Blog Post

Retargeting Ads – The Digital Marketer’s Secret Weapon 

  • By Mark Baker
  • 16 Nov, 2016

Creating a robust strategy is vital to an effective marketing campaign. There are lots of ad formats and types to choose from, but one important one to remember is the retargeting ad.
What are retargeting ads? They’re ads that are directed towards people who have already visited your website and interacted with your brand. Unlike display ads, which are shown to everyone, retargeting ads allow you to anonymously follow your website visitors around the Web and display your content in useful and effective ways, helping to turn potential customers into qualified leads.

This type of advertisement can prove particularly important; studies note that 73% of all business to business leads are not sales-ready when they first interact with your brand. This suggests a need to continue to reach out to help them along the buyers journey until they’re ready to make a purchase. Email marketing is one tactic to consider, but online digital retargeting is another great way to remind and re-engage your customers.

Here are a few best practices to consider when you’re creating retargeting ads:


1. Integrate Retargeting Ads into Your Marketing Budget

Marketing results will reflect how much time and planning you put into the campaign. In order to be effective they need to be comprehensive. Planning your retargeting ads and budgeting for them correctly is an excellent way to make sure your marketing plan is robust and compelling. This may seem obvious but simple tactics often are the best. If you are thorough in your budgeting and planning, it will show in your performance.

It’s also important to make realistic and trackable goals for retargeting ads, as well as your entire campaign. What do we mean by realistic? Think direct conversion and click through rates, or a quantifiable number that you can track. Create goals that will actually measure if your ads are effective by making them simple, trackable, and precise. And remember, when we say track, we mean early and often


2. Choose the Right Platform and Type 

Once you’ve set your budget and created your plan, there are a number of platforms and types of retargeting ads from which to choose. The main platforms are Facebook, Google, and Bing. The platform you choose should reflect what kind of company you are and the habits of your ideal buyer. If your brand has a lot of personality and embraces a strong community presence, Facebook is probably the right platform for you. If you want to appeal to a more professional audience, you might be better suited for Google or Bing. Each platform has different steps to set up the ads, but are all three are generally straight-forward and user-friendly.

Next, choose which of the two types of retargeting ads will work best for you. The first is called list-based. These ads are generated for people who have voluntarily given your company their contact information for your database. The second and more common type are called pixel-based. This type of retargeting ad tracks anonymous site visitors and redisplays your advertisement once they’ve left your page.


3. Segmentation is Everything 

The importance of segmenting your audience cannot be overstated. This is true for retargeting ads and just about every piece of your overall marketing plan. Segmenting your audiences for your retargeting ads allows to you speak directly to where potential leads are in the buyers journey, and target them with products they’ve already expressed interest in. With Pixel based retargeting ads you can create different ads for the different pages and products that site visitors browsed. If visitors looked at something specific you can make sure the ad generated for them is for the product they were searching for. It’s rare, delightful and effective when ads are tailored specifically for potential customers and what they uniquely were searching for.

Another important point to consider is the destination URL connected to each ad you create. Instead of linking every ad directly to your home page or product page, tailor the link to match the subject matter of the ad.


4. Don’t be Annoying 

Repetition can become annoying, and if your retargeting ads are following site visitors all over the Web, they could quickly become bored with the messaging. The last thing you want is to turn interest in your product into aversion or dislike. Frequency caps are a useful setting that can prevent oversaturating your target audience and make sure they only see the ad a few times; enough to tempt them but hopefully not overwhelm or annoy them.

Burn codes are another useful tool you can use to make sure your ads are only working for you and not against you. Burn codes are little snippets of code that you can place in your post-transactional page where leads are taken after they make a purchase. They allow you to make sure you don’t run these ads for visitors that have already been converted to customers, so you don’t waste your spend budget on people who are already fans, and don’t get annoyed after they’ve made a purchase.


5. Analyze Your Ad’s Results 

Analyzing your ad is paramount to its success – and by no means should you wait until after the campaign is over to start doing it. Create ads with different copy, different images, new CTAs and track how they perform in your retargeting ads. Only change one element at a time so you can be sure of the effect of each change, but don’t be afraid to test everything. It’s probably a good idea to switch up your audience segmentation every now and then too, just to make sure your retargeting ad is doing the very best that it possibly can.


In conclusion, retargeting ads are a must-have for any thorough digital marketing plan. With the help of these best practices, your retargeting ads can become the foundation of your digital lead targeting strategy. Remember, planning beforehand and analyzing your results throughout is the best way to make sure your campaigns work successfully.


 

Mark Baker

Mark Baker is a natural artist. Since starting his first business hand painting graphics onto vehicles in high school, Mark gained experience in the entertainment, sports, and retail industries before founding this company in 1993. Honest and pragmatic, Mark knows that anything can be accomplished with a great communication plan and creative thinking. 

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