Retargeting is a powerful form of digital advertising in which audiences are targeted with specific ads based upon their online behavior.
In short, retargeting campaigns convert “would-be shoppers” into bona fide paying customers for your business.
As marketers here at Maxburst, we would love to exist in a world in which most online visitors turn into customers, but the fact is the buying process is exceedingly complex. As a matter of fact, only two percent of your online traffic will convert into customers upon initial visit.
Regardless of whether you’re just beginning or a skilled expert, these nine simple retargeting strategies will help elevate your campaigns to new heights.
1. Content is still king
The goal of retargeting is to accelerate conversions, but you need to offer users something of significance to expedite that process. The wonderful thing about retargeting with content is that it gives you an opportunity to connect with and offer value to prospects who aren’t yet prepared to purchase.
For an individual who is only mildly interested in your product, a timely eBook or whitepaper could subtly push them towards a purchase. Supposing you have a substantial set of content already developed for other purposes, this strategy shouldn’t cut into your budget.
To determine which parts of content to incorporate into your campaign, establish what your top performers are predicated on behavior data. How you interpret that is up to you – time on page or views/downloads can be excellent places to begin.
If you have the capability, sort your content by multi-touch revenue created; if an asset has demonstrated consistently to promote conversions, it’s ideal for retargeting ads. Afterward, segment your content, so that people are receiving the right piece of content at the right time.
2. Audience segmentation
If your retargeting campaigns are not meeting your expectations, there’s a good chance that you need to enhance your segmentation. The greatest error a marketer can make in retargeting is to presume that all visitors are similar and present each visitor with the same ads.
By being careless and not segmenting your visitors into groups, your results will be inferior and many of your impressions will simply be squandered extraneous spend. For example, it’s not logical to target an individual who has viewed a page about soap and show them a banner ad for dog food.
The key to effective retargeting is user segmentation. When you segment audiences, you will be able to recognize and understand the various behaviors and intentions of the users on your website. This is essential as it allows you to vigorously target users with applicable ad messages, ensuring the retargeting experience is customized.
Setting up segments by URL inside your retargeting software is simple as soon as your pixels are created.
There is no correct method to segment your users. It’s determined by what kind of business you’re operating, what part of the funnel the visitor is in, and what your objectives are.
3. Recognizing the buyer cycle
Recognizing the buyer cycle is critical and applies to all of your retargeting campaigns. It’s comparable to the sales funnel, in that the process starts with more customers at the top in the awareness phase and ends up at the bottom with fewer people in the conversion phase.
Retargeting is designed to capture more of those customers as they advance through the funnel.
However, if you’re not cautious, you can actually hurt conversion rates by disregarding the buyer cycle.
A note worth mentioning – If you’re contemplating allowing your retargeting ad campaigns to manage themselves: DON’T.
It’s not just about showing your ad to the wrong person on multiple occasions, which incidentally, can be extremely irritating to customers.
It’s also about wasting all understanding of the performance of your advertisements. One thing marketers absolutely must have is a thorough understanding of their data and the efficiency of their marketing efforts. That means making a distinction between what’s working and what’s not. Who’s converting on what? Which ad creatives or ad set have the highest ROI?
4. Monitor your advertising frequency
Many advertisers don’t consider frequency a priority in their campaigns, but frequency is a fundamental component in regards to improving their total performance.
A new study on U.S. consumer emotions connected with retargeting ads states that ad frequency has an adverse effect on buyer emotions.
Heavy ad frequency alters a customer’s mindset from positive to negative. It can be prying, upsetting, and further yet – it may provoke customers to become furious with your brand. This can unquestionably impact existing and future sales. Be sure to place some kind of ad frequency restriction on your campaigns.
5. Test until you find a highly-compelling offer
Lead magnets are your most compelling call-to-action. It’s crucial to find something that you know your customers desire and that other people will be drawn to as well.
If you’re having difficulty identifying an effective lead magnet, begin with a quick examination of your website’s traffic. What pages, products, and articles are users visiting most often?
If you want to take it a step further, test conversion rates for those products or pages. In other words, what’s the total number of individuals that convert from a particular page in relation to the total number of visitors?
The better the conversion rate, the more effective the magnet.
6. Employ Dynamic Creative Facebook Ads
Facebook’s Dynamic Creative Ads feature automatically analyzes numerous variations of a specific ad within a targeting group. Essentially, its A/B testing put on autopilot which means boosting effectiveness for the marketing team and getting greater campaign results.
Win-win, correct? But how does it work?
The Dynamic Creative Ads tool actively grabs copy and imagery to serve various combinations of an ad. This comprises images/graphics, descriptions, videos, titles, and calls to action throughout the target audiences.
It then decides which combinations produce the best results, permitting advertisers to then run the optimal ads in forthcoming campaigns.
Facebook states, “Dynamic creative will analyze which version of the ad performed best with each audience and in each placement, including News Feed, Instagram and Audience Network, giving you the insights you need to run the most effective ads and drive results for your business.”
It’s like having a complete marketing team, but at a fraction of the cost!
7. Create basic sequential engagement campaigns
When creating sequential engagement campaigns, you’re taking a huge audience and turning them into a group of smaller, more qualified prospects.
This is distinct from segmenting your audience as this is centered around individuals who interact with your content. It’s an effective way to enhance your brand recognition while also sending people down the funnel.
Let’s suppose you’re a small-to-medium sized e-commerce brand that offers unique footwear products.
Begin by boosting a video that has tested well organically on Instagram or Facebook.
Over time, the views of that video will gradually start to accumulate. You can then build a laser-focused audience based on individuals who have watched 5 seconds, 15 seconds, 25%, 50%, or even 100% of the video and target them with an ad that is sequentially logical.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes here. If you saw this ad, what would be the next sensible step be? Then chart that out over the period of several days to a few weeks.
8. Don’t forget burn pixels
If your product or service only consists of a one-off purchase (or you just don’t want to burn your budget on a visitor you’ve previously converted), you’ll want to implement a burn pixel.
What’s a burn pixel? It’s basically a line of code that resides on the “post-transaction” page. When a visitor lands there, they are labeled as so and will no longer be served ads.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean marketing to your present customers shouldn’t be a priority. While a burn pixel aids you in preserving your retargeting budget, studies published by Gartner Group indicate that 80 percent of your organization’s future revenue will stem from only 20 percent of your current customers. That’s significant.
Having said that, burn pixels can additionally be used to eliminate those who have already converted from your initial retargeting campaign which enables you to enroll them in a secondary campaign that utilizes ad copy that speaks to their unique wants and desires as a consumer, in lieu of a visitor.
9. Leverage the emotional factor of advertising
We all like to believe that we’re intelligent consumers who always act sensibly, but that’s only somewhat accurate. Our emotional side is triggered when it comes to buying products.
A clear list of product features might sway the rational self in some individuals, but in most cases, it has no impact on their emotional side. In truth, our emotional self is unconcerned with features. That element of us wants to imagine and recognize the benefits.
It’s essential to speak to both the logical and emotional side of potential customers in your advertisements. Express yourself like a human. Incorporate emotionally charged language. Discuss benefits instead of features.
Help individuals envision a life with your product – a product they never realized existed.
