It’s the new year and you need a new idea to capture the interest of your target market. In 2017 you worked hard on getting traffic to your site, which is great. Problem is – while you’re now getting enough traffic, not many of these visitors are converting. This is where retargeting comes in.
Imagine: you’re playing a game, you’ve mastered the first level in 2017. Come 2018 and you’ve levelled up, this round is focused on retargeting. The goal? Focus, aim and hit the big red bullseye.
To achieve this you must go through a number of marketing mini-missions. Catch audiences that previously visited your site, but didn’t convert and the bullseye gets closer to reaching. Do this, and your ROI will receive a boost. Level two – complete.
Background on retargeting
Retargeting, also known as remarketing is exactly what it sounds like. You’re focusing your marketing efforts on capturing traffic that hasn’t converted.
All you require to complete this mission is a simple Javascript code, usually called a Pixel. The pixel will be placed within your sites code and will silently wait to drop a browser cookie everytime a new visitor clicks on your site.
When a website is open it’ll give the visitor an option; accept the cookie, view cookie policy and change cookie settings.
What the cookie does
The cookie dropped will track your visitor when they next browse the internet. When they do this, they’ll be picked up and shown your specific ad in the hopes to recapture their interest.
Did you know? Most sites only covert 2% of first-time visitors!
This means that the other 98% of site visitors that don’t convert first time around, will now be reintroduced to your site.
1. Demographic Filtering
One way to modify your remarketing list is through filtering your audience demographically. The simple options are by age, gender and language, however, to go one step further, you can target your audience based on specific categories. An example of this could be “gamers”.
These people are towards the mid-upper level of the funnel who have shown some sort of interest for a topic related to your business but have not yet engaged with your business.
Another option for you to consider is in-market segments. These allow you to find users that are really interested in your products. These types of people are actively researching products or services that your business offers.
You can apply these filters in Google Analytics. However, it’s important to note that these filters are very specific. If you don’t have a lot of traffic going to your website, you could see the audience size shrink very quickly. You can also use PPC (pay per click) to advertise to your demographic.
2. Segmentation
Boost your focus by refining your retargeting audience by user behaviour. These more refined groups are called segments. You can segment users by a number of behaviours, some include:
- Site pages visited
- Number of pages visited
- Shopping cart status
To dig deeper into segmenting by user behaviour, let’s take a look at an example – Say you’re retargeting by shopping cart status, more specifically, those who have products in their baskets but fail to purchase, then you’ll create an ad campaign that sparks their buying mood.
An easy way to do this? Advertise a discount for the products in their basket, to only those who fit this segment.
To learn how to use segmentation in your retargeting ad campaign, visit Google analytics answers.
3. Sales Funnel
So you’ve completed mission 1 and 2, next up is learning about the sales funnel. The segments that you’ve chosen will fit into the levels of the sales funnel.We can split the sales funnel up into three basic sections:
- Upper funnel – New customers (irrelevant to retargeting)
- Mid-funnel – Users that have shown interest in your site (perfect!)
- Lower-funnel – Users that have shown interest in a specific product (even better)
Ideally, you want to be retargeting users that fit into the mid and lower funnel.
Of course, the lower-funnel will give you a higher chance of conversion seen as they are already considering buying. However, this does not mean you should miss out the mid-funnel users.
If you do, then you’re missing out on a whole ton of points and potential conversions.
4. Retargeting types
So far, we have discussed site retargeting. This is actually only one way to retarget. The main retargeting types are:
- Search – retargeting users that search keywords/phrases relevant to your business
- Site – using browser cookies to track site visitors
- Email – retargeting users based on actions taken from emails you’ve sent
- Creative – also known as engagement retargeting, retargeting users engaging with your media
You can use any of these retargeting types, but the most effective is dependant on your business. For example, if you find more users convert as a result of email marketing, then you’ll want to focus your efforts there.
5. Frequency Capping
A configuration setting named frequency capping is another great tool to use when remarketing your products or services. Frequency capping allows you to set a limit to the number of ads one particular person will see.
It’s this that allows you to avoid spamming your retargeted market. Therefore, anyone who isn’t engaging with your brand will not be annoyed by your ads popping up constantly.
In order to find the optimum frequency for your target audience, be sure to test and try different strategies. This is because every segmented list will react differently. There’s no rule or special number that you can target, so you may find increasing the frequency for one demographic works better than others.
What worked best for you?
Now we’ve run through 5 tips on retargeting it’s time for you to implement them into your ad campaign. We’d be interested to hear about your experiences with what retargeting methods have worked for your ROI. Let us know in the comments below and give this a share!