Is Retargeting For You? Yes.

Retargeting ads keep your brand top-of-mind and are essential in providing the multiple exposures that lead consumers to convert.

If you’re expecting to reel in a 100-pound Salmon on your first cast, you’ve never been fishing (especially because the biggest Salmon ever caught was 97-pounds). The world of marketing is the exact same way. Most of your website visitors won’t even begin to think about taking action after seeing your first ad. In fact, data shows it takes from five to 200 times of being exposed to an ad before a consumer will act. Fortunately, there’s a tool that guarantees your consumers will see your ad more than just once.

If you have a website that gets traffic and you want that traffic to do something, then Retargeting is for you. Here’s why: hop over to your analytics reports and, assuming you’re tracking some sort of conversion (the actions you want people to take), look at your conversion rate. Chances are it’s not as high as you’d like it to be. Let’s just say your conversion rate is 5% – this means that 95% of your traffic did NOT convert. What are you doing about that?

Naturally, you won’t ever get ALL of your traffic to convert; but working towards that end is time well spent, and Retargeting can be a very effective tool for doing so.

Retargeting’s purpose is to move more people down your conversion funnel faster. And because the targeting for this channel can be incredibly focused (as you’ll see ahead), Retargeting can be a very cost-effective channel too. It’s not at all uncommon for us to see 1,000%+ ROI on Retargeting campaigns.

Retargeting is a special class of banner advertising where the ads are only served when the viewer matches a pre-defined data profile (based on some previous behavior). This all-important layer of targeting data can vary widely, but to begin, let’s look at some of the flashy possibilities:

– Dynamic product-level retargeting: show ads based on the products your visitor browsed. Ads show the products visitors abandoned in their cart or suggested products they may be interested in.

– CRM Database Retargeting: convert customer information (like email addresses) into audiences.

– Sequential Retargeting: rotate in ads that “auto-optimize” based on the response or non-response of the viewer. E.g. if the user doesn’t respond to promotion 1, show promotion 2, etc. This can be layered onto other retargeting programs as well.

– Fully Customizable: Show ads based on data you previously wrote to their browser cookies when they visited your site – the sky is the limit here. Personas, past purchase history, demographics, etc.

If you have data, there’s probably a way to leverage it in your Retargeting – and the more data you have, the more powerful the campaign.

But if you’re just starting out or don’t have big data and an IT army on your side, guess what, retarging is still for you! No matter the situation, anyone can get rolling with Site Retargeting.

Site Retargeting audiences are built based on visits to your site and once set up, these audiences can be grouped, segmented, or combined with relative ease. For example: a common, no-nonsense approach for advertisers just starting out with is to target ads to all visitors of their site EXCEPT those that converted – thus focusing their ad spend on prospects while keeping setup and administration simple.

Clearly, there are numerous approaches you CAN take with your Retargeting campaign; but before getting started, it’s important to define the approach you SHOULD take. The right answer is different for each organization. Here are some high-level factors to consider in defining your strategy:

– What’s your objective? Once you know what outcome you want, it’s easier to make sure your targeting, campaign structure, and ads are in alignment.

– How big will your target audience be? The number of ads you can show depends on the size of your audience and how many ads you want to show them over a given time period (reach and frequency). Audience size also determines the velocity of your campaign and how quickly you’ll be able to perform tests on ad variations, etc.

– How does your traffic engage with your brand/category? Do they shop quickly and make purchase decisions same-day (short audience duration would be appropriate), or do they mull it over for months before acting (you’ll need to stay in front of them for a longer time period)?

– How complex does your program need to be? Starting out, keep it simple. Don’t muddle things with complex targeting logic and overly-involved setups just because you can – you can refine things as you go.

– Where will your ads show? Beyond targeting your audience, one of the biggest influences on ad performance is ad placement. What’s acceptable for your brand safety standards? You’ll want to determine ahead of time what types of sites you don’t want to show up on.

Here at SmartClick we’re constantly working to bring top technologies down-market to even the smallest client. We’ve built up a fantastic working knowledge across multiple Retargeting strategies in the process; so if you’d like to get started with retargeting, contact us. We’ll get you there.