*** UPDATE ***
My simple experiment did not work. I think there's an issue with the timing of dropping the Facebook pixel and the redirect – it happens too fast and the pixel never registers. There may be a way to slow this down but I don't know how to do it without making the visitor wait a really long time, which is NOT what I want to do.
Original post
I love the internet!
I had an idea and wasn't sure whether it would work or not; I even devised a method to make it functional, if it worked.
And then I found this:
2 plugins: One to paste in your Facebook retargeting pixel, the other to do the redirect.
Why the redirect? Why not? Seriously…here's why.
There are a few scenarios I can imagine where you can do this ethically.
The gist of it is this: Say I'm an affiliate. In the old days of online marketing, you'd just send your visitor or subscriber to your vendor's page. You may get the sale, but you wouldn't capture an email or anything for that matter.
Then, the second evolution of this was to try to “squeeze” an email out of a prospect by sending them to a squeeze page, get them to sign up for a newsletter or free report, and then send them to the vendor's site. This worked, but it wasn't very efficient. Conversions were generally very low.
This is the third iteration – but in this case, you don't have to ask for anything – just send a prospect to the vendor's site, but with a redirect FROM your own site first.
Watch the video – it will make sense.
This way, you build a custom audience in Facebook, you don't inconvenience your prospect by sending them to your site first, you don't have to ask for an email address, and it appears that all you do is send them where they wanted to go in the first place.
Now, if they click one of these links you've pointed them to, they will be served with Facebook ads, and you know those ads will resonate–at least a little bit–because you already know they are interested in that sort of product or service (you could re-market the same product or advertise a complementary or similar product).
Watch the video. It's a good one. I'm glad I found it!
Just what I was looking for. Is this against facebook’ss terms and conditions though?
Hey Colin, I don’t know if this is scenario is specifically called out in Facebook’s TOS or T&Cs. But I do know it doesn’t harm the end user in ANY way, simply because they are taken exactly to the information they wanted AND if they don’t buy then and there, they may get served another ad about it.
And I know a lot of folks are using this method now…doesn’t make it right or confirm that it’s adhering to FB’s terms…but I guess as in a lot of things, it’s not wrong until the vendor makes it so.
At the end of the day, you have to determine for yourself if this is a tactic you want to employ and decide if you can live with it or not.