What is Website Retargeting & How to Benefit From It

As someone running a small business, you want to find the best way to get customers on your site. Once you have their attention, you’re more likely to make the sale. There’s so much competition out there though, so how can you be sure that you’ll get them on to your site in the first place and come back to make the purchase?

Website retargeting is the best way to get visitors and potential customers to visit your site. It’s often called Remarketing, and it helps spread awareness of your brand. It’s quite simple, really.

The first step is to have someone visit your website, where they would then receive a retargeting cookie. Then, the retargeting cookies will place ads strategically on the websites they visit, be it search engines, or social media. Afterwards, when they click on the ad, it will bring them back to your website to complete the sale. With B2B, the biggest challenge is visitors, and you need visitors to have sales.

The Importance of Website Retargeting

Why should you look into retargeting as a marketing strategy? The fact is, once someone leaves your site, they’re almost always gone forever. In fact, around 98% of would-be customers will leave your site, once they’ve visited, and not come back to buy anything at all. 

You don’t want to lose out on those sales that those website visits could have brought, and that’s why retargeting is so important as a strategy. You can advertise to those customers with a retargeting cookie, and they’ll be reminded of what you offer, and be more likely to come back. It’s quite a simple strategy, but one that’s highly effective.

How Retargeting in Marketing Works

So how does the system work for you? You’ve probably been on the other end of the strategy, and not even realized it. 

Have you ever visited a website to have a look around, and then gone elsewhere online? You very likely saw adverts on these other sites for the site you just left. In some cases, they would have even advertised the items that you looked at back at you. 

This happened because when you visited the site, you will have accepted cookies to browse it. One of those cookies is a retargeting cookie. Your browser will ‘remember’ where you’ve been, and feed you ads for that store. 

You can take advantage of this for your own site. It’s quite simple to set up, and once you do customers will be seeing your adverts online whenever they browse. With those ads, they’re more likely to come back and buy from you.

Pixel vs List Based Retargeting

There are two ways in which retargeting marketing can work for your business. These are pixel based retargeting, and list based retargeting. Which is the one that will work best for you?

Pixel Based Retargeting

This method uses browser cookie tech, as mentioned above. You’ll add a small piece of code to your site, which is often called a ‘pixel’ as it’s small and unobtrusive. As it’s so small, it shouldn’t affect site performance and customers won’t notice it. 

Every time you get a new visitor, that code will embed that cookie into their browser. It simply stores the fact that they visited your site, but won’t store any personal info such as a name or email address. Once the customer leaves the site, the cookie tracks their web browsing activity. They’ll then see ads for your site on other sites they visit, and that encourages them to come back. 

List Based Retargeting

So how does this method compare? Typically, this is used on social media platforms, and retargets customers that are well known to you. As you already know the customer, the ads on a website can be highly customized, making it more likely for them to come back and buy from you. 

However, there are some issues with this method that make it harder to use. For example, there’s a low match rate between B2B contact lists and social platforms. It also needs you to go through your contact list manually, and reupload the list on a regular basis. It’s a lot more work for potentially less payoff, but it is still something you should consider. 

Finding Your Target Audience

When looking to use a retargeting campaign, you’ll need to identify your target audience. Who are you looking to target through these ads? Every single unconverted visitor will seem like a good option, but you can’t pour all your marketing resources into all of them. As such, you’ll need to segment that audience and pick the right people to focus on.

“For example, you can build a campaign on those who have visited a specific page on your site. That’s a good option if you’re hoping to encourage sales of a particular item. That also works if you target those who come to your landing page and don’t download the free ebook that you’re offering”,

explains Gary Johnson, a Digital marketer at Lia Help and UKWritings.

You can also create retargeting campaigns based around certain customer types and traits, such as age, occupation, etc. These details can be picked up through your market research and third party aggregators. 

So Why is a Retargeting Strategy Effective?

It’s a cost-effective way to engage potential customers, or even bring them back to your site. On average, about 2% of your website traffic will convert. You want to find a way to bring in the other 98%, and that’s where retargeting comes in. As you only need a small piece of code to handle the retargeted ads, it’s very cost-effective and easy to implement. 

It makes sense to spend time targeting this section of your audience. They’ve already shown interest in your product, so you’ll want to try and bring them further down through the marketing funnel. 

As well as this, retargeting is a good way of raising brand awareness. If you have longer buying cycles, you want your customers to remember you even when they’re not looking to buy right now. With these targeted ads, they’ll know who to go to when they are ready.

It helps to sustain brand awareness, which is essential with B2B’s longer buying cycles. Retargeting is especially beneficial if you offer free trials, which eliminate risk and generate sign-ups for your brand right away.

Retargeting those that have signed up for your free trial will remind them to take the steps necessary to enroll into a paid service that you offer. One thing to keep in mind is customers do not like seeing ads retargeting for services or products they have already purchased. It’s essential to ensure you are not using retargeting ads to draw customers back to sign up for a free trial they have already signed up for, or to purchase something they have already purchased.

You can still advertise to existing customers, but you must do so in a way that adds value to your ad. One way would be suggesting a paid product to those with the free trial, such as an upsell through a freemium product.

How Does Website Retargeting Benefit You?

Using retargeting allows you to reconnect with past visitors, providing value in multiple ways. In one way it helps to solidify consumers to your brand. We have all heard that you need to repeat something 3 times before you are most likely to remember it.

By reminding customers of your brand, and services or products relevant to their needs, they’re more likely to buy from you, as consumers tend to buy from familiar brands that they’ve had positive associations with.

