Many people are always surprised when shopping for an item, and now it seems like that item is in every ad they see. The ads follow them across devices and websites, constantly reminding them of what they are shopping for, even if they have already purchased it. This is called retargeting ads, and small businesses can use them as efficiently as large brands. Retargeting ads are essential for business marketing success because they effectively keep the attention of potential customers and help influence their decision to make a purchase.
NEXTFLY, an Indianapolis web design company, has launched many retargeting ad campaigns for businesses. A retargeting campaign could be just the push your customers need to complete a purchase.
What Are Retargeting Ads?
Retargeting ads are a powerful digital marketing strategy that allows businesses to re-engage users who have previously interacted with their website, social media, or app but didn’t complete a desired action, like making a purchase.
Retargeting ads use cookies or tracking pixels to serve personalized ads to users as they browse other sites or social media platforms. This keeps the brand top of mind and encourages them to return and take action. Retargeting ads are essential for business marketing because they can boost conversions by reminding potential customers about products or services they’ve shown interest in.
How Are Retargeting and Remarketing Different?
Remarketing is also a digital marketing strategy, but it is different from retargeting. It involves using your previous customers, those who have purchased from you in the past or signed up on a form, to send them direct marketing materials.
An example of remarketing would be sending returning customers a coupon for their next purchase, or announcing a new product. Remarketing is more general than retargeting. You also can only create a remarketing campaign for those you have contact information. Whereas, retargeting uses pixels and cookies to follow customers to different websites without asking for their email.
Defining Your Customer Journey
Before you start retargeting your customers, you need to figure out how they interact with your brand. The customer journey refers to the path a potential customer takes from first learning about your brand to making a purchase (and even beyond). It includes various stages such as awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase engagement.
By understanding this journey, businesses can create more targeted and effective retargeting ads. Mapping out the customer journey helps identify key touchpoints where users might need extra encouragement, whether it’s reminding them about a product they viewed or offering a special discount to seal the deal. Tailoring retargeting ads is essential for business marketing success because they show ads to specific stages of the journey to increase relevance, boost engagement, and improve conversion rates.
How Does Retargeting Work?
To create a retargeting ad, you would put a pixel, or a cookie in the heading of your website. This little bit of code is placed in a customer’s browser and collects the user’s IP address, so your retargeting ads can be served to that IP address in the future. Advertising platforms recognize the user during visits to other websites and social media platforms so ads can reach them.
These pixels record lots of information besides IP addresses. They track your user’s activity around the website including what pages they look at, what they click on, forms filled out, and items added to carts to name a few.
Once you collect the information you need about your customers, you can start making retargeting ads that follow these best practices:
Personalized Ads
You’ll need to make retargeting ad campaigns about your various products to make sure they retarget the same things your customers were shopping for. If you own a shoe store, and your customer browsed sandals for a while but didn’t make a purchase, make sure you have a campaign about sandals to show in your retargeting campaign. If they instead see a retargeted campaign about boots, they’re not going to be interested.
Landing Pages That Match The Ad
Make sure that your landing pages for your ad take them directly to the product you are advertising. Many businesses think that their homepage is good enough for a retargeting ad, but that only makes extra hoops for your customers to jump through. If your customer was shopping for sandals, left your site, but saw a retargeting ad on Facebook for sandals and clicked on it, you better make sure it takes them directly to that page so they can complete a purchase quickly.
Optimize Bidding
Retargeting ads often need to make sure you’re spending enough to match up with the length of the buyer’s journey. Be aware of how long the sales cycle is for your items and make sure your bids match.
Monitor Analytics
Pay attention to your analytics account to see what pages customers are clicking on and where they drop off. Your first retargeting campaign is rarely perfect with no issues. Maintenance and fine-tuning will not only keep your ads working, it can also make it easier to create new retargeting campaigns in the future.
Retargeting Ads Are Essential For Business Marketing Success
Any business can benefit from a retargeting campaign, and many of the tools needed to get one started are free to set up an account. Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Meta Ads are all free to set up an account. From there, you can start to see how customers interact with your website, and what they commonly click on and interact with.
Retargeting ads are everywhere and you can see why they’re so effective. When you don’t include retargeting ads in your digital marketing campaign, you miss out on the potential for success.
Talk to NEXTFLY® To Start A Retargeting Ad Campaign
While retargeting ads are essential for business marketing success, they can be challenging to set up and implement. If you do not have a dedicated PPC specialist as part of your team, NEXTFLY, an Indianapolis web design company, has experience rolling out retargeting ads and keeping your business top-of-mind to potential customers. Talk to us today about building your customer journey and see how retargeting ads can benefit your business.