How amazing would it be if your advertisements traveled throughout the internet, seeking out people who recently visited your website? Letting them know that the special product or service that they recently reviewed was now on sale, or was running low on inventory? This may seem like a far-future functionality that sounds cool but isn't available. For marketers -- it's just called retargeting or remarketing, and we do it every day. This relatively new feature allows you to wrangle those individuals who didn't quite make it to the finish line on their purchase back into the fold, and back into a measurable customer journey. Retargeting is perhaps the best way to help prospects walk through the entirely convoluted sales process, as each lead may interact with your business in a slightly different way. Retargeting allows you to reach out with the most relevant message to a prospect who is already engaged, making your advertising dollars work harder and smarter! See how you can use retargeting to boomerang new customers straight back to your website.
What is Retargeting?
Studies show that less than 2% of prospects will become a customer on their first visit to your store or interaction with your brand. What happens to that other 98%? Well, some of them keep shopping and eventually buy a different product from a competitor, some buy the same product and some decide not to purchase at all. Retargeting helps you keep an eye on the ones who are interested and gently nudge them back to your website to complete their purchase. If you're having difficulty delighting and converting your customers, retargeting is where it's at for your business! At Joplin Radio, our retargeting game is strong. Here's our quick definition:
Retargeting allows you to serve your ads to people who have visited your website but didn’t fulfill on the desired action — like making a purchase or filling out a form to join your eNewsletter list. You can even use ads that reflect their specific interest, like the product they viewed.
This still may seem a bit like hocus-pocus, but we'll walk through how you can get started and best practices to keep those leads flowing smoothly to your website.
How Retargeting Works
Retargeting allows you to dynamically segment your audience based on where they are in their customer journey -- already made a purchase, filled their cart but didn't buy, looking for a specific type of item on your site and more. The cookies that are placed on each individual's computer or mobile device allow display ads to be generated for their eyes alone, based on their unique browsing history. Even better, you only pay for these ads when impressions are served, saving you a significant amount of money because you're targeting prospects who have already indicated a level of interest in your products or services.
Getting Started with Retargeting
Once you wrap your mind around the idea of retargeting, getting started is relatively straightforward. You'll place a tracking pixel on your website, often using code provided by Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This allows the platform to track individual viewers and their activity for later retargeting. Videos can also be tagged, so you can target individuals who engaged with that media at a later date. When you place advertisements on public websites, you can also track activity against those ads. According to WordStream, people are 76% more likely to click on a relevant retargeting ad than on a display ad -- which tends to be more generic.
Placing Your Retargeting Ads
One of the most popular places to set to your retargeting ads is on social media. Ever browsed a product on Amazon only to see the same item show up minutes later (or hours later) as a part of your social media feed? This is retargeting at its best, and Facebook is a pro. This easy reminder often has a call to action or a discount code, further enticing you to head back to the website and complete your purchase or download a free item. Snapchat rolled out retargeting in mid-2017, and their option allows you to reach out to anyone who has interacted with your account in a variety of ways, including Sponsored Lens and Sponsored Geofilter.
Best Practices for Creating Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads are the ideal opportunity to create real interest with your audience, by subtly showing information that is extremely relevant to them personally. That means the end of generic ads, and finding ways to engage much more deeply by jumping over the information that they already are interested in, and getting right to the meat of the message. This is the ideal way to identify and overcome what could be initial challenges with your sale. Specificity also means showing pictures of exactly the items that browsers were interested in, or a discount on the same items to show the urgency of the message. Dynamic countdowns are one way you can utilize an ever-changing element to entice users and play on their FOMO -- or fear of missing out (in this case, on a great deal!). If they recently made one purchase on your site, retargeting ads allow you to take it to the next level and convince the buyer to grab a related item, too. You can even use suggestive selling by noting items that other visitors have purchased in the past.
Our retargeting best practices include adding frequency caps and conversion tags to your retargeting operations, so you're not spending money serving ads to individuals who have already made a purchase. The frequency caps keep your ads from becoming overly redundant or being shown to the same individual more times than they are likely to be effective. When you work with the digital marketing professionals at Zimmer Radio, you will find that we can help effectively target your audience while improving your overall advertising ROI. Contact us today at 417-624-1025 and we will get started on a campaign that will delight (and convert!) your audience!
