Retargeting is often a very effective form of display advertising, because you only show ads to people who have already expressed an interest in your product or service. While the technique has already been widely accepted throughout the mainstream world, adult is still learning and understanding the potential value in this marketing method.
Here are a number of simple answers to questions, as well as strategies, on retargeting:
All in all retargeting is a very powerful marketing tool, working on your website visitors, creating in effect an invisible pool of prospects to fish from.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting is when you as an advertiser are explicitly targeting people who have visited your website already, but who for some reason haven’t purchased anything yet. You probably have noticed this, when your wife has been surfing the Internet looking for shoes, you will notice all kinds of shoe advertisements popping up in your Facebook page or on your news site or even YouTube.
How does it work? When a visitor comes to your site or specific product page, an ad network places a small cookie on this visitor. This allows the ad network to track the visitor over its entire network. If the visitor then goes to a page on a totally different website, but one that is still connected to the ad network, the ad network will be able to retarget this visitor, essentially showing him the “special limited time” offer you have for him.
Is Retargeting Right for Me?
When it comes to traditional banner advertising, without any guidance towards specific target groups, this essentially is a way for many to create and enhance their brand awareness by means of pure exposure. While retargeting works on quality instead of quantity, creating a “conversion bringer “ for all the traffic you drive to your site regardless of traffic source. Retargeting ads work well to communicate further with those who have already shown interest in what you can offer them. This in turn increases the conversion ratio, depending on the product and audience by up to 150 percent.
For example an established website converts about 1-3 percent of the “cold” traffic. Retargeting can help you to “remind” the other 97 percent of your offers and increase your chances that those visitors will convert later.
If your goal is to get an outright sale and that you have a decent amount of traffic on your website, more than 5,000-10,000 unique visitors per month, retargeting can be the right solution for you.
However, it can be so that it does not fit you if your value per customer is at low levels. If you have a relatively low conversion on your site compared to others in the industry, it can be difficult to get it profitable even with retargeting, so this is an important factor that you have to keep in mind.
What Results Can I Expect?
Compared to traditional display advertising, you can expect a considerably better click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate from retargeting campaigns. To demonstrate with an example we can compare the CTR for traditional display advertising and CTR for retargeting.
• An average display campaign (without steering audiences) typically generates CTR of 0.04 percent-0.08 percent.
• While retargeting often results in at least the double CTR: 0.10 percent-0.15 percent.
Looking then at the conversion rate, it of course varies depending on products and the conversion on the landing pages. But I‘ve worked with clients who normally are around 2 percent conversion rate, which in many cases went up to 4-8 percent with retargeting traffic. This type of result is not at all unusual, they are the rule rather than the exception. And if you use dynamic retargeting ads you can even expect both higher CTR and conversion compared to what is standard for your site.
Appear Bigger Than You Are
One thing that many people I work with like, is when their visitors see their ads on some of the biggest websites. Especially when they appear at some of larger tubes (such as PornHub, YouPorn, HardSexTube, Xhamster, Tube8 etc.). Visitors who visited your site, and then go out in on the Internet, will see your ad on these big sites and in some cases believe that you are advertising directly on those sites.
Which in turn can increase confidence in your brand further than if they saw your ad on an “amateurish” blog or website with a lot of traffic which is located in the gray area of what is moral. But in order to gain the power you need to see the provider’s site list (an open ad network that shows you a list of all their sites that your ads may appear on) otherwise there may be a reverse effect on your visibility on pages that devalue your brand.
How to Get Started With Retargeting
I recommend that you have a certain amount of traffic before launching a retargeting campaign, because Retargeting only shows ads for the traffic that has visited your site before. So if you have some traffic on the site it also means that you get a very small group of people to show retargeted ads to, which in turn means very little traffic for a campaign, which can effect your sales ratio.
My recommendation is to have at least 5,000 unique visitors per month, or more before you’ll launch your retargeting campaign. When it comes to dynamic retargeting, I recommend that you have approximately 25,000 unique visitors per month.
The exact process for starting a retargeting campaign may vary per retargeting provider, each ad network offers different ways of retargeting. But more or less, the whole process is the same for most suppliers.
Determine the Cost for You to Accept a New Lead
It’s great if you already know, before launching the campaign, what a new customer is worth (customer value) for your business. It can be a key to measure and optimize campaign received during the promotion period.
Higher customer value means that you can afford a larger ad budget and can quickly scale up the campaign. Take into account lifetime value for your customer by weighting the average number of recurrent purchases, to derive a figure for what a new customer may cost you. This figure is more important than what CTR you would get on your campaign.
Optimization and Reporting
While you’ve now determined the maximum cost a new lead may cost you, this does not mean that your retargeting campaign is can be run with a “fire and forget” strategy. Without the proper efficiency between different ads and offers, your campaign can come to a screeching halt. The right offer and the right ads can be the difference between success and failure, try to replace your advertising material every 4-6 weeks to prevent your visitors from becoming blind to your ads.
Some of the best advertising networks strive to keep a close relationship with customers, keeping an eye on the campaign performance, even down to individual ads. If ads are performing sub-par, most systems automatically flag that ad for review. This keeps your campaigns optimal and fresh as much as possible.
All in all retargeting is a very powerful marketing tool, working on your website visitors, creating in effect an invisible pool of prospects to fish from. You shouldn’t let this very valuable resource go to waste, especially when you have already paid for their attention, but for some reason didn’t convert, retargeting is the tool to target this group of people, remind them of your offer and dramatically reduce the cost per lead.
Judy Shalom is CEO of ADAMO Advertising
