Sometimes you get your eye so set on the prize that you fail to notice a golden marketing opportunity that’s right in front of you. This is the concept behind retargeting, which is the practice of presenting your ads to those individuals that visited your website and did not take any action.
How It Works
The cookie-based technology works by placing a piece of code on your site. This code drops an unobtrusive browser cookie whenever a visitor comes to your site. When that same visitor browses the Web, your ads strategically appear where they are browsing. Retargeting providers such as AdRoll, Google Remarketing, Bizo (for business-to-business re-targeting), and Retargeter can help you coordinate your retargeting efforts.
Why It Works
Retargeting is effective because you are targeting people already familiar with your brand. After all, they showed some interest – just not to the point of taking any action. Research shows that marketers can expect a higher ROI by retargeting customers rather than focusing on entirely new potential customers every time. Think of it as a first date that hasn’t said yes or no to a second date.
When to Use Retargeting
Retargeting tends to work best with your other content marketing strategies. You can get an increase in conversions with this technique, but you aren’t going to increase traffic to your site with retargeting alone. It’s best to use other marketing tools that are already working for you to drive traffic to your site and then incorporate retargeting to increase your conversions.
Types of Retargeting
Looking closer at retargeting, there are different methods for accomplishing the goal of converting curious website visitors. Site Retargeting is the method where you use cookies to track visitors to your site that browsed or added a few items to their cart without making a purchase. Additional methods of retargeting include:
Search Retargeting
This method involves targeting individuals via search engines. You use certain keywords and phrases relevant to your business. This method does, however, make the assumption of interest in your business based on guessing the searcher’s intent.
Email Retargeting
This type of retargeting focuses on the actions someone takes when receiving an email from you. You take a different approach based on whether someone actually opens your email, doesn’t even open it, or creates a link and forwards it to friends. While some unopened emails may have ended up in spam folders, your best bet marketing-wise is to focus on individuals who either open or forward your email.
Engagement Retargeting
This method focuses your retargeting efforts based on the actions taken by visitors to your site or blog. A visitor watching your videos, for instance, is likely to be more responsive to new videos you post via your social accounts or through YouTube. You can then create highly targeted – and usually more effective – display ads.
If you think about it, it actually makes sense to go after an audience that has already shown an initial interest in your business. Your goal is to remind people of the potential value you offer in meeting their needs – and make a conversion. Retargeting really has broad appeal since every business has “almost customers” who browse without taking any action. With a little effort, you can get these tire kicking fish to take the bait.
