Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that can help you keep your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website. For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit.

How Does Retargeting Work?

Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the Web.

Here’s how it works: you place a small, unobtrusive piece of code on your website (this code is sometimes referred to as a pixel). The code, or pixel, is unnoticeable to your site visitors and won’t affect your site’s performance. Every time a new visitor comes to your site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie. Later, when your cookied visitors browse the Web, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads, ensuring that your ads are served to only to people who have previously visited your site.

Retargeting is so effective because it focuses your advertising spend on people who are already familiar with your brand and have recently demonstrated interest. That’s why most marketers who use it see a higher ROI than from most other digital channels.

When Does Retargeting Work?

Retargeting is a powerful branding and conversion optimization tool, but it works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

Retargeting works best in conjunction with inbound and outbound marketing or demand generation. Strategies involving content marketing, AdWords, and targeted display are great for driving traffic, but they don’t help with conversion optimization. Conversely, retargeting can help increase conversions, but it can’t drive people to your site. Your best chance of success is using one or more tools to drive traffic and retargeting to get the most out of that traffic.

So, if you're ready to take your marketing to the next level, learn more about how to utilize retargeting (aka remarketing) in your business now.

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About the Topic

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Everyone deserves a second chance, and remarketing (also called retargeting) is your chance to get your business back in front of your customers’ eyes no matter where they go after they’ve visited your site. 

But how do you get the most out of your retargeting efforts?

--Build Brand Awareness for Newly Launched Sites

If your site is brand new, your goal is going to be building up brand awareness. This is the most basic of all types of remarketing and the fastest to set up.

In a nutshell, you’ll be displaying the same ad to everyone who has visited your site. The code is placed on a core area of your site—such as the header or footer—so it executes site-wide.

--Market to Customers Who Have Already Converted with Special Offers

Next, there are the people who have visited your site and already converted. These people are a remarketing goldmine, since they’re already familiar with your brand and have taken that all-important first step toward interacting with you, be it buying a product, calling for a quote or signing up for your mailing list.

It doesn’t make sense to remarket to these people with the same generic brand-wide ad, so why not design and test a variety of creatives that entice the user to come back and save money? By targeting it only to people who have converted, you’ll greatly increase their chances of coming back and converting again.

Since Google launched its remarketing platform, businesses are taking full advantage and increasing their conversions 300-400% plus. In addition to this you can reduce your cost per click (CPC) or place this spend into your remarketing strategy.

If you’ve already set up your Facebook account to drive traffic and conversions, then you may want to try Adroll. SalesBlend used Adroll for their Facebook remarketing to target their specific audience. With Adroll, they paid a CPC of $1.62. Now, since switching to running their remarketing directly through Facebook, they’ve reduced CPC to an unbelievable $0.44. That’s a 73% decrease.

--Be the Helpful Salesperson

Have you ever had a salesperson that stood out as someone truly helpful? Not only did they help you find that amazingly comfortable pair of shoes, they also suggested a fantastic pair of jeans to go with them. You could tell right away that they were interested in making you look and feel your best.

That’s what your remarketing ads should do.

If someone is browsing on your site, use remarketing to take stock of what they looked at, and suggest relevant accessories that would look or perform even better with whatever it was they had their eye on.

--Avoid Shopping Cart Abandonment

It begs the question: What approach are you implementing to minimize customers falling through the net?

According to research conducted by Yoast, a whopping 56% of online shoppers abandon payment at the point of sale because of unexpected costs.

Shopping cart abandonment is a huge problem for even the most well-known retailers and presents the perfect opportunity for remarketing to shine. Not only can you remind customers by email of the products they left in their cart (provided you have their email), but you can also address any common issues they may have had shopping the first time that caused them not to order from you.

For example, your creative might show the item(s) they left in their cart, along with a “Free Shipping on Orders Over $25” note, just in case the user anticipated that shipping their items would be too costly.

--Adjust for Seasonality

Depending on your business, you may see more traffic around certain holidays—or even months afterward. If you create a remarketing list of users who viewed your site leading up to, during and slightly after a specific holiday, you can use that list to send them reminders the following year.

Something like this, for example: “Remember how much your mom loved that personalized picture frame you bought her last year? We now have them available in a larger size so you can fill them with even more special family moments!”

--Experiment with Duration Time

When remarketing to your customers (or potential customers), you don’t want to bombard them with ads to the point where their ambivalence toward you becomes downright animosity.

With Google, as well as many other ad networks, you can set the duration time of your ads. While there is no “best time” that fits every business or industry, CPC Strategy has a great outline of how to calculate a fair duration time for your ads depending on whether you’re using Adwords or Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

As you can see, every step of the retargeting process needs to be carefully considered and planned to avoid throwing money on the wall and hoping some of it sticks!

--Segment Ads Based on User Groups

Segmenting users based on gender, location, device used and other attributes is just good marketing sense. Some ads go so far as to target clothing shoppers depending on the weather in their area.

Each network has its own set of criteria, so understanding your market as well as individuals in that market can make a bigger impact on your remarketing efforts than broader advertising attempts.

By the same token, if the user has already made a purchase of an item that might eventually require repair or upgrade (think electronics, mobile phones or services), segment them into a “product lifespan” group and remind them when it’s time to re-order or upgrade.

Segmenting also allows you to personalize your marketing efforts. A survey by Adobe and Econsultancy found that 52% of marketers consider “personalization” as a fundamental factor to their online marketing strategy. You can do this by capturing; user preferences, on-site behavior, browser or purchase history, personal data.

--Create Custom Landing Pages that Incorporate Your Retargeting Message

Finally, with so much attention on retargeting, creative, placement and segments, landing pages may seem like an after-thought that’s cobbled together at the last minute. Unfortunately, this is the worst thing to do. After all, you’ve spent a good deal of money getting this far—why settle for a piecemeal landing page when it’s your business’ moment to shine?

Take the time to incorporate custom landing pages that reflect your retargeting message for each group/segment. There’s nothing worse than doing all that work to get the user to your landing page, only to have them think, “Is this the right page?” when they arrive.

By using similar language and even the specific keyword or copy from your retargeting ad, you’ll create a smoother, more tightly integrated and relevant page that drastically improves your conversion rate.

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