Here's a number worth sitting with: roughly 97% of people who visit your website for the first time don't take any action. They look around, they leave, and they forget about you. Without retargeting, you've paid to get them there and then lost them entirely.
Retargeting changes that. It lets you serve follow-up ads specifically to people who've already shown interest — and because they already know who you are, the conversion rates are dramatically higher than cold traffic.
The Retargeting Audiences That Work for Sport Clubs
Not all retargeting audiences are created equal. Here are the ones that consistently deliver results for padel clubs and golf venues.
Website Visitors
Anyone who visits your website and doesn't convert should be in a retargeting pool. On Meta, you set this up via the Meta Pixel; on Google, via the Google Ads tag or Google Analytics. Create separate audiences for:
- All website visitors (last 30 days)
- People who visited your pricing or membership page (highest intent)
- People who started a booking but didn't complete it (cart abandonment equivalent)
The membership page visitors are your priority. Someone browsing your pricing page is a warm lead — they're actively evaluating whether to join. Retargeting them with a specific membership ad is highly effective.
Video Viewers
If you're running video ads — court footage, testimonial clips, event highlights — Meta lets you build audiences of people who watched 25%, 50%, 75%, or 95% of your video.
People who watched 75%+ of a court video are warm. They spent time with your content. Retarget them with a direct response ad: "You've seen the courts. Ready to book your first session?"
This is one of the most cost-effective retargeting approaches available because video views are cheap, and the audience you build from them is pre-qualified by engagement.
Lead Form Abandoners
If you're running Meta Lead Gen ads, you'll get people who start filling in the form and then abandon it. You can retarget these people with a different creative — perhaps addressing a specific concern or offering a stronger incentive.
Past Enquirers (CRM-based Custom Audiences)
Upload a list of past enquirers from your CRM who never converted. These people showed enough interest to reach out but didn't join. A targeted retargeting campaign with a time-limited offer can revive a significant percentage of these.
Similarly, upload lapsed members. People who were members and left are often your easiest re-acquisitions — they know your product, they just drifted away.
Lookalike Audiences: Scaling From What Works
Once you have solid custom audiences — your member list, your converted leads, your highest-value website visitors — you can build lookalike audiences. Meta will find people with similar characteristics across its user base.
A 1% lookalike of your current member list is typically the highest-performing cold audience you can run, because it's based on real data about what your actual customers look like. Test 1%, 2%, and 3% lookalikes to find the right balance of precision and reach.
Ad Creative for Retargeting
The creative rules for retargeting are different from cold audience advertising.
Cold audiences: Build awareness. Show the vibe, the experience, the aspiration. Educate people about padel or your facility.
Warm retargeting audiences: Get specific. They already know who you are. Now answer objections, create urgency, and give them a reason to act now.
Retargeting ad formats that work well:
- Testimonial videos: "I was nervous to try padel for the first time, but..." — direct social proof
- Offer-led static ads: "Founding membership — offer ends [date]" with a clear CTA
- Court walkthrough videos: Short, high-quality footage of your facility
- Dynamic ads: If your booking platform supports it, show the specific session or membership they were looking at
Frequency Management
Watch your frequency metric. If your retargeting audience is small and you're spending heavily, the same person may see your ad 10+ times in a week. This leads to ad fatigue and can actively damage your brand perception. Aim for a frequency of 2–4 per week on retargeting audiences, and refresh your creative every 2–3 weeks.
Budget Allocation
A common approach: allocate 20–30% of your Meta Ads budget to retargeting campaigns. The rest goes to cold audience prospecting. The retargeting budget will always have a better return — your job is to make sure you're feeding the top of the funnel with enough cold traffic to keep the retargeting audiences well-populated.
If you're seeing CPLs of £1–5 on cold traffic and £0.50–2 on retargeting, that's a healthy funnel. If your retargeting CPL is higher than your cold CPL, something is wrong with either your creative or your audience setup.
Retargeting isn't complex once the infrastructure is in place. But it requires a proper pixel setup, clean CRM data, and fresh creative. Get those three things right and it becomes one of the most reliable parts of your ad account.