Reconnecting with your target audience increases engagement, no matter where the buying cycle is. Take care to ensure the right message to your audience, based on what they have viewed, or perhaps missed, or did not finalize. The trick to winning over customers is using branding and engagement to your advantage, by using retargeting to create a message to previous visitors, which have the highest intent to buy, such as those that have placed an item into their cart but left before finalizing the transaction.

How Does it Generate Leads?

With B2B, the cycle for sales is usually longer than those of consumer goods. Customers are more likely to thoroughly research all options diligently.

Amanda Hammer, a Marketing strategist at Bigassignments and Eliteassignmenthelp comments:

“Retargeting keeps your customers reminded of your brand while they are looking at your competition, which helps keep awareness, and thus generate leads. It also helps you nurture those leads, by keeping them engaged. One way to do this is through email retargeting campaigns. All this does is add a retargeting code into the HTML or into your email signature. In turn, anyone who opens your email will start seeing your ads while they are browsing the web”.

How Can it Help You Reach Your Target Audience?

Every visitor to your site is a candidate for retargeting, although financially, it may not make sense to target every visitor. Companies often focus their resources on those that best align with business goals, the goal often being intent to purchase.

An easy way to do this is via behavioral retargeting. This means targeting those customers who place an item into their cart but leave before finalizing their transaction. Retargeting would remind them of that item, and prompt them to return to your site, to complete the desired action.

Another important aspect for retargeting campaigns is to learn where your targets spend their time when they are online. Are they spending time at competitors’ websites? Are they on social media? Using social media to your advantage is highly effective because of how likely people are to openly share information or discuss brands.

Many people assume retargeting is only for ecommerce, however there are a multitude of ways it can be used to help B2B companies with their goals, increasing brand awareness, and becoming familiar to customers, increasing traffic to their sites, which would increase leads, conversions and then of course, revenue.

It may take some time for them to come back to finalize their purchase, so that is why retargeting is an effective way of reminding customers of the services and products that you offer.

Retargeting vs Remarketing

Many first time marketers will have heard the term ‘remarketing’ as well as ‘retargeting’. Are these the same thing?

They are very similar concepts. They’re both marketing strategies that aim to target customers who’ve already been to your site, and are more likely to make a purchase. They’re also designed to build up lasting connections with your customer base. However, they differ in how that goal is achieved. 

Retargeting uses paid ads online, to target your customers where they are and make them aware of what you have to offer them. On the other hand, remarketing works through email. This involves sending emails to people who have bought from you before. 

The key difference is you’re looking to target customers who have visited your site, but haven’t bought from you yet. As such the tactics are slightly different. You may well use both in your marketing strategy, though. 

When to use Retargeting Ads

You’ve seen just why these ads are so effective, so of course you’ll want to try and use them yourself. Every business is different though, and so you’ll need to find the best marketing strategy for you. There are several times when you’ll want to give retargeting a try:

• If your website gets 100 hits or more a month, then retargeting will be a viable marketing strategy for you. Your business already needs to have a following for it to work effectively, so if that sounds like you, you’re in luck. 
• Are you bringing in a new product selection? If so, then you can use retargeting in order to show your customers everything about it. Those ads can be tailored to show off what’s new, and give your customers a clear path back to your site so they can pick up your newest items. 
• Promote your best sellers with retargeting, as this is an effective strategy to get customers to come back and check them out. If they’re already familiar with you and your store, they’ll be more likely to come back and buy. 
• You can also use retargeting to move some slow moving inventory too, should you need to. Every store owner has had to deal with some stock that you just couldn’t shift from time to time. With retargeting, you can advertise it to an audience that may already be interested, and get sales moving again.
• Finally, retargeting is great when you’re looking to build brand awareness. Many customers will need to visit you a few times before they go ahead and buy from you. As such, you’ll want to stay in their mind as they consider the purchase, and retargeted ads help you do that.

Retargeting vs Remarketing – Using Retargeting With Other Marketing Strategies

If you’re using retargeting in your marketing strategy, it needs to be used alongside other marketing strategies too. You always need more than one marketing channel, as there’s always going to be different types of customers that you want to focus on. If you only use one channel to meet the needs of one customer type, others are going to fall through the cracks.

“As such, make sure you’re researching other marketing tools too, and ensure that you know who your customers are. With good market research, you’ll be able to really boost your reach,”

says Diane Millton, a blogger at OXEssays and State Of Writing.

Summary

There’s a lot to know about retargeting, but when used correctly it’s a powerful part of your marketing strategy. 

When only around 2% of website visitors convert, you want to find a way to bring them back and get them to convert on the site. That’s where retargeting cookies come in. A small piece of code on the site will track their behavior online, and send them ads for your site. 

You can target these ads at certain demographics on your site, to really bring in a certain type of customer, or get a certain product selling. 

Retargeting should be used with other marketing strategies, in order to really give you the best chance of converting those customers. For example, it seems as though retargeting and remarketing are the same, but they’re actually slightly different tactics. They can both be used to up your chances of a sale. 

There are a lot of benefits to using retargeting ads. They’ll help bring those customers back and get that sale. They also ensure that you stay at the forefront of their mind as they’re shopping around, and make it more likely for them to come back. As well as this, you’ll see that you can promote certain items, such as new products or slow moving stock. 

Overall, it’s a strategy that’s best used when you already have a following. If customers are visiting your site, you can send retargeted ads to them and get the most from this strategy.

As such, you’ll want to consider using website retargeting ads in your marketing strategy, if you aren’t already. It’s a cost-effective solution for many businesses, and you can see some amazing results when used correctly. Put it in your strategy now and see just how well it works.

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