110 - Meta Ads 101 - The Smart Way to Retarget (Part 4 of 4)

In this episode of the Sports Marketing Machine podcast, host Jeremy Neisser wraps up the 4-part Meta Ads 101 series with a deep dive into retargeting—what it is, why it works, and how to do it effectively.

Jeremy walks through step-by-step how to retarget website visitors and social media engagers, while showing you how to exclude recent ticket buyers so you’re not wasting ad dollars. Plus, he explains why timing matters more than you think and how to set the right window (3–7 days or 10–14 days) for maximum conversions.

🧠 Takeaways

• Retargeting helps you re-engage warm, high-intent audiences who didn’t convert the first time.
• Website visitors from the past 3–7 days are your best bet for quick wins.
• Use exclusion lists to avoid showing ads to past ticket buyers—save budget & reduce fatigue.
• Social media engagers (likes, shares, comments, video viewers) are great to retarget within 7–14 days.
• Set up rolling audiences to keep campaigns automatically refreshed.
• $5/day budget can go a long way when ads are highly targeted.
• These tactics work best during your season when web traffic is high.
• Big brands do this daily—you can too, without a big budget.
• Combine retargeting + exclusions + time window for highest ROI.

🔊 Sound Bites

 "If you're spending $35 a week to stay in front of high-intent fans—that's worth it."

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Intro to Retargeting
01:12 – Website Visitors: The Most Valuable Warm Audience
03:46 – Creating an 8-Day Retargeting List
06:10 – Building Your Ad & Excluding Ticket Buyers
08:48 – Social Media Engagers: Likes, Shares & Views
11:36 – Why Timing (3–7 or 10–14 Days) Matters
13:22 – Recap & How to Test for Just $5/Day

Watch the tutorial on Youtube

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Transcript

Jeremy Neisser (00:00.487)
Welcome to episode 110.

of the Sports Marketing Machine podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Nizer. This is part four of the four part series about meta ads. Meta ads 101. Today we're talking about retargeting. What it is and how to be able to use it to sell more tickets. So retargeting is exactly what you think it is. Someone has done some sort of activity and you want to retarget them with an ad. Oftentimes the simplest ones to be able to do retargeting are people who visited your website.

But didn't buy let's go after them people who have done something on social media That haven't bought tickets. Let's retarget them so really good strategies here of being ninja esque but going after a very warm audience so today I'm to show you two examples the first one I'm going to show you as website visitors. These are a highly engaged warm Intent high intent audience we're going to go after them to be able to sell some tickets. They visited specific

pages or maybe they went to your website but didn't complete a purchase and we're going to show an ad to them about an upcoming game or an event. The second one we're going to show you is about social media followers. So here I am, I'm an ads manager dot Facebook dot com. We've created some audiences in here. We see our video viewers. We've got our ticket buyer list. Let's pretend email list is ticket buyers. We have that. So what I created was website.

visitors last seven days. So let me show you how I did this and I'm going do it again just so that you've got this. Alright, so we're going to go Audiences, Create Audience, we're going to click Website.

Jeremy Neisser (01:40.301)
We got the pixel. It's green which means that's good all website visitors We have the ability to go after people who visit specific pages or even time spent on your website So I've seen teams and I've done this before if you wanted to do specific web pages You could target people who've gone to the schedule page or a ticket plan page, but in this case for this example Let's do all website visitors, which is great We'll click that and then I'm gonna do because I already have a seven in there I'm just gonna do eight just for

for right now, right? Website, visitors.

last eight days. Now keep in mind this is a rolling eight days. So if today was Monday, eight days from now would be Tuesday and it rolls. So when it's Tuesday, the eight days is Wednesday and so on and so forth. So really good opportunity here. So if I was to create an ad to go after these people, you've been to my website last eight days, I want to remind you about a specific game. This is a great way to

be able to do this during your season because during your season you're going to have the most traffic on your website versus the off season. So you got a lot of people on your website. You've got this rolling last seven days. You just got to remember to update the list, your ticket buyers every seven days for your exclusion. And I'll show you why right now. So we're going to say, okay, let's create an ad. We're going to create an ad targeting people who've been to our website last seven days, last eight days rather. And we're going to exclude people who have purchased tickets.

Alright, so here we are, new traffic campaign under the ad set, which is the second one here. We're going to click it.

Jeremy Neisser (03:22.391)
We send people to our website. We're going to maximize the number of landing page views. We learned that from episode 107. We're going to scroll on down and says, okay, here is your audience here. Custom audience, website visitors. And then we want to do an exclusion. Right now you don't see it in there. You say, okay, create a custom audience, look like audience. I don't see that in here, right? But I want to switch to original audience options because I want to exclude ticket buyers.

