Retargeting is a great way to get people who didn’t buy your product the first time to buy it.
In addition, retargeting is less expensive than most types of advertising.
What efforts do you need to try in order to retarget successfully?
Effective Retargeting Strategies That Work
Below are three examples of successful retargeting campaigns along with guidance on how to replicate them. It is also important to be aware of future trends in retargeting so that your campaigns can stay ahead of the curve.
Retarget Specific URL Visits
There are many ways to fail at retargeting.
Some marketers target Facebook and Google Ads users who have visited their website within the past 90 days.
Although working hard can be effective, it is not as effective as working smarter. As you probably know, I am all about being productive – working smarter, not harder.
I love being productive efficient and getting the same benefits as someone who spends a lot of time on a task.
I used to manage Facebook retargeting campaigns using the Business Manager feature (now called the Facebook Business Suite).
I’d simply retarget everyone who landed on my site.
My conversion rate was the same as my website: low.
I was doing the Ask Method, but I wasn’t being specific enough. Casting too wide of a net when using the Ask Method causes people to not be ready to buy.
You can’t expect 50% of a large audience to convert.
For example, there is a big difference between visitor X who comes to your website, reads a single blog post then leaves, compared to visitor Y who comes to your site, they read the same blog post, but they also fill out a lead-magnet form, and they also check out your product and pricing page.
What is the main offer that you are going to use to attract website visitors?
If you offer a lead magnet, that may not be appealing to visitor Y. If you offer a free trial, that may not be available to visitor X yet.
If you don’t carefully target your offers, you might end up sending the wrong one to the wrong person at the wrong stage of their buyer’s journey.
I recommend targeting users according to specific actions they take on your site.
Retargeting Existing Customers
Why would you want to retarget existing customers?
The purpose of a winback campaign is to bring inactive customers back into your email list.
The main issue with email lists is that most of your subscribers will eventually become unresponsive.
The list of visitors will experience a turnover, where new visitors will join and old ones will become unresponsive.
This means that your email upsells are not reaching the user you intended them to reach.
What this means is that you take your customer list and upload it into your ad platform of choice. You can then start targeting these individuals with ads specifically designed to get them to come back and make another purchase. You can improve your business by targeting ads specifically at your existing customers in order to get them to come back and make another purchase.
Lead-Gen Ads Based on Page Engagement
Try this if you’re not having success with retargeting using websites.
Facebook’s “Lead Ads” tool makes it easy to collect leads without having to send users to a landing page, giving Facebook a powerful lead generation tool.
People see these ads and are asked to input their email address and job type in order to receive a lead magnet, which is essentially an incentive for customers to give away their information.
You can also generate leads from Facebook by running a lead magnet on a landing page on your website.
There is no one definitive way to create them. They are one of the most intuitive and natural-looking forms you can create.
These ads are beautiful and very well put together. They offer something that the customer wants in exchange for their information.
One of the best ways to retarget your ads is by using Facebook page engagement.
People don’t browse Facebook every day to see ads.
People use the internet to stay connected with friends and family or to read news articles.
Sending someone away from your site can be a costly mistake that reduces conversions.
The lead ads don’t interfere with what a Facebook user is doing, but they still allow the user to get the lead magnet.
They can help you increase conversions by providing a clear call to action.
The main reason is that people who have already engaged with your Facebook page are more likely to be interested in what you have to say. Retargeting people based on Facebook page engagement is a good idea for a few reasons. The most important reason is that people who have already engaged with your Facebook page are more likely to be interested in what you have to say.
This is because you are able to target ads at users who are known to be active on Facebook, making your retargeting efforts more successful.
These users are constantly checking for new brands on social media platforms.
They should be targeted with Facebook Ads.
We need to create an audience of people who have engaged with our page in some way in order to create a lead-generation ad.
First, create a custom audience, then select “Facebook Page” from the list of sources.
You can choose to be specific in your retargeting by choosing from a lot of options here.
Make sure the form questions you ask in the next step are only the ones that will get the most important information.
You do not want your visitors to feel overwhelmed or that you are taking up too much of their time.
The goal of this is to collect leads in an easy way that causes no pain.
I absolutely love Facebook’s page-based retargeting for driving users back to my site or converting them on lead magnets and products.
Their audiences are usually very engaged and use Facebook in a different way than most users.
Instead of interacting mainly with family or friends on the platform, they actively seek out businesses.
This is an opportunity to turn visitors who did not convert on your site or showed interest in your pages into paying customers.
