What is retargeting and why you should use it?

It can be extremely difficult to get people online to visit your company’s or brand’s website.

If you are lucky enough to get the right traffic to your website and they leave without taking any action, how do you get those visitors to come back to your website to purchase a product or your services?

The secret is called Retargeting.

The competition has never been more fierce for your attention and your dollars. Data crumbs and trails of online user behavior have benefited behemoths like Google and Facebook to generate billions of dollars in advertising revenue. Brands and companies are spending a ton of money on these efforts to win sales and customers. What they are doing, you can do too. These brands are also using a unique, and simple strategy to turn their website visitors into paying customers and clients.

If you are not employing this tactic, there is a good chance that your competition is already knee-deep in the weeds taking your current and potential customers away from you as you read this. Believe it or not, this technique can be very cost-effective and prove to be a positive return on your investment and a positive impact on your business or brand.

What is Retargeting?

The term retargeting, typically refers to online ad placements and display ads that are served based on the activity of a user on your website. It is the process of advertising specifically to visitors and customers who have expressed an interest in your product, service or brand. They may not be ready to make a purchase as they are in the early stages of the buying process or their potential purchase or research has been interrupted for whatever reason and they have left the website. Retargeting gives you another window of opportunity to turn them into a customer.

Let’s paint a scenario. A user visits your newly designed website. You have created a unique user journey with various calls of action along the way. When the user comes to your website, a cookie is set giving you the ability to deliver targeted ads to that user when they leave and visit other websites. A cookie is a small data packet which web pages load onto browsers. Every time the visitor returns to the same URL, the computer will send back this little package of information to the server, which will then detect that you have returned to the web page.

The Retargeting Process:

1. A visitor lands on your website
2. Using JavaScript, a cookie is placed in a visitor’s browser
3. The visitor leaves without taking any action and continues to visit other websites
4. Eventually, they land on a website that serves ads to visitors
5. The cookie in your visitor’s browser will enable your ads to be displayed based on your pre-configured settings.

What is impressive about retargeting is the size of the potential audience you will have access to. Retargeting is not only limited to your website. Social media sites have adopted the same practice. There are third-party networks like AdBrite as well as the Google Display Network and Facebook that allow brands and companies to retarget cost-effectively.

What Value does Retargeting bring to the table?

1. Top of Mind. 

Retargeting creates the necessary impressions needed to resonate with the audience that recently left your website without taking any action.

2. Make a Big Impression.

When using retargeting, your ads could appear on a website like CNN.com or NFL.com. This creates the illusion that you are bigger than you really are.

3. Awareness.

Retargeting is a great way to promote a special offer to existing customers and increase brand awareness at the same time.

4. The Right Target at the Right Time.

It allows you the ability to segment and target the right people at the right time in the right place.

5. Extends the Sales Funnel.

Retargeting allows you to extend the sales funnel, giving you and your company another opportunity to win the business.

Retargeting has its pitfalls. You don’t want to overload a visitor with ads to the point that they are annoyed. How many times does it take before you hear a radio or see an internet ad before you are sick of it? Most retargeting campaigns will run for about 30 days. During that timeframe, no more than 17-20 ads per user per month is recommended.

There are ways to limit the number of times a visitor will see your retargeting ad in a 24 hour period. This is also referred to as Frequency. An industry rule of thumb has been serving no more than 3 ads in a 24 hour period.

Another way to avoid the annoying factor is by creating a variety of display ads so that the visitors are not seeing the same creative and advertisements over and over again. Relevancy is key. For example, when a visitor comes to your homepage, you can target them with a general ad about your services or products. If they looked at your product page, you can serve them with more specific ads around your product offerings.

Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is about breaking down your target market based on certain criteria so you can deliver ads to the right people in the right places. This allows you to tailor ad messages to users in different stages of the purchase funnel. By placing different retargeting pixels on different pages of your website, you would then tailor the creatives based on the pages visited as well as the depth of engagement of each user.

Segmentation gives brands the opportunity to define their audience so that they can get laser-focused on the right customers while bringing in new sales at the same time. Segmentation can help gear your efforts to certain groups of visitors sharing similar paths and visiting certain pages on your website.

For example, if you are an Architectural design firm that has a portfolio page on your website or a page dedicated to explaining your process and why your company is different from the competition, you may want to retarget those who visit these pages. You may create a retargeting campaign around setting up a free consultation or an action that brings them back to your website to further funnels these prospects into potential customers.

Create the opportunity to bring them back to your website, using eye-catching creative and effective landing pages with the hope of capturing their contact information for your sales team. Give your visitors free content in the form of e-books, blog or newsletter content in exchange for their email if you didn’t have the chance to engage the first time they visited the website. Showcasing your expertise and experience by using branded content will establish trust and position your company or brand as an industry leader.

Retargeting is an effective way to reach those that have come to your website but didn’t take the necessary action to keep them engaged with your brand.

The great thing, it won’t break the bank. Retargeting very well might help to put more dough in the bank for your brand.

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