I don't I want to exclude those so let's go in here So we're gonna pretend this list here is our ticket buyers it says email list so go ahead I'll put this in here so right now What I am telling meta is the ad that I'm about to hit go on I want you to show this to my website visitors the last eight days so every Whoever's been on my website last eight days show this to them, but they cannot be on this list so exclude the people who are customer

Already, let's exclude them already. So We've got that in there. We can actually change the location, which would be great. So we say hey, we want to change this not In this specific city we could do that But if they're in your in your community website visitors are great And then you can you can hit go on this one here you can even change the ages if you really wanted to but such a great way to be able to retarget people who have been to your website and

You can exclude ticket buyers. So if you don't have a tremendous amount of traffic to your website in the offseason this isn't going to work. But if you're running $5 a day to your website visitors for the last eight days and you're running $5 a day and you're excluding people from your list and you're updating you're running the list once a week and you're uploading it you're going to sell more tickets at $5 a day because this is getting in front of people who are a warm high intent audience. So just to recap here you go website visitors we're going to exclude

Exclude current ticket buyers and the website visitors. They've been to our website last three to seven days The example I was showing you is eight but three to seven days even if you run five dollars a day You're gonna get people to come back and buy at five dollars a day every seven days. You're spending thirty five dollars You're gonna sell a lot more tickets because you're getting people to come back to the website and you're reminding them about the game or the Promotion that you have so that's a good one next one. I'm gonna show you social media followers and

Jeremy Neisser (05:52.143)
and video viewers, we're gonna exclude ticket buyers, but we're gonna target people who have engaged with our social media content. Not only have they watched video, but maybe they've hit like or share or commented on some of our content. Maybe they've shared something or commented on a post or even social media followers. All of these are great to be able to target people. This is a great opportunity. If you're a team, you just launched some new merch here in the off season or you're in season and you've got some content

and organic content that's gone pretty well, you want to be able to get that in front of more people. This is really good to be able to get this in front of more people. And then you can exclude ticket buyers, but run it for 10 to 14 days. So let's see what this looks like here. So.

Inside I've already built the Instagram audience engaged the last 14 days So these are people who have engaged with my account within the last 14 days and remember it's rolling So now I'm gonna click this and we're gonna say okay. We want to target people Who are doing? Exactly Just that so I'm gonna click this here, and we're gonna I guess I can't create an ad that way, but we're gonna do it the other way then So let's go over here. We're gonna create

and add and we're gonna do a traffic campaign we're just gonna just call this test and we're gonna call this test hit continue and then now we have here we're gonna send to the website remember and then we want to switch to original audience options yep I want to do that so I want to insta

last 14 days. So show me all the people who have engaged with my Instagram last 14 days, but take out the people.

Jeremy Neisser (07:45.079)
who have purchased tickets. That's the customer list that I have here. It says email list, but just pretend with me here. So this is a great way. If you've got a good piece of organic content that has a lot of engagement on it, $5 a day to go after these people if you're selling merchandise or you're selling tickets. Great way to be able to target these people with a specific campaign to try to get them to come back and buy. They've engaged and now you're showing up in their feed. A lot of big brands are using these two

Strategies that I've just shared with you today to be able to sell more items Specifically the retargeting of the website visitors, but also if you engage with their content Watch some video whatever that may have been you're in this bucket, and then they're showing more This is what a lot of big brands are doing and I hope for you test these out put $5 a day and see what happens give yourself that opportunity to say okay great now We're running some campaigns, and we're selling some tickets and having a blast with it

So there you go big takeaways here retargeting website visitors social media engagers Even people who have bought tickets in the past you could even retarget those folks as well use the Exclusion to prevent wasted money on targeting the wrong audience and then the time base that is huge People who have engaged in the last 14 days people who have visited your website last three to seven days timing of really hitting these people is important because

because

Showing them something that they are remembering within the last few days That's gonna really give you the best chance to be able to turn them into ticket sale ticket buyers or merchandise buyers If you say, just show it to one last hundred and eighty days. You may not get the audience You may not get the success that you're looking for if you're running it that way. So timing equals conversion so best for a website last three to seven days best for engagement on

Jeremy Neisser (09:46.895)
social media. I would say within 7 to 14 days would be perfect. there you go. Here are these again for you. Social media followers, 10 to 14 days, great. Website visitors, 3 to 7. So there you go. Couple tips here, two strategies for you to be able to run meta ads that are successful and convert and go after high intent, warm people. Sell some tickets, sell some merchandise. If you found value in any of the episodes in the last few that I've put

all about meta ads please pop one over to use Spotify or Apple share a rating or review it would mean the world to me but more importantly it would share the podcast and get it in front of people who are just like you people looking to sell more tickets grow develop as a marketer and most importantly get your fan base to grow and get more people to your games until next time