A visitor visits your website, views three products, adds one to their cart, and leaves without purchasing it. For many advertisers, that was not the end of the customer journey but just the start of retargeting campaigns.
Rather than spending money on constantly introducing the brand to totally new audiences, retargeting ads enable you to reconnect with those individuals who have engaged with your website, app, product, or brand.
Key Takeaways
- Retargeting advertisements enable companies to engage with users who have been to their website in the past, along with using apps, products, and other digital assets.
- A good campaign segments its audience based on intent and behavior, and does not treat all of the prior visitors in the same manner.
- Its performance will be affected by many aspects such as quality of audience, offer, creative, frequency, timing, experience on the landing page, tracking, and privacy compliance, but not necessarily only by retargeting itself.
What are Retargeting Ads?
Retargeting is a type of digital advertisement delivered to individuals who have already had some interactions with a business but have failed to perform any necessary actions, like buying products or services, filling out forms, scheduling consultations, or subscribing to services.
This marketing concept has a simple logic behind it: someone who has already displayed interest in your product might be more important than a stranger you are trying to attract.
As an illustration, let’s say that a client visited an online furniture store and checked out several office chairs. They left without buying anything. Retargeting may help you deliver an advertisement about this chair or any other related product in order to bring the potential customer back.
Moreover, retargeting goes beyond pages where a product is advertised. You can build an audience for people who have checked the prices on your website, filled out part of a form, watched a video, used an application, or have been a customer already.
Recently, the majority of platforms tend to give priority to first-party audience data and privacy controls. For instance, Google uses “your data segments” when referring to a remarketing audience, which consists of individuals who have had interactions with a website before.
Types of Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads don’t follow one particular form or template. It depends on what the audience has done, where the audience can be reached, and what the advertiser would like them to do next.
1. Website Visitor Retargeting
Website visit retargeting focuses on individuals who have previously visited the website. In the case of a retail business, display ads can be shown to website visitors who went through a certain category but made no purchase at all.
2. Dynamic Retargeting
Dynamic retargeting will be much more relevant in this case, as it involves making use of data that describes the products and services that were viewed by the customer earlier. Dynamic retargeting may be used by e-commerce businesses by displaying not only the product but also related products to the customer who had already thought about purchasing them.
3. Search Retargeting
Search retargeting allows an advertiser to reach out again to the previous website visitor upon conducting another search. Rather than only using the display placement approach, advertisers may opt to change their bid or message to the already exposed user.
4. Video Retargeting
Video retargeting refers to targeting users that have previously interacted with the video content of a firm. It can be appropriate for instances where there is a lengthy consideration time for a product and video plays a critical role in educating or building brands.
5. Customer List Retargeting
Customer list retargeting involves the use of information provided by customers voluntarily to a business in accordance with platform regulations and privacy policies. Google explains Customer Match as one method through which advertisers can use customer information to target audiences for their products.
These approaches can work independently or together. The important distinction is the audience signal and the message delivered to that audience – not simply the visual format of the advertisement.
How Do Retargeting Ads Work?
The process usually begins when there is an interaction by an individual with the website of the company in question.
An identification mechanism, an audience tag, a platform integration, or another acceptable signal will be used by the advertising platform to identify that the person is part of an eligible audience. The advertiser sets up certain rules for the audience, such as “visited product page but did not buy anything” or “added product to the cart but did not check out.”
At the same time, an advertiser can set up the length of time during which the person remains an eligible member of the specific audience. This is necessary since the user who abandoned the purchase yesterday has a much higher intent compared to the one visiting the site six months ago.
Once the audience is formed, the advertiser forms a campaign and sets up the location and times at which the members of an eligible audience can see the advertisements.
Here is an example:
- The customer goes to an e-commerce website.
- The customer sees some running shoes on the website.
- The customer leaves the site without buying.
- The customer joins the appropriate audience group.
- The advertiser puts up a relevant ad in a future advertising session.
- The customer either makes the purchase or does not.
This process may vary according to each advertising platform, and not all visitors would get an ad at all. There could be various other factors affecting the delivery of the ads, including minimum audience eligibility and more. Google has pointed out that new audience segments would need some time before they become eligible.
How Effective Are Retargeting Ads
It will depend a lot on how it is done.
One of the typical mistakes in such campaigns is assuming that all visitors of a site represent a valuable lead. This is not the case all the time. Visitors may come there by accident, perform comparisons, do research for someone else, or decide against the purchase in advance.
Thus, the best advertising campaigns differentiate between various degrees of intent.
For example, one should be treated differently depending on whether he just viewed a homepage or put a certain item into his cart. Also, it does not make sense to send an advertisement for a product someone has already bought to that customer.
Metrics should go beyond click-throughs. There should be an evaluation of conversion rate, cost per acquisition, return on advertising spend in some cases, incremental sales, revenue, frequency, and even customer quality.
There is a danger of attributing conversions correctly in retargeting campaigns too. There is a chance that conversion would happen anyway. Comparison of exposed and unexposed groups, different audience window tests, and controlled experiments where possible will help in understanding real value.
