Using Retargeting to Complement Your Marketing Strategy
Retargeting advertisements are ads that are displayed digitally to people who have already been to your website and taken a specific action. This type of action can be as simple as a page view or can be more specifically targeted toward those who started a checkout process but did not complete it.
In other words, retargeting is designed to encourage people to complete the final steps of a goal process on your website, which may include purchases, lead form submissions, content downloads, and more. If you were to look at this in relation to the marketing funnel, retargeting likely lives closer to the bottom of the funnel since it’s built not to engage new users or spread awareness, but to finish a goal set from those who are already interested and engaged.
Common Uses for Retargeting
As mentioned, retargeting is often used to try to close sales or gain leads from those who have previously dropped out of the process before completion. But there are many ways that retargeting can be applied. These include, but are not limited to:
- Re-engaging past customers after a set time frame to encourage re-purchases.
- Marketing related and complementary products to users who already completed a goal.
- Encouraging lead-form submissions for those who have not yet completed a lead.
- Engaging past customers and potential customers at a specific time when there would be heightened interest around said product. Think retargeting ads selling flowers for Valentine’s Day, as an example.
- Re-engaging users who have abandoned a goal process in the past.
What Types of Industries And Scenarios Does Retargeting Best Work For?
Given retargeting’s nature as a lower funnel tactic, it makes sense that there would be certain industries and goal types for which it works better than others. With that said, these are generalizations, and the most important item to consider is the cost relative to return.
Retargeting Usually Works Best When:
- Used on business to consumer relationships.
- Targeting items that may have an emotional appeal.
- Targeting users who have abandoned checkouts but have purchased items on your website before.
- Targeting services and goods that are normally sold online.
- Being used for items that are visually friendly and engaging (since retargeting is typically built with visual display ads).
- Used in partnership with other metrics that can identify high interest from the prospective user.
Retargeting Often Underperforms When:
- Targeting users for items that are not normally purchased online.
- Targeting goods that require a longer decision-making process to purchase. This often makes B2B purchases less ideal for retargeting programs since there is no emotional or impulsive component in the purchase process.
- Being used with poor reporting and analytics data. Lack of data means it’s difficult to understand the success or lack thereof. It also can make it more difficult to target the right segment of users to get the best results.
- The product or the display ads used in retargeting are not visually appealing or friendly. This makes it difficult to catch the user’s eye.
Why Everyone Should Try Retargeting – It’s All About the Cost and ROI
As with almost all of Google’s ads programs, one of biggest benefits is that advertisers can turn these programs on and off with the click of a button. There is also a strong ability to control costs. As a result, even for industries and scenarios that remarketing may not seem to be the best choice, it may pay to at least give it a shot. If leads or purchases cost less than the profit generated from them, there is no reason to think twice about utilizing retargeting.
Another consideration is that bidding costs for retargeting may be lower in industries for which retargeting may not be an ideal tactic. If the cost falls low enough, there is little to no downside even if your segment isn’t the ideal application for this tactic.
At the end of the day, if the effort and returns are not worth the cost, one can simply end the campaign. But most of the time, it’s at least worthwhile to try retargeting before writing the strategy off.