If you’ve spent time online looking at websites for purchase ideas, chances are you’ve experienced retargeting advertising. The telltale sign comes from ads in your social media feeds directly related to websites you visited. This type of advertising is called retargeting. Given that around 97-98% of all those who visit websites don’t buy anything, retargeting is an excellent way to re-engage potential customers.

Some might think retargeting ad campaigns are trickery. After all, we don’t ask for those intrusive ad placements, which can be embarrassing if the websites we visited should be kept private. Are our web searches and online activities public knowledge? The default answer is yes. However, given recent privacy laws such as the EU’s GDPR, most people have the option to opt-out of targeted advertising, even if it isn’t readily known. 

Nonetheless, enough people keep their default privacy settings intact, making targeted advertising a beneficial strategy. Retargeting works for most businesses. However, the retargeting advertising strategy depends on the company and its products and services. This article highlights six retargeting strategies.

Site Retargeting

Site retargeting is perhaps the most common because it is the easiest to employ. Since a potential customer already visited your website, all you need to do is tag that visitor and follow them around the internet. Once the visitor goes to a public place such as Instagram, your site places ads inside that visitor’s Instagram feed.

Ideally, your website should not follow everyone. Instead, tag those who are likely to purchase something when the visitor goes back to your site. For example, many people leave a website before buying items left in a shopping cart.

Narrowing the list of potential targets for more advertising can be achieved with buyer persona targeting. For instance, if your core buyers are grade school teachers, you wouldn’t want to target plumbers. Buyer personas come from market research that considers aspects such as demographics.

Cross-Channel Retargeting

The online advertising world has multiple channels where users are engaged in different ways. To this end, online advertising agencies skilled in cross-channel retargeting increase conversion rates. The social media advertising experts at Web Rocket Media understand how to adjust an advertising message to match the platform.

While using cross-channel retargeting, the online advertising agency should not flood a visitor’s media channels with messages. This approach could discourage potential customers because they feel like ad messages are harassing them. Instead, find ideal times to present messages that make the least possible intrusion into people’s lives. In other words, don’t be that telemarketer that calls at dinnertime.

Search Retargeting

Search retargeting requires looking for people who used search engines and keywords specific to your business. Unfortunately, this type of retargeting is highly dependent on user intent and susceptible to error. While Google’s algorithms moved toward determining user intent in recent years, search retargeting should not rely solely on Google.

Search retargeting works best when using other retargeting strategies presented in the article. In particular, you can make some assumptions about why a grade school teacher would use the keywords “colored pencils.” Conversely, you would make a different user intent assumption if a plumber used “colored pencils” keywords.

Sales Funnel Segmented Retargeting

So far, we’ve mentioned a handful of retargeting strategies based on two stages of the customer decision to purchase process. These are visiting a website and getting potential customers to come back to the same website for possible sales conversion. And, as noted above, buyer intent is critical to understanding whom to retarget. Online advertising agencies can break down buyer intent even further with the sales funnel. 

The sales funnel looks at customer conversion as a process that goes from potential customer/website visitor to converted customer.

• The top of the funnel has two levels: website visitor and sales lead.
• The middle part of the funnel contains two levels: those that interact with marketing material and those that interact with sales material.
• The bottom part of the funnel also has two levels: opportunity and customer.

The type of retargeting message varies depending on where in the sales funnel the customer resides. Retargeting for sales funnel positions is not as hard as it might seem. Today’s websites have multiple pages at different levels in the sales funnel. Using tags, web admins can know what pages visitors see.

Brand Loyalty Retargeting

Retargeting those customers who already bought something might seem like a waste of money. Either the customer likes the product and will repurchase it, or they don’t. However, this thinking is shortsighted because it doesn’t take into account the nature of e-commerce marketplaces. There is so much competition that one-time customers need reminding. Keep in mind, returning customers have already been through a sales funnel.

Brand loyalty targeting is something all e-commerce merchants should consider as soon as the first advertising campaign begins. Brand loyalty ties directly to buyer experience and the moment the customer first sees the product.

From the first sale on, the customer needs to remember the buying experience in a positive light. Brand loyalty retargeting is a friendly reminder that you might need to repurchase the product. At the same time, add more value to the repurchase with freemiums and other customer service options like free shipping.

Retargeting for B2B

In answering the question: “does retargeting work for all types of businesses?” the answer is a simple yes. However, B2B retargeting takes a different set of strategies based on a longer sales funnel. B2B deals take an average of between four and seven months to close. While this is considerably longer than most B2C deals, B2B is several times more lucrative.

Online advertising agencies such as Web Rocket Media understand the B2B retargeting advertising world. Their advertising experts keep B2B clients at the forefront of their business with relevant and timely content that addresses all stages of sales funnel B2B customers. For example, it isn’t just one person buying the product or service. Multiple stakeholders participate, which means retargeting must reach everyone in the sales funnel.

In closing, give Web Rocket Media a call and discover the difference an experienced online advertising agency brings to the table.