Meta Retargeting
Facebook and Instagram reach 3 billion people daily. Meta Retargeting puts your ads in front of people who have already visited your website — on the platforms where they spend 30+ minutes every day.
- Set up Meta Business Suite and create a Facebook Page if you don't have one
- Install the Meta Pixel on your website to track visitors
- Build a Custom Audience of past site visitors
- Create a retargeting campaign targeting that audience on Facebook and Instagram
- Write ad copy and choose imagery that works for a warm, returning audience
Meet your warm audience where they already spend their time
In Course 07 you set up Google Remarketing — your ads following past visitors across websites and apps in Google's network. Meta Retargeting does exactly the same thing, but on Facebook and Instagram instead. The two together form a remarketing net that covers almost every corner of a person's online life.
People spend an average of 30–40 minutes per day on Facebook and Instagram combined. Unlike websites they stumble across while browsing, they choose to open these apps — which means they're in a relaxed, receptive mood. A beautifully photographed destination ad appearing in that context, for someone who's already been on your website, is one of the most natural and effective forms of digital advertising available.
And at £30–£50/month targeting only past visitors, the cost per impression is extraordinarily low — sometimes just pennies per thousand people reached. This is not about immediate conversions. It's about staying visible to warm prospects during the weeks or months they take to make a decision.
Your remarketing coverage when Courses 07 + 08 run together
One pixel — ads on two of the world's biggest platforms
The Meta Pixel installed on your website tracks every visitor. Meta's system then matches those visitors to their Facebook and Instagram accounts and serves your ads to them on both platforms simultaneously — all from a single campaign. The setup effort is identical whether you're advertising on one or both.
What you need
- A personal Facebook account — needed to set up Meta Business Suite
- A Facebook Page for your business — free to create at facebook.com/pages/create
- Access to your Travelgenix website — you'll need to add a small tracking code to the site
- A destination photo for your ad — 1200×628px minimum, high quality, no text overlaid
- Your business logo in PNG format
Setting up Meta Retargeting from scratch
Set up Meta Business Suite
Go to business.facebook.com and click "Create Account." Sign in with your personal Facebook account. Enter your business name and connect it to your Facebook Page.
Meta Business Suite is your central control panel for all Meta advertising — campaigns, pixel, audiences, and billing all live here. It's separate from your personal Facebook profile and keeps your business activity completely separate from your personal account.
Create your Meta Pixel and install it on your website
In Business Suite, go to Events Manager → Data Sources → + Connect Data Sources → Web → Meta Pixel. Name your pixel "[Your Business] Pixel" and click Continue.
You'll be shown a small block of JavaScript code — your Meta Pixel. Copy it. Then email it to your Travelgenix support team with this message: "Please add this Meta Pixel code to the <head> section of my website — it needs to appear on every page."
Verify the pixel is firing correctly
In Events Manager, go to your pixel and click "Test Events." Open your website in a new browser tab and navigate around a few pages. Come back to Events Manager — you should see "PageView" events appearing in real time as you browse.
If events are appearing, your pixel is working correctly. If nothing shows after 2–3 minutes, contact your Travelgenix team to confirm the code was added correctly.
Build your Custom Audience
In Meta Ads Manager ( business.facebook.com → Ads Manager), go to Audiences → Create Audience → Custom Audience → Website.
Configure it as:
- Include: All website visitors
- Time window: 30 days (visitors stay in the audience for 30 days after their last visit)
- Audience name:"Website Visitors – 30 days"
Click Save. Meta will now build this audience automatically from everyone your pixel records. The audience size will appear as "Fewer than 1,000" until it reaches that threshold — this is normal and will grow as traffic builds.
Create your retargeting campaign
In Ads Manager, click + Create. Select "Leads" or "Traffic" as your campaign objective. Name it "Retargeting – Website Visitors."
At the Ad Set level:
- Audience: Click "Use a saved audience" and select "Website Visitors – 30 days"
- Location: United Kingdom
- Age: 30–65 (adjust if you know your typical client age range)
- Advantage+ Audience: switch this OFF — you want to control who sees your ads, not let Meta decide
Choose your placements — manual, not automatic
Under Placements, select "Manual placements" rather than Advantage+ placements. Then select only these three:
Set your budget — daily, continuous
Set a daily budget of £1.50–£2.00. Select no end date — you want this running permanently in the background, not stopping after a set number of days.
Don't set a lifetime budget. Daily budgets give you more control and are easier to pause, adjust, or increase as your audience grows.
Create your ad — imagery does most of the work
At the Ad level, choose Single Image as your format. Select a stunning destination photograph — overwater villas, mountain scenery, a beautiful beach, a safari landscape. The image needs to stop someone mid-scroll. A mediocre image will underperform a great headline; a great image will outperform excellent copy every time.
