In case you missed the memo, retargeting is one of the most effective tools in re-engaging with prospects who have visited your website.
The technology allows you to target your display advertising on networks like Google AdWords or AdRoll.com to specific users who have previously visited your website – giving you the chance to win them back.
Here are five reasons why you need to get in the game with retargeting:
1. Brand awareness
When you launch a new product it takes a long time to build up your brand. There is an old marketing adage that a customer needs to be exposed to your brand seven times before making a purchase – while it’s a little outdated it certainly doesn’t hurt your brand to remind your customers that you exist.
For RecruitLoop.com CEO Michael Overell, retargeting helped to reinforce their launch messaging and to stay front of mind for their customers. “Within a week, we’d had a dozen tweets, emails or comments about how effective our digital advertising was”.
2. Segment your advertising campaigns
Regular display advertising can be segmented in a number of ways. But it can’t be segmented based on what your customers have done on your website.
Retargeting lets you create segments based on what your customers have done on your website.
For instance, if I looked at a particular product, you can show me advertising only about that product. Or if you saw me looking at the men’s section you might only show me advertising targeted at men.
The more targeted your advertising campaigns to individual users, the higher the conversion rates you can expect.
3. Reduce cart abandonment
Every online marketer suffers from cart abandonment and the story is always the same. You run a marketing campaign, bringing a user to your website. They look around and add some products to their shopping cart to make a purchase and at the last minute they have a change of heart, put their credit card away and close the browser. You were so close!
Retargeting lets you place tags on the purchase page of your shopping cart. You can then place a different tag on your payment confirmation page.
This then lets you target ads at people who have the cookie from the first tag, but not from the second – these are the people who have abandoned their shopping carts.
One idea would be to create banner ads offering a 10% discount or perhaps free shipping – whatever you need to do to get that purchase over the line.
4. Seasonal promotions
A lot of online retailers will run special promotions on Boxing Day this year.
The savvy ones have been running email campaigns around these events to let their existing customers know; which is a great way to drive traffic to your sale.
Retargeting works in the same way but it’s on every site the customer is on, instead of just in their email inbox, which is often overlooked during the Christmas/New Year period.
Retargeting cookies can be set to last over 12 months, so you can even target next year’s Christmas campaign at customers who purchased from your site this holiday season.
5. Driving lifetime value
The lifeblood of any online business is lifetime value.
It’s expensive to bring new customers to your website to make a purchase. The higher you can get your lifetime value from an individual customer the more profit you will make out of your marketing dollars.
Retargeting is a great way to optimise lifetime value by re-engaging with customers you have already brought to your site to encourage further purchase behaviour.
Ned Dwyer is a digital marketer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Tweaky.com, a marketplace for website customisation.
