Do qualified customers leave your website without contacting you or completing a purchase? Then you should strongly consider retargeting. The average customer needs to see an offer 7 times before they will buy, which means you need a way of showcasing your unique benefits to this potential customer multiple times. Retargeting makes this possible, by showing your ad to only those that have visited your website recently.
Ultimate Guide to Retargeting
- How It Works
- Retargeting Tips to Increase ROI
- Cost of Retargeting
- Top Vendors to Consider
- How to Get Started
- Conclusion
Customers are 70% more likely to convert when retargeting is used and up to 91% of marketers have found that it’s more effective than other marketing methods like display ads, email, and search. Therefore, integrating retargeting with your overall strategy is a no-brainer. Even better, it takes minutes to implement!
In this ultimate guide to retargeting, you’ll learn about how it works, the cost associated with the technique, some of the notable vendors worth using, and how you can get your first retargeting ads converting.
How It Works
Retargeting is based on cookie technology that uses a bit of JavaScript code in order to “follow” the website user around the internet. This is 100% legal, however, you’ll still want to make sure the vendor you use is staying up to date on privacy laws. Those in Europe, due to GDPR, need to be careful to only allow tracking methods on a visitor’s approval. The code that’s added to your website does not reduce performance and it will not be noticed by visitors.
With every new visit, an anonymous browser cookie is created by the code. This cookie will direct ads to the potential customer when they travel around the web. The retargeting vendor knows who to target with the ads because of the cookie stores all this information.
A high ROI is achieved with this form of marketing because the prospect has previously shown an interest in the brand and it’s highly targeted. As the prospect repeatedly sees your ad they will pay more attention to it. Eventually, a tipping point might be reached where the lead takes a strong interest in the ad and clicks to see the offer in further detail.
Retargeting Tips to Increase ROI
To ensure that you get the maximum return on investment you need to take the right approach. Here are some of the common tips that you can follow to ensure your retargeting campaign is a success:
Audience Segmentation: every website visitor is different and therefore will respond differently to various offers.
Your job is to place the right offer in front of them to achieve the highest conversion rate possible, and segmentation can help with that. Convert users based on recency, because a visitor that came a few hours ago is more likely to convert that one who made a visit a few days ago. Also, do not segment visitors that are already being targeted using a different marketing campaign that’s in progress.
When segmenting it’s all about taking a look at the products they have viewed and providing them with related offers. Segmenting your traffic can be a comprehensive process as there are a variety of lists that you can create. However, start with the products or categories of your website that receive the highest amount of traffic and go from there.
Don’t Ignore the Buyers: some marketers make the mistake of only retargeting to website visitors that left without a sale, but upselling to existing customers can potentially be more fruitful.
After all, they have shown to trust your website and bought in the past, which means there is a good chance they will buy again if the right offer is placed in front of them. The statistics show that an existing customer has a 60-70% chance of buying again, whereas there is only a 5-20% of generating sales from new leads. Therefore, if you have a limited budget to spend on retargeting, you should focus on your list of existing customers.
Clickable Message: create a beautiful and powerful design that compels the user to click on the ad. It should be classy, creative, and stand out regardless of where it’s located online.
Keep in mind that your retargeting messages will be displayed on all sorts of websites. You should create a recognizable color scheme that can easily be linked to your brand. Furthermore, the quality of the offer should be conveyed in the ad so that the customer has a strong reason to click.
Just make sure to keep it short and sweet. For instance, “20 % OFF Today” or “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” great for getting the job done effectively.
A/B Split Testing: from day 1 you need to test out the various aspects of the ads. A/B split testing involves choosing one variable and creating two different advertisements where the specific variable is different in each ad.
You can test any number of variables at a time, but it’s a good idea to stick with one to keep things simple. It’s important to throw a good sample size of traffic at both ads to ensure that the data from testing is reliable enough to draw conclusions.