Critical rules for Meta images:
- No text overlaid on the image — Meta penalises ads with text covering more than 20% of the image
- Minimum 1200×628px for feed placements
- Bright, vivid, aspirational — it should make someone pause and think "I want to be there"
Ad copy — warm and inviting, not salesy:
- Headline:"Still thinking about that holiday?" / "Your dream trip is waiting" / "Ready when you are"
- Body text:"You've been browsing — let us help you make it happen. Our specialists create tailored holidays with no booking fees and full ATOL protection. No pressure, just brilliant holidays."
- Call to action button:"Learn More" or "Get in Touch" — not "Book Now" (too much pressure for a warm-up ad)
Publish and set your monthly check-in
Click Publish. Your retargeting campaign is live. Like the Google Remarketing campaign from Course 07, this one needs very little ongoing management.
Set a monthly calendar reminder. At each check-in review: reach, impressions, link clicks, click-through rate (aim for 0.5%+), and cost per click. If CTR drops significantly, refresh your image or copy — your audience is showing ad fatigue.
The full remarketing stack — what it looks like running together
With Course 07 (Google Remarketing) and Course 08 (Meta Retargeting) both running, a past visitor to your site will see your brand while reading the news, while scrolling Facebook, while browsing Instagram, and on most other major websites they visit. At a combined budget of around £60–£90/month, you're maintaining brand presence across virtually their entire online life. This is what large travel brands pay thousands a month to achieve — you can do it for less than £100.
Travelgenix tip
Ask your Travelgenix account manager whether a Meta Pixel can be added to your site via Duda's site settings, rather than requiring a manual code change. Duda (which powers Travelgenix websites) has a built-in integration for Meta Pixel installation — it can often be added through the platform without any code editing, which is faster and less likely to cause issues.
For more experienced marketers
Build a Lookalike Audience to find new clients who look like your past visitors
Once your Website Visitors audience has reached 1,000+ people, Meta can use it to create a "Lookalike Audience" — a new audience of people who share similar characteristics to your site visitors but haven't been to your site yet. This is one of the most powerful cold prospecting tools available. In Ads Manager: Audiences → Create Audience → Lookalike Audience → select your Website Visitors audience as the source. Use a 1% similarity (the most closely matched) and target the United Kingdom. This creates a cold audience of approximately 400,000–600,000 people who resemble your existing warm visitors — ideal for a separate prospecting campaign when you're ready to scale.
Use carousel ads to showcase multiple destinations
Instead of a single image, a Carousel ad lets you show 2–10 images in a swipeable format within a single ad. For a travel agent, this is perfect — one card per destination, each with its own headline and link. A carousel for "our top five honeymoon destinations" lets each image do its own work, and Meta's algorithm automatically moves the best-performing card to the front. Carousel ads typically achieve 20–30% higher click-through rates than single image ads for travel businesses.
Exclude your enquiry thank-you page audience
As in Course 07, create a separate Custom Audience for visitors to your thank-you page (the page shown after an enquiry is submitted) and exclude it from your retargeting campaign. This stops spending money on people who have already converted and improves your cost-efficiency. In your Ad Set, go to Audiences → Exclusions → add your "Thank You Page Visitors" audience. This is a 5-minute task that meaningfully improves your return on ad spend.
Meta retargeting mistakes to avoid
- Leaving Advantage+ Audience switched on — Meta will expand your audience beyond your retargeting list, defeating the whole purpose
- Including Audience Network in placements — low quality, click-farm-prone traffic that wastes budget
- Text on images — Meta's algorithm significantly limits the reach of ads where text covers more than 20% of the image
- Using "Book Now" as the CTA — too much pressure for a warm-up retargeting ad; "Learn More" or "Get in Touch" converts better at this stage
- Never refreshing creative — ad fatigue on small retargeting audiences happens fast; refresh every 4–6 weeks
Your monthly 10-minute Meta check
- Check reach and impressions — low numbers mean audience is still small, which will improve as traffic grows
- Check CTR — aim for 0.5%+. Below 0.3% signals ad fatigue — swap your image
- Check cost per click — should be under £0.50 for a well-targeted retargeting campaign
- If CTR has dropped: go to the ad, click Edit, swap the image for a fresh destination photo
- Confirm your daily budget is still set correctly and campaign has no end date
What to expect and when
| When | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Week 1–2 | Pixel installed and tracking. Audience building. If under 1,000 people, ads won't deliver yet — this is normal. Audience grows with every new site visitor. |
| Month 1 | Audience reaches threshold. Ads begin delivering on Facebook and Instagram feeds. First impressions and clicks from past visitors who recognise your brand. |
| Month 2–3 | Running alongside Google Remarketing, your combined remarketing presence is now near-total. Past visitors encounter your brand across virtually all their online activity. |
| Month 3–6 | Steady return traffic from social platforms. Brand recall in your warm audience significantly higher. Return visitors convert to enquiries at 3–5× the rate of first-time visitors. |
| Ongoing | One of your best-value background campaigns. Creative refresh every 4–6 weeks keeps performance strong. Minimal management, consistent brand presence, compounding returns. |
Lesson completion checklist
📄 Download the Course 08 Workbook
Setup checklist, pixel installation guide, ad copy planner, and monthly performance tracker.