Understanding the Basics of Retargeting Ads

It can take a lot of work to drive steady, high-quality traffic to your business’s website. Between search engine optimization, social media marketing, digital advertising, and more, you may be investing a great deal of effort and budget promoting your business online. With so much of your marketing efforts devoted to getting the right traffic to your website, it can feel like a major defeat when much of that hard-earned traffic leaves your site without taking action.

Luckily, prospects who leave your site aren’t lost to you forever. Using a digital advertising method called retargeting, you can reconnect with this valuable audience and guide them along the path to conversion.

TIP 1 | What are retargeting ads?

Retargeting ads are online ads that are shown to specific audiences based on their activity on your website. These ads might “follow” a user as they browse other websites, or appear in their social media feeds. There are a variety of different ways to use retargeting to promote your business, and it can be surprisingly easy to create a very precise retargeting strategy.

With retargeting ads, you have a tremendous amount of creative potential. You have the ability to create bold image ads that highlight your core services, dynamic ads that automatically showcase the specific products a customer viewed on your site, and engaging video ads that share your key messages in a friendly, personable way.

TIP 2 | How Do Retargeting Ads Work?

In order to use retargeting ads to stay connected with website visitors, you first need to add a snippet of tracking code to your website. The advertising platform you are using, such as Facebook or Google, will provide you with instructions so either you or your developer can add the code to your site.

When a user visits your site, a piece of code is automatically placed on their browser. This transfer takes place “behind the scenes” and is not noticeable or intrusive for the user. Once the user leaves your site, that piece of code sends the signal to start showing the user your retargeting ads as they browse other sites.

TIP 3 | Why Are Retargeting Ads So Effective?

In an ideal world, every single visitor who ends up on your website is ready to buy, and follows through with making a purchase. In reality, the path to becoming a customer is often a meandering one. At any given time, your website visitors are probably each at a different stage of the decision-making process. Some may still be trying to decide if they even need your services, while others may be in need but are still weighing all of their options. Through remarketing, you can share targeted ads that appeal to each of these audiences, along with any others that you want to stay connected with.

Before you launch any retargeting ads, it’s important to spend some time learning more about each step of your buying cycle. Once you have a better understanding of each phase of the typical customer journey, you can start building out an advertising strategy that addresses their needs and concerns at every phase.

By using retargeting ads that are designed to suit the needs of your audience(s), you can subtly lead them to the point where they are ready to convert. The best retargeting campaigns are effective because they address the needs and concerns of prospects, and work to break down any barriers that are preventing them from making a purchase decision.

TIP 4 | What are some best practices for executing Retargeting Ads?

While retargeting campaigns can be incredibly effective, there are some potential issues you can run into without a solid strategy in place. A poorly-executed retargeting strategy can annoy some users, or even seem intrusive. Luckily, these issues can be avoided by following a few best practices:

• Create eye-catching ads that drive action. The overall success of your retargeting efforts hinges on the quality of your ad creative. If you’re going to invest your advertising dollars in a retargeting campaign, you owe it to yourself to also invest in beautifully-designed ads. Each of your ads should be consistent with your brand to make them more recognizable. Bold, branded colors and clear calls to action are also important. You’ll also want to make sure that any copy on your ads is clear and concise. Trying to fit too much copy into a small ad can cause your message to be overlooked
• Segment your audience whenever possible. One major benefit of using retargeting is the potential to really personalize your ad content to suit your audiences. Platforms such as Facebook and Google make it easy to segment your audience based on which pages they visited on your site. You can then create a variety of ads that are tailored to each of those audiences. For example, users who only visited your homepage might see ads with more general brand awareness messaging. Users who browsed specific product or service pages may be closer to making a purchase decision, so your remarketing ads should feature content related to the products or services they viewed during their visit.
• Provide a cohesive and high-quality user experience. No matter what type of digital ad you are running, your ads should send traffic to pages that have a similar look and feel to the ad content. You also need to ensure that users arrive on a page that feels like the logical next step from the ad they clicked on. For example, if your ad mentions a promotion for a discount on a specific service, it needs to send users to a page about that service and promotion. If there is any disconnect between the ad and the landing page, either visually or within the content, users are more likely to leave your site without taking any action.

With any digital advertising strategy, it’s important to put the needs of your users first. By creating a cohesive, user-focused experience, you’ll be able to achieve better results through your campaigns. For help with creating a digital advertising strategy that is tailored to your business goals, contact our team for a free Digital Marketing Plan.