What Really Happens When You Retarget Ads?
Retargeting, remarketing and pixels… They’re marketing buzzwords you’ve probably heard thrown about in conversations, or perhaps even told you need, but what exactly are they and how will they boost your business?
How Remarketing and Retargeting Works
Many people use the terms remarketing and retargeting interchangeably; and while they are very similar in strategy, they can differ in tactic.
Retargeting: Nurturing a website visitor into a lead with reminders of your brand, business, products or services through display advertising on other websites they visit. And, just to confuse things, Google calls this method of advertising ‘remarketing’ which is why the terms are often used interchangeably. We’ll refer to this method of advertising as Pixel-Based Retargeting.
Remarketing: Remarketing is the term typically used to refer to re-engaging customers or past website visitors via. Email campaigns. We’ll call this form of advertising Email List Based Marketing.
Essentially, both forms of advertising serve to remind potential customers about your brand.
Pixel-based retargeting
Pixel-based is the most commonly used. If you want to use retargeting as part of your marketing campaign you will need to place a piece of Javascript code (known as a pixel) on your website. This code will not be noticed by your visitors, but when they visit your site, the code will drop an anonymous browser cookie.
And as your cookied visitor browses your website and then the web, the cookie notifies your retargeting provider to serve your ad to the people who have visited your site.
Most online shoppers browse before they buy, in fact the percentage of first-time conversions is less than 3%. Retargeting helps brands market to visitors who have bounced off site, but might still be interested in the product. It also helps visitors by offering them easy access to the products and services they searched for without having to dive into their search history to find that site with the swimsuits they like.
Email List-Based Remarketing
Email List-based remarketing involves collecting a database of contacts from your website visitors. Depending on your business you may further segment the list into various categories/actions/themes.
The benefit of a list-based campaign is the ability to segregate lists and develop highly-focussed email campaigns to serve as a reminder of your brand, business, products and services. These campaigns can be simple in nature (regularly scheduled email newsletters) to more sophisticated (product-based emails to subscribers based on what they have browsed on your website.
Define Your Retargeting & Remarketing Campaigns
To make the most of your campaigns, you should begin by defining your goals.
Is it to create awareness? – an ad that wants to drive awareness will direct the customer to pages that provide information about the products or services.
Is it to drive a conversion? – if the ad is to drive the conversion of a product, it will direct the customer to the product page where they can easily add it to their cart.
If the conversion is for a service, the ad may direct the customer to a landing page or contact page where they can book an appointment or call for service.
Do it Right – 10 Point Retargeting Checklist
- Make sure your ad is clearly branded with your company logo
- Make sure the CTA is clearly defined – so visitors know what to expect
- Use power words in the ad copy
- Create a few different versions of the ad to avoid consumer fatigue and irritation
- Try A/B Testing of the ads to determine best conversion rate
- Display the value of the offer
- Make sure the ad is bold enough to stand out from the rest of the page
- Think about the length of the buying cycle to make sure you don’t run redundant ads
- Create several banner sizes to be compliant with different ad placements
- Make sure the pixel tracking code is on every page of your site or properly strategized and implemented if the goal is to provide specific ads to specific interactions of your website
- Create different ads for each target segment
Retargeting is a useful means of advertising but it can be confusing. If you would like learn more about how retargeting can help your business, contact GetOn Marketing Inc, as your digital marketing consultants we will be happy to help.
