Best Practices of Retargeting, Part 2

In the first part of our blog series, we discussed the basics of retargeting ad campaigns and the foundational knowledge required to be effective. Now, we’ll look over the other channels in-depth that brands can utilize to expand their reach and influence. 

Programmatic Display Retargeting

With 96% of consumers not ready to purchase on their first visit to your site, it’s important to keep your brand top of mind for potential customers, nudging them to reconsider until they are ready to take action. Programmatic display retargeting is the most effective and most crucial to allow brands the ability to continue to show users item(s) they have shown interest in and increases their likelihood of conversion. One of the biggest benefits of programmatic retargeting ads is just how vast the options are to reach your audience. Your programmatic retargeting ads can be segmented down to a granular degree and only served to audiences who have visited your website and product pages.  

Programmatic display retargeting ads can be tailored with messaging and placement to prompt users to take action. For additional sophistication, they can be shown dynamically, showcasing your products that are in stock with current pricing based on a user’s browsing behavior. 

Audiences can also be reached through cross-device retargeting to reach multiple devices used throughout the day, reinforcing your messaging.  On average, 90% of people start a task on one device and finish on another. Leveraging this data to reengage can gently motivate users to complete a purchase they may have had to abandon due to distraction previously. 

The amount of personalization that can be segmented on your programmatic retargeting campaigns is almost impossible to imagine. Combining customization and retargeting on your programmatic campaigns can improve your ROI effectively.

Search Remarketing

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs), is a feature that enables advertisers to tailor search campaigns based on whether the user has visited your website or app and promote the pages they’ve viewed. These ads help you customize bids and ads to these users when they are searching on Google. This is particularly effective when incorporating a personalized message that may spark their interest while exemplifying a brand’s distinction from the competition. 

Retargeting on search won’t show users your text ads just because they’re included on your retargeting list. In order to see RLSAs, users must be continuing to search for products or services that relate to your keywords via Google Search. Personalizing this experience with ad choices, keywords and bidding parameters increases the likelihood of conversion since you already know the users has shown interest. This can both increase the relevancy of your ads and decrease the costs associated with your campaign, thus improving ROI.

Retargeting on Social

How many times have you clicked around a website and then, only a few minutes later, are scrolling through Instagram and see an ad in your feed for that product? It’s certainly not a rare experience. 

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are all becoming powerful tools for marketers, and retargeting campaigns can be run on these platforms. For the average American, one in every five minutes spent on phones is spent on social media. Getting distracted and hopping on a social media app are basically synonymous at this point (and usually sequential, too). Running a retargeting campaign on the channels that could very well be distracting them from their purchase can improve the campaign’s effectiveness since retargeting ads on Facebook can be three times as effective as a traditional display ad.

Social media, particularly Facebook, retargeting ads use audience data to show users who have been to your site your ads when they are on these other platforms and apps. Facebook’s user profile data allows brands to connect with these audiences easily and effectively. You can also create a list of existing users or leads to upload into Facebook’s Audience Manager for even more granular targeting for those lower in the funnel and closer to purchase. 

Retargeting is an effective strategy to get your customers to convert. Whatever takes the users away from their carts at any given moment can make them forget altogether. But retargeting serves as a reminder to the customers of items that interested them and to complete the purchase.