4 Helpful Tips on How to Save Money by Retargeting

By now, most of us have seen those ads that follow you around the Internet offering you the exact same product you searched for, browsed, or maybe added to a shopping cart. Depending on the websites you visit, you may even get an email with a product you were interested in along with suggestions of other products that might interest you. Welcome to the world of remarketing!

The cold, hard facts on retargeting:

• Much of your advertising spend is wasted on visitors that will never get another chance to convert.
• Customers are less likely to convert in highly competitive markets and verticals.
• Many businesses don’t leverage all of their analytics to understand repeat visitors and repeat customers.

Although many tactics of ad retargeting can be regarded as creepy or annoying to visitors if not properly frequency-capped, the results of retargeting can be overwhelmingly effective. So how can you turn ineffective ad campaigns into retargeted success?

Filter Out Bad Prospects That Will Never Convert

There is no point wasting additional retargeting efforts on visitors to paid search or display advertising that will never convert. Consider the initial engagement of users to your site through advertising channels. Did they:

• Bounce immediately?
• Browse around a few pages?
• Actually add products to your cart?
• Make it halfway through the conversion funnel?

All of these criteria can help you gauge the quality of your campaign visitors.

Retarget Known Repeat Visitors & Customers via Email

Leverage all that you know about your customers from web analytics solutions, offline databases, CRM systems, Facebook open-graph, and opt-in lists. Try to:

• Offer helpful instructions on how to decide on a purchase.
• Offer alternatives for the products they were researching.
• Offer helpful reviews from other customers.
• Incentivize a purchase through a personally tailored promotion or coupon.

Constantly Update Your Retargeting Creative

Whether it’s via email or display, make sure you keep your retargeting creative from getting stale. Retargeting is only effective if you can serve up substantially different calls to action and figure out which of the 4 P’s visitors were not confident about: place, product, promotion, or price.

Don’t Forget About On-site Retargeting

Some of the best retail websites are able to effectively leverage data about their visitors for retargeting on their own site in subsequent visits. One of the easiest ways to do this is to connect visitor behavior with customer behavior (i.e., people who were interested in iPad cases, were also interested in styluses on subsequent visits).

Conclusion

Successful retargeting campaigns can often generate a lift of between 4x and 8x the original standalone campaign, so it’s easy to see why many are considering this once “creepy” technology. Have you tried retargeting yet? Let us know in the comments section below.