It’s rare that a first-time visitor to your website will make a purchase. In fact, less than 5 percent of the traffic that you get on your website will convert during the first visit. That means about 95 percent of your web traffic will leave after a first visit and may choose to never return.
What is Retargeting?
Ever went shopping online, didn’t purchase, but started seeing ads appear for the exact same thing you were shopping for on other sites?
Retargeting is all about finding a way to reach the 95 percent of visitors that don’t convert during their first visit.
You’ve probably heard the expression “out of sight, out of mind.” Well, this applies perfectly to the traffic that visits your website for a few seconds and then clicks elsewhere.
With retargeting, however, you have a chance to keep your brand in front of these visitors that are at least somewhat familiar with your business because they have already visited your website.
How Does Retargeting Work?
First, web designers place a small piece of code on your website that is completely unnoticeable to your visitors.
Every time your website gets a visitor, this code drops an anonymous browser cookie that allows you to follow and serve ads to each visitor as they browse other sites.
Considering that your ads will only be seen by people that have previously visited your website and expressed an interest in your business, you can be much more effective in converting these leads