Retarget to Stay Top of Mind With Engaged Prospects and Increase Sales

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that can help keep your brand in front of visitors who have previously engaged with your company, website, blog or e-mail messages, and have demonstrated interest but haven’t converted to a sale. Retargeting ads serve as a reminder for engaged prospects, increasing brand awareness and opportunities for conversion. Recognized as a powerful, cost-effective conversion tool, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook and Retargeting.com all offer retargeting ad platforms and services.

Why Retarget?

According to Google Think Insights, on average, business buyers do not contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase research process is complete. Potential customers are researching a number of companies, forming opinions, learning technical specifications, building requirements lists, and narrowing down their options, all on their own, with minimal influence from you. Gleanster claims that 50% of prospects are not ready to buy and furthermore, ReTargeter.com declares that only 2% of web visitors convert to a sale or a call to action on the first visit.

Retargeting ads increase your brand’s profile and serve as a helpful reminder for the 98% of previously engaged prospects to revisit your site and evaluate available offers. Since these customers have completed their own research to make an informed purchase, a well-timed retarget increases the chance they will buy from you when they are ready.

How Does Retargeting Work?

Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses a simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your engaged prospects while on the Web. Every time a new prospect comes to your site, reads a blog or opens an e-mail, the embedded code drops an anonymous browser cookie. When these prospects revisit the Web, the cookie informs the retargeting provider to serve or display your ads on landing pages they are viewing, or on pages for keyword searches they undertake, that are relevant to your ad campaign target specifications. While retargeting is a powerful branding and conversion optimization tool, it works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

Some Best Practices:

Retargeting can perform poorly, wasting marketing dollars if not well executed.

1. Define your goals. Is your goal to raise brand awareness? To increase sales? Increase calls to action? Ad campaigns must reflect your goals and be relevant to the prospect.

2. Don’t overwhelm prospects. ReTargeter typically recommends 17-20 ads per user per month. More ads can be annoying and perceived negatively by prospects.

3. Target for relevancy. Retargeted ads can be targeted based on demographic information, keywords, relevant subject matter based on prospect engagement activity and geographic parameters. If the display ad is an offer, makes sure the code untags prospects who made a purchase.

4. Use a single retargeting provider. Multiple providers each bid for the same ad spots on the same websites, driving up media costs and decreasing the chances each has to serve your display ads.

To find out more on retargeting visit: Retargeter and Google Targeting

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