Modern digital ads can have a huge relevancy
problem, and using a retargeting strategy is one of the best ways to solve it.
WIth retargeting, you only show ads to people
who have indicated interest in your product or website before. Usually, the
interest-signaling behavior is a visit to a particular page on your website.
While the abilities of retargeting sound
creepy—and they definitely can be eerie when the practice is done
incorrectly—most retargeted ad campaigns are actually doing consumers a favor.
Instead of showing them irrelevant ads for things they may never buy, such as
an expensive luxury car, you’re showing them ads for things they’ve directly
looked at before.
At its core, retargeting strategies are all
about that relevancy. The idea is that someone has already entered into your
sales funnel or taken the first steps of the customer journey. Retargeted ads
should ideally be a nudge a little further along that path.
When done right, it works! One company
reportedly achieved [an average ROI for their retargeting campaigns of 488\\
percent to as much as 2054 percent](https://www.infusionsoft.com/business-success-blog/marketing/digital-marketing/effective-advertising-techniques)
. That’s hundreds to
thousands of dollars in revenue for every dollar they spend!
If you’re ready to try a retargeting strategy
for your digital ad campaigns, dig into the information below for a deeper
analysis of what makes retargeting effective, along with six tips to help your
campaigns find success.
What, Exactly, Is Retargeting, and How Does It Work?
The easiest way to think of retargeting is
that it rewrites how traditional ad targeting according to demographics works.
Under normal ad targeting, demographics like location, age, gender, household
income and even parental status could be considered. A car dealer could target
everyone within an hour’s drive of their dealership lot, for instance. Or, the
dealership could choose an age range and income bracket that closely matches
the most common traits of their best customers.
Retargeting takes the same approach, but
instead of looking at static demographics for its targeting list, it looks at
browsing behaviors. Specifically, what pages of your site users stopped on the
longest or the last page they viewed before they left.
Retargeting campaigns build these lists by
applying what’s known as a “tracking pixel” to their page. A list gets built
from everyone who viewed the page based on their browser’s cached data.
For example, if someone searches for desk
lamps in their area, finds the local office supply store you own, clicks on the
product page, and then later closes the tab to do something else, a “tracking
pixel” can register the person’s initial visit. Then, they get added to your
list of everyone else who visited that page, and they get served an ad for the
exact same lamp they were just looking at.
In theory, the ad serves as a reminder for
someone who may be willing to buy eventually but just hasn’t committed yet.
Say, for instance, that they were browsing through your office products as a
way to kill time during their lunch break and weren’t really intending to buy
anything just yet. But if they have a chance to think about it again in a few
days, they may decide to finally commit to a purchase.
Pixel Tracking by Page Allows Your Campaigns to Be Perfectly Segmented According to the Visitor’s Behaviors
Serving ads according to who ends up on your
pixel tracking list allows for a number of different strategies.
You could potentially place a pixel on every
page within your site; many companies actually do. This approach allows you to
serve personal-feeling ads tailored to the exact pages someone browsed.
Someone who looks at several different
versions of the same product, maybe even adding one to their cart, could see an
ad for the exact same item. Or, someone who browses many products in a single
category but never bothers to add any to their cart could see ads for general
items in that category.
Finally, people who visit non-product pages on
your website, such as the home page or your blog, could receive more general
ads that give examples of your most popular products.
You could even just serve them ads that say
general positive things about your brand. Customer testimonials work really well
for this type of trust- or awareness-building campaign.
In this way, you have content aimed at
different people in the buying funnel that can be optimized towards getting to
the next step.
An excellent example of this practice in
action would be a retargeting campaign aimed at previous buyers. Someone who
checked out of your ecommerce website for an expensive purchase, like a
smartphone, isn’t likely going to purchase the exact same device again. If you
put a pixel on the “Thank You for Your Purchase” or “Order Confirmed” page,
then you can filter these individuals out and avoid showing them ads for a
product they already bought.
Better yet, your ad can attempt to cross-sell
them a related product, increasing their customer lifetime value. After all,
it’s often easier to get someone to make a repeat purchase than to convert a
brand-new customer lead to a sale.
6 Tips for More Effective Ad Retargeting Campaigns
Ad retargeting campaigns have a track record
of extremely reliable conversions. [The average retargeting ad is 76 percent more likely to\\
earn a click](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/13/retargeting-ad-ideas "Link: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/13/retargeting-ad-ideas")
compared to a non-retargeted ad. Thirty
percent of consumers also have either [positive or very positive sentiments towards retargeted\\
ads](https://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2013/11/20/15_Stats_Retargeting.html)
.
On the other hand, 11 percent of people had
negative reactions to ads that appear to “follow them around” while they browse
the internet. The majority of people — 59 percent — felt “neutral.” You
absolutely don’t want your retargeted ads to trigger a negative reaction. You
also want to avoid having a neutral impact.
To improve the effectiveness of your
retargeting campaigns, put some or all of the following strategies into action:
1. **Start Small and Branch**
**Out**
—Retargeting may sound sophisticated, but
platforms like Facebook and Google’s AdWords
make it easy.
Start off your campaigns on these networks, and then move on to more
complex platforms, such as the Google Display Network (GDN).
2. **Use Frequency Capping**
—Frequency capping limits the number of exposures people have to a
single ad or a retargeting campaign in general. Since you don’t want to
annoy people, consider putting some sort of upper boundary on all of your
campaigns.
3. **Limit Your Retargeting**
**Window According to Average Buy Cycles**
—Most
retargeting platforms limit your campaigns to 180 days (about 6 months)
after their last tracking pixel was registered. But if you have a product
category with a shorter buying cycle, such as retail goods under $50, then
you may want to end your retargeting campaigns after just a few days. For
more expensive products with a longer buying cycle, such as cars, showing
people similar ads for months makes more sense.
4. **Use Limited Offers and**
**Urgency to Clinch Bottom-of-the-Funnel Leads**
—If
someone appears close to making a purchase, sometimes a personalized offer
is all the nudge they need to commit. Use retargeting pixels to serve
special offers to people who browsed for certain products or product
categories. Or, use these lists to serve up ads any time your business is
doing a big sale.
5. **Be Diligent About Brand**
**Safety**
—Retargeting campaigns can often find
people on thousands of different sites. However, you may not want your
brand associated with certain content. Someone snapping a screenshot of an
ad for your family-friendly brand on an adult website is a recipe for an
instant PR crisis. Review the policies of your ad partner, and use tools
like Google Safe Browsing
to avoid
this scenario.
6. **Study Your Performance**
**Data, Test, Experiment and Optimize**
—Like so much
of digital marketing, your work is far from over when a retargeting
campaign launches. Use the data the campaign generates to tell which
practices work and which don’t. Experiment and A/B test
to find even more
effective conversion techniques. Gradually, you should become better and
better at making effective campaigns based on past discoveries, successes
and failures.
Ad Retargeting Is Easy to Get Started But Difficult to Master
The above tips are just the warm-up for even
more in-depth and sophisticated ad retargeting practices. If you can keep the
consumer’s experience in mind and establish best practices based on your data,
the sky is the limit for how complex and effective your retargeting campaigns
can be.