Best Practices for Running a Retargeting Campaign
Retargeting can be very beneficial to eCommerce businesses when done correctly. It essentially helps to keep your business at the forefront of consumers’ minds, and thus can help increase conversions from browsers to buyers. To make sure you get the best return on investment from your retargeting campaign, here are some best practices to follow.
Apply Frequency Caps
If you don’t want to turn your valuable consumers off, then don’t bombard them with too many ads. Around one third of internet users find display ads to be annoying. I think it’s a safe assumption that if you show a consumer your ad multiple times a day, they would find your ad and your brand to be unacceptable.
Have you ever heard of banner blindness? This is when you’ve been overexposed to an ad while browsing online to the point where you just start ignoring it. Consumers either start ignoring the ad, or you now have a negative association with your brand. Either way, this is not what you want for your company.
Frequency capping simply puts a limit on how many times a person sees your ad per day, week, or month. How many ads you serve and how often will vary, so use some common sense, find analytics to go off from other retargeting campaigns, and test two or three frequency levels to see which gives you the best margin. In conclusion, if you don’t want to turn your valuable consumers off, then don’t bombard them with too many ads.
Use a Burn Code
If a business doesn’t retarget their campaign, only 26% of customers will return to the site to finish their purchase. However, if a customer has already bought the advertised product, they don’t want to see that same ad again. This will just annoy them and make them not want to buy from the company again. To avoid this, put a snippet of code on your post-purchase page and stop serving those customers the same ads. Using this “burn code” will also save money by not wasting impressions on customers who have already converted. The opposite is true – you can now advertise to them. If someone buys a necklace from your store, you can try to sell them matching earrings or a shirt to go with the necklace. The best generation to target for this is millennials, as 72% of them approve of retargeting.
Utilize Audience Segmentation
The best way to determine your audience for retargeting is through audience segmentation. Consumer behavior typically falls into four categories:
Retarget first-time visitors with creatives that will make them aware of your brand.
People who visit your site frequently can be retargeted with ads for products they frequently look at on your site. It seems that messages with discounts work well with people who are already interested in your product.
Loyal shoppers should be targeted with messages that either cross-sell or upsell coordinating items that they have already bought or new products they might be interested in based on past purchases. Retargeter found that businesses that retargeted with upselling-focused messages earned click-through and conversion rates that were 3-5% higher than those of businesses that used traditional retargeting messages.
Shoppers who leave items in their shopping cart are called “cart abandoners.” To retarget these shoppers, follow up with them via email or display an ad reminding them of what they left in their cart.
Target Ads by Demographic, Geographic, and Contextual Variables
You can make your targeted ads even more effective by considering demographics such as gender and age, geographic data, and other contextual variables. This allows you to serve more relevant ads in the right place, at the right time, and to the right people, which should increase your ad performance. 70% of site visitors who are retargeted with targeted ads are more likely to convert to your site.
Set View-Through Conversion Windows
Display ads are a good way to increase brand awareness. You may have heard that online display ads don’t get clicked on as much as paid search ads, but there’s more to brand awareness than clicks. Even if someone sees a retargeted ad and doesn’t click on it, they’re still seeing your brand. One study found that retargeted ads led to a 1046% increase in branded search. Another study showed a 726% boost in site visits after a month of being exposed to retargeted ads. Some say that a view-through window of 30 days works best. Others recommend 24 hours. Test different lengths of time and see what works best for your targeted audience.
Run Single-Provider Retargeting Campaigns
Retargeting campaigns are more effective and cheaper when you only use one provider. Having multiple providers bidding against each other for ad space on the same websites drives up costs and decreases the visibility of your ads. If you’re new to retargeting and haven’t decided on a provider yet, run a campaign with one for a few months, then test another one for a few months, and compare the results to see which one is the best match for your retargeting goals.
Conclusion
Most of the people who visit your website won’t turn into customers or clients right away. They don’t have any idea who you are, what your business does, or how you could help them.
This means that the people you’re trying to sell to are not prepared or willing to make a purchase from you at this time.
Retargeting ads help bring users who have already shown interest in a product or service back to the site when they are closer to conversion.
While banner blindness is a real phenomenon, there are still some ways to retarget visitors without driving them crazy.
Retargeting customers who have visited specific URLs on your website is one of the most effective ways to convert them into paying customers.
I come across a lot of ads on my Facebook feed and I usually click on them.
Next, try retargeting unresponsive, existing customers.
If someone hasn’t bought anything from you in the past six months, show them some ads to try and get them to buy something.
Finally, create ads that generate leads in response to engagement on your site.
This will help you attract users who are already interested and thus more likely to respond to the ads.
Retargeting efforts must be specific and highly focused to drive conversions.