goal of retargeted content (also known as remarketing) is to place your brand top of mind. Common strategies remarket to people who have already visited your website.

Updates like this can show up in your news feed if you’ve ever visited the Plated website.

People rarely buy from you the first time they visit your site or see an offer. They would rather take their time, compare your pricing with competitors’ and visit your site a few more times before completing that valuable sale.

Here are four custom audiences you can use to retarget Facebook users with your content.

#1: Website Visitors

The most common remarketing tactic is targeting relevant ads at people who have already visited your website (usually a specific landing page).

To create a targeted audience based on website visitors, you must have a Facebook website custom audience in place.

Overall, retargeting website visitors is a simple concept: When someone visits a page with your custom audience code (i.e., an offsite pixel), they’re added to your custom audience list in your Facebook Ads Manager.

You can include those visitors (and the custom audience they’re part of) as a target audience in a Facebook ad retargeting campaign.

Custom audiences are important to Facebook retargeting campaigns.

There may be a case where you want to retarget only a portion of the traffic that has visited a landing page on your website. No problem. You can do that by creating a personalized custom audience:

1. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager and choose Audience.

2. Click on Create a Custom Audience.

3. Under Website Traffic, select People Visiting Specific Pages.

3. Next to the Visited field, customize the URL elements to match the pages you want to retarget.

4. Click on Create.

You don’t have to retarget everyone who visits your website.

After you create your personalized custom audience, it’s ready to use. However, keep in mind that it may take a few hours for the new audience to have the final user count.

#2: Facebook Fans

Retargeting to existing Facebook fans is incredibly easy: When you set up your Facebook ad, choose to target people who are already fans of your page.

Narrow your retargeting audience to include only people who are fans of your page.

Does it seem odd to advertise to existing Facebook fans? Consider that acquiring sales from existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new leads (and many of your fans are probably customers). You can also upsell those existing customers with new or better products and services.

Additionally, your fans may not be seeing all of your Facebook updates. If youretarget your most important content to them via a Facebook ad, they’re more likely to see it.

#3: Email Subscribers

You can actually strengthen the power of your newsletter by serving Facebook ads to existing email subscribers.

To set up this custom audience, you need an Excel file with a column that includes all of your subscriber email addresses. Once you have that, go to Audiences in your Facebook Ads Manager, click Create Audience and choose Custom Audience.

Click on Data File Custom Audience and follow the instructions for the setup. Make sure to indicate that you’re updating email addresses.

Create a custom audience based on your email subscriber list.

Retargeting to email subscribers can increase the chance of conversion exponentially. It’s worth the extra effort to set it all up.

#4: Similar Audiences

Many of your users—whether website visitors, Facebook fans or list subscribers—have overlapping demographics, interests and behaviors. Wouldn’t it be great to find more people like them? Well, you can.

You can create a custom audience targeting people who share similar characteristics to your existing connections—people who are very likely to be interested in your products, services and content.

The custom audiences you create to retarget to by similarity are called lookalike audiences and they expose your ads to a more vast and relevant audience.

To create a custom audience based on similarities to website visitors, go to the Audience section of your Ads Manager and choose the custom audience installed on your website (see #1). Click Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page and choose the desired audience reach.

To create a custom audience based similarities to your current Facebook fans’ personal data (e.g., behavior, interests, etc.), go to the Audience section of your Ads Manager, click Create Audience and choose Lookalike Audience from the menu.

Create a lookalike target audience to find potential Facebook fans and customers.

Click Source and type your page name. Select the country you want to target and how similar your audience should to be to your current fans. Click Create Audience.

Choose the characteristics of your fan page lookalike target audience.

To create a custom audience based on similarity to your current email subscribers, go to your Audience menu, click on the name of the email list you loaded in #3 and click on Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page.

Once you have your custom lookalike audiences in place, you can select each as needed depending on the goal of your Facebook ads.

Wrapping Up

Retargeting via Facebook ads helps you stay top of mind while they’re considering their decision.

The trick is to retarget content to a precise audience rather than a generalized audience that may or may not be interested in learning more about your business, product or service.

Take advantage of Facebook’s extensive custom audience options to capture more conversions and meet your advertising goals.

What do you think? Have you retargeted content using Facebook custom audiences? Did you see more conversions? Leave your comments and questions below.

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