Retargeting ads on Google and Meta for the people who already found you

Most people who find a local business do not call the first time. Retargeting shows a short video from you to the people who visited your site or watched your video, on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, for a small budget. It is the fifth part of my plan, after the ranking work, and it does not move your Maps position.

Most people who find your business do not call the first time. They search, open two or three listings, get pulled away, and they are gone. Retargeting is how you keep showing up to those people after they leave. They see a short video from you on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and when they are finally ready, yours is the name they remember.

I am Brandon Medina. I run BCM Results from Framingham, Massachusetts, and I work with local businesses anywhere. Retargeting is the fifth of six parts in my plan. It comes after the ranking work, not instead of it.

Why most people do not buy the first time

Think about the last time you looked for a plumber or a dentist. You looked at a few, then you stopped. Maybe the price felt like a lot. Maybe you got busy. You were not ready yet.

Your customers do the same thing. They find you on Google Maps, read your reviews, click your website, and leave. Most of them mean to come back. Most of them forget. If they search again next week, they might click a different business, because to a stranger the three names in the top 3 look the same. Retargeting fixes the forgetting part.

What retargeting is, in plain words

Retargeting means showing ads only to people who already found you. Not strangers. Here is how it works:

• A small piece of code on your website (the Meta pixel and the Google tag) notes when someone visits.
• Google and Meta each build a list from those visits. That list is called a custom audience.
• You run ads to that list only, on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
• Someone who fills out your form lands on a thank you page, and that visit is counted as a result.

The audiences I build come from two places. Site visits: anyone who opened your website over the last month or so. Video views: anyone who watched a good chunk of a video from you. I also take out the people who already filled out your form. There is no point paying to remind a customer who already asked for a quote.

The budget: small on purpose

Retargeting is cheap next to cold ads because the list is small. You are not paying to reach a whole city, only the people who already looked at you. In my plan the retargeting budget is ten to twenty percent of what a cold campaign would cost, agreed on before anything starts. Two settings keep it from wasting money:

• Awareness objective. On Meta the campaign is set to Awareness, with the goal of reaching as many people on the list as possible. You are not paying per new click. You are paying to be seen by warm people.
• Frequency cap. A limit on how many times one person sees your ad in a given period. Enough to be remembered, not enough to annoy.

The creatives: a person talking to the camera

The ad that works best is not a polished commercial. It is you, or someone on your team, talking to the phone camera for about a minute, with captions. I ask for several videos, because a person who sees the same clip over and over stops noticing it:

• The reminder. Who you are, what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you.
• Objection videos. One short video per reason people hesitate. Price, timing, "do I really need this", "what if it goes wrong". You answer the question they had when they left your site.
• The proof. A walk through a finished job, in your own words.

Each video gets exported vertical for Stories, Reels and Shorts, and square and landscape for feeds.

Where the ads show

Each platform only knows its own list, so both need their code on your site. On the Google side I keep the campaign to YouTube and leave the Display Network and search partners off, so a small budget is not spread across sites your customers never visit.

The thank you page: how results get counted

When someone on the list finally fills out your contact form, they land on a page that says thank you. The pixel and the tag fire there, so Google and Meta count a real result. Without it you only see clicks, and clicks are not customers. That person also comes off the list.

This is why the thank you page is part of the website optimization work in my plan. The ad, the page it points to and the form have to say the same thing, so the person who clicked lands where they expected.

What retargeting does not do

• It does not move your Maps position. Google's help page on local ranking says local results come from relevance, distance and prominence. Ads are not on that list. You can pay for retargeting all year and stay ninth.
• It does not bring new people. The list is made of people who already found you. If nobody is finding you, there is nobody to retarget.
• It does not fix a weak site. If the person clicks back to a page with no address, no map and no clear next step, the reminder was wasted.

Where it sits in my plan

My plan has six parts, in this order: the Google Business Profile rebuilt category by category, the website, a review system your team can run, citations cleaned up, retargeting, and a dated rank grid screenshot every month. Retargeting is fifth on purpose. The first four parts are the work behind getting into the top 3 on Google Maps. Retargeting only multiplies what those parts already produce.

I am in Framingham, and a business near me in Framingham, Boston or Cambridge gets the same plan, in the same order, as a business in another state. The place changes the search, not the order of the work.

How it works in my plan

1. The ranking work goes first. Profile, website, reviews, citations. By the time retargeting starts, your site has the form, the thank you page and the map, and the pixel and the tag are on every page.
2. The lists build. Site visitors and video viewers collect on their own while the rest of the plan runs. No ad spend yet.
3. You film the videos. I send you the questions to answer and how to hold the phone. You talk. I edit, caption and export each one. Filming a few short clips is the one extra ask this step adds.
4. Campaigns go live. One awareness campaign on Meta, one video campaign on Google. Custom audiences only. Frequency cap on. Budget written into the one page plan before anything starts.
5. Results are counted on the thank you page. We look at form fills, not clicks or likes.
6. Swap what stops working. When a video gets tired, a new one goes in. The one that produced the most form fills stays.

In general, ad spend is paid to Google and Meta from your own ad accounts. My flat monthly rate is quoted in writing before we start and locked for as long as we work together. The number is given on the call.

A checklist you can use yourself

Whether you hire me or do it yourself, a working setup has all of these:

• Meta pixel and Google tag on every page of the site, including the thank you page.
• A custom audience of site visitors on both platforms, and one of video viewers on Meta.
• People who reached the thank you page taken out of both audiences.
• Campaign objective set to Awareness on Meta, reach as the goal, not clicks.
• A frequency cap, so one person does not see the same ad every day.
• Budget at ten to twenty percent of a cold budget, agreed in writing.
• Several videos of a real person talking to the camera, one per common objection.
• The Google campaign kept to YouTube, with the Display Network and search partners off.
• Ads pointing to a page with one clear form and a thank you page that counts the fill.
• The ranking work done first, so the list is not empty.

Questions people ask

If you want to know whether retargeting is the right next step for your business, or whether the ranking work has to come first, send me your details through the free marketing analysis and I will reply by email within two business days.