Complete Guide To Retargeting
In this “Power of Digital Marketing” series, we cover everything from the power of search, content marketing, and additional tactics to help you build and grow your business through Omni-Channel Marketing. The last installment covered the beginners guide to keyword strategy.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting, or specifically “behavioral retargeting”, is a type of Internet-based advertising that is tailored to consumers based on their previous online actions. This is achieved by tagging online users by including a piece of code, often times referred to as a pixel, within the target webpage, which then sets a cookie in the user's browser. Retargeting works by keeping track of users who visit your site and displaying your ads to them as they visit other sites online to try and capture their business.
What are “Cookies”?
Cookies are small pieces of data that are sent from a website and stored in the user's web browser. Marketers use these cookies to gather information on the user’s behavior, using Javascript to anonymously track what products they view on different websites to create a learned algorithm. This algorithm is then used to advertise targeted content to promote a brand or a product in which the user has expressed previous interest.
How Does Retargeting Work?
The buyer's journey is very complex, evolving and changing daily. Users visit your website and then quickly leave, usually not converting on the first visit.
In general, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Once a user visits your website or blog and then leaves to visit other sites, they’ll start to see your ads while reading an article, listening to music, or browsing other websites. The intent is that your repeated, targeted, ads will provide the user with additional opportunities to remind them of your product offering and value proposition. This will help bring them back to your site, when they’re sales ready. Retargeting is a tool designed to help brands reach the 98% of users that don’t convert the first time, allowing you to stay top-of-mind, so that when they want to buy, you’re there.
What are The Best Retargeting Tools?
Behavioral retargeting can be employed in a variety of channels including social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), mobile apps, dynamic retargeting (personalized ads up to the specific product/service level), and search engines (retargeting based on keywords a user entered into search instead of website visits).
Retargeting is a very powerful branding and conversion tool, but it works best when combined with inbound and outbound marketing channels.
Pay-per-click, search engine optimization (SEO), and content marketing are great for driving traffic to your website or blog, but they don’t help with conversion optimization. They are therefore naturally complementing to Retargeting, which will increase the conversion rate achieved from these visits.
To optimize your success, use several digital channels to drive traffic, while using retargeting to get the most out of that traffic. By ensuring your brand stays front and center across all channels and devices, you set your company up to have the best possible opportunity to make the sale.