Testing can be executed to find out how new products are received in the marketplace and what types of ads have the highest conversion rate. Even testing seemingly minor elements like call to action phrases and call to action buttons can see remarkable differences. It may take some investment to test your ads, but in the long run the improvements to conversion rate will outweigh the cost of the testing phase.
Test Different Offers: potential customers may have different reasons for hesitating, so try differing offers.
One simple way to encourage action is to try providing different incentives. Would a 10% coupon move them to a sale? Would a free consultation? Would an influencer using the product or service? Or is it something as simple a guarantee? See which offers can make a difference to encourage immediate action.
Cost of Retargeting
The cost of retargeting depends on a number of factors, which includes the vendor, marketplace, and level of competition. Just like with a traditional pay per click campaign, the cost is calculated per click – no fee will be charged if the lead simply looks at the ad without clicking.
On average the cost of a remarketing click is in the range of $0.25 to $0.60, which is cheaper than the $2-3 average of Google PPC. The idea is to bring in more in sales than you spend on paying for clicks. You can set a number of filters on your retargeting campaign to optimize costs. These include duration, display frequency, geographic location, buying preferences, and demographics.
Top Vendors to Consider
You’ll need to choose a vendor that will handle the retargeting and there are some solid options. Explore all of the vendors in our ultimate guide to retargeting to see which one is the right fit for your business.
- Google Ads Remarketing: Google Ads, previously Google Adwords, is one of the most comprehensive and well-supported solutions for retargeting. The ads will be displayed across their entire network, which includes YouTube, Android apps, Google AdSense and Google Display Network. There are a number of filters that can be set to pre-define your desired target audience for the ads. Getting started is free and 24/7 help is available in case you get stuck. It’s a good place to start for beginners because of the help that’s provided to get going.
- Facebook Customer Audiences: there are in excess of 1 billion people on Facebook, which means that there is a good likelihood that your customers are on that social media platform. The Custom Audiences feature of their marketing tools allows you to create specific customer lists and focus in on specific segments of your target market. The advantage of this vendor is the relatively low cost per click that makes it easier to create a positive ROI experience.
- ReTargeter: this vendor allows for a lot of volumes because they will throw your ads in a variety of locations. Prices start at $500 per month, which is a solid choice for small businesses looking to get started. However, if you wish to make use of audience targeting features like contextual data, interests, geographic information, and demographics, then the cost goes up to $2500 per month. This extra investment is worth it as targeting brings in more sales.
- AdRoll: businesses that want to take their retargeting efforts to another level should consider AdRoll. Their internet coverage is at 95% because they have various partners like Twitter, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook Exchange, and Google.
How to Get Started
You can get started with retargeting today, simply follow this ultimate guide to retargeting and your ads can be live as soon as you’ve set up your campaign.
- Choose a vendor: the first step of the process is to choose a vendor. This should be based on your budget, how much volume you need, and ease of use. It’s a good idea to scour the internet looking at all the options out there. Give each one a try to see where the best fit is.
- Segment the list: create a list of customers that you feel has the highest chance of converting. Starting with previous buyers is a good idea.
- Create ads: design the ads to generate the maximum number of clicks. However, the ads must be accurate as otherwise, you’ll get a lot of clicks without many sales.
- Set the filters: to increase the level of targeting, use the filters available to focus on the customers that are most likely to buy. The quality of the filters depends on the vendor, and this may be one of the main factors that determine the vendor you’ll be using.
- Measure success: you need to take a look at the numbers to determine which ads are successful and which ones are losers. Keep the winners and get rid of the losers to improve the quality of your retargeting campaign.
- Test: once the ad is set up, you need to test it thoroughly to increase the conversion rate. The testing phase should never end because there are always positive ROI changes that can be made.
Conclusion
The power of retargeting can be a game-changer for businesses that are struggling to convert their traffic. It’s arguably the best method for converting visitors that leave your website. One of the key strengths of retargeting is that you can get started right away in any industry.
With this ultimate guide to retargeting, you now have enough information to take your business to another level. It may prove to be the best marketing method for your business that will command the majority of your marketing budget.
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