Building a Better Retargeting Ads Strategy
A good retargeting ads strategy involves segmentation.
1. Begin by understanding what indicates intent. These could involve actions like viewing a product, going through a pricing page, downloading something, starting the checkout process, asking for a quote, and many others depending on the company.
2. Then you have to segment those who convert from those who do not. Once a customer has made a purchase, then he should be excluded from your first-time buyer campaign. The customer may belong to another campaign such as a cross-sell or an upsell. Time plays an equally vital role in retargeting. It may depend on the length of your consideration period or the cost involved before you create your retargeting audience list. No one knows how long a membership has to last to fit every business.
3. Creative should also take into account the reason why the person hasn’t converted previously. It is better to address their concerns rather than to ask them again and again, “Come back.” This may be done by providing more information about product benefits, answering the question of why they haven’t taken action, and simplifying the next steps.
4. Also, the frequency controls have to be considered. The overfrequent display of the same advertisement is irritating and makes the brand seem intrusive. It is a good idea to remind people of the brand rather than to overwhelm them.
5. It is also crucial to pay enough attention to the landing page. When the user is directed to a page that is unrelated to what was promoted in the ad, they will lose interest in it. The experience after clicking on the advertisement has to be consistent with it.
The Google Ads retargeting strategy uses the audience segments that were shown in the ad previously to connect the advertiser and the potential customer via other advertising environments available within Google.
Retargeting Ads Examples That Show the Strategy
Let us look at some examples of practical retargeting ad campaigns.
First, an online store selling clothes can build an audience of customers who saw a particular jacket but didn’t buy it. Instead of sending the usual brand ad, they could send an ad of the jacket accompanied by reviews and complementary products.
Second, a software company can build an audience of people who visited the pricing page but didn’t sign up for a trial version. Instead of telling about the company and its benefits once again, the ad should emphasize aspects such as a product demonstration, implementation, or a particular feature.
Third, a travel agency can target people who looked for a certain destination but stopped searching. Depending on the campaign and available information, they could offer destination-specific ads and push the potential customer to continue researching.
Fourth, a subscription-based company can exclude the current subscribers from the acquisition campaigns and build a separate audience from their past customers. Instead of trying to get a new prospect, they could talk about the changes in the subscription.
These examples show one important thing: the most successful Ad Retargeting campaigns are based on the previous customer’s experience and not just the fact that they visited a website.
Remarketing vs Retargeting
The terms “remarketing” vs “retargeting” can easily be used interchangeably since in most marketing discussions, they mean more or less the same thing – trying to connect with people who have previously been in contact with a company.
However, traditionally, “retargeting” has referred to paid digital advertisements for past website visitors, while “remarketing” has referred to a broader effort, usually through email.
Of course, the two terms are not entirely clear-cut either since various ad platforms will have their own terminologies. For instance, Google’s Ads service has rebranded and no longer uses the term “retargeting.” It now refers to remarketing audiences as “your data segments.”
The important consideration here, for any marketer, would be not the terminology but the target audience and channel used. Sending an abandoned cart email and a display advertisement to the same person can both be considered a way of re-engaging that individual, even if through different channels and methods.
Bottom Line
In order for retargeting campaigns to be effective, simply targeting consumers who visited previously is not enough.
Businesses need to identify their target audience according to their intent, exclude those who have already made a conversion, limit the frequency of the advertisements shown, and use creatives according to where they are in their purchasing process. Effective landing pages and conversion tracking must also be employed. Retargeting will not help solve the issue of low-quality traffic or an ineffective acquisition process.
AdMedia provides advertising services for companies seeking to convert more of their website visitors into paying customers. When implemented effectively, these strategies can help you make up for lost business and convert missed chances into successful marketing opportunities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can small businesses benefit from retargeting campaigns?
Yes. Even a small business does not have to worry about having a huge audience for its retargeting program because of the minimum audience size requirement by some advertising channels. Retargeting can be effective in a scenario where there is already enough qualified web traffic and something the business wants its former visitors to do.
How long does someone stay in the retargeting audience?
There is no set time period for everyone. It all depends on the buying cycle of a product. Some e-commerce product purchases may call for short retargeting periods, while some other product purchases that require more consideration and higher expenditures may call for longer periods.
Should customers who already purchased still see retargeting ads?
Not always. They should usually not be included in campaigns for acquisition or first-time purchases. Existing customers can, however, be considered when launching cross-selling campaigns, replenishment campaigns, upgrade campaigns, complementary products, loyalty programs, or new products.
Why might a retargeting campaign receive clicks but few sales?
Many clicks without conversion can mean that there is a disconnect between the ad and the landing page, an offer that does not convince, a bad audience, buying process obstacles, or conversion tracking problems.
Is retargeting still useful as third-party tracking changes?
Retargeting is still possible, but the approach to building and activating audiences is changing. The role of first-party data, audiences built using platform-specific technology, consent, and privacy technologies is growing. Advertisers should construct a strategy based on compliant data collection rather than one particular tracking method.
