Retargeting is a form of online advertising that is informed by a customer’s previous engagement with your content. Once a customer engages with your content, be it on your website, blog, or any other medium, they will see targeted advertisements for your goods and services on other websites and social media platforms. This keeps your company fresh in their minds and encourages them to come back.
You can retarget potential customers for free or through paid methods. Obviously, free methods aren’t truly free; they cost time, and paid methods yield better results, so either direction you choose to go is the right one because you’re doing something for your business.
The Benefits of Retargeting
Have you ever gone to a networking event where you didn’t know anyone?
After glancing at the faces in the room, you spotted someone who looked vaguely familiar, and just like that, you were motivated to start your networking efforts with that person. Why?
That sense of familiarity signaled to your brain that connecting with that person might be easier or more enjoyable than connecting with total strangers.
Generally speaking, unless our initial contact with a brand or a person is negative, the more we are “exposed” to them, the more we develop a preference for them. The American Psychological Association calls this the mere-exposure effect. For instance, if you were to recognize that same person at a conference a few months later, you’d probably choose to sit near them instead of getting nestled between strangers again. You would be demonstrating a preference.
The mere-exposure effect works on potential customers as well. When you retarget them in different settings, you gradually increase their preference for your brand. You become that one familiar face in a room full of strangers. When they’re looking to book inflatables, concessions, foam machines, and more, they remember your face. They’ve seen your logo all over the place and countless positive reviews about your business since the day they first engaged with your content. On some level, they inherently trust they’re going to have an easier, more enjoyable time dealing with your company than with a random find online.
And that’s good for business.
FREE RETARGETING METHODS
This method only works if you can get the customer’s info, like an email or a phone number you can text.
Essentially, you want to retarget your customers with email campaigns and/or text messages based on the behavior they exhibited on your site and their points of interest.
Did they add something to their cart without checking out? Send cart abandonment emails. Did they linger on the page about inflatable games? Send emails, testimonials, or links to your blog posts about inflatable games.
NOTE! You’ll need to send at least eight messages to your prospect because, on average, it takes eight encounters with a brand before customers commit to a purchase. To make it easier on yourself, your messages should be pre-written and scheduled to go out at intervals of time.
Make sure your content is engaging, and you’ve written interesting email subject lines. The last thing you want is for your emails to get ignored or end up in the spam folder. Test your email subject line with https://sendcheckit.com/email-subject-line-tester.
PAID RETARGETING METHODS
This is where retargeting gets exciting and yields phenomenal results. For starters:
- Input a Facebook pixel on your site.
- Create events within certain URLs to target specific customers within your site based on their activities.
- Set up a retargeting campaign for all users within the past X days that have been on your site, looked at an item, or put an item in their cart. You can also choose to retarget the top 25% of site visitors based on the amount of time spent on the site. The metric you use is up to you.
- Exclude users who checked out.
Now, it’s time to work that retargeting magic. Deliver a beautiful, dynamic ad about the experiences you offer, the benefits of choosing your company, and the many happy customers who were elated to have done business with you. Let your prospect build a preference for your brand over time.
And when I say “over time,” I mean it. Just like football championships are won one game at a time, retargeting is a “season-long” strategy that brings in the harvest if you stick with it.
CASE STUDY
Check out the success of the BestLyfe client below.
This table, best viewed on a desktop, not mobile, represents 3 months of different retargeting ad campaigns. The results are outstanding!
Our client spent $2,945.63 on retargeting ads we configured for their business.
Those ads resulted in $60,135.79 in purchases.
Their return was 20.42 times their spending.
Whether your business makes $50,000 a year or several million, when you don’t invest in retargeting strategies, you’re leaving money on the table.
The best part about all this is our client retargeted customers with benefit-rich ads showing cheerful kids, happy parents, and glowing reviews.
They didn’t have to pimp themselves out by flashing offers like $25 off, nor did they resort to showing everything they had in inventory, crossing their fingers, hoping at least one of those items would lead to a sale.
They used advertising that built trust, and they got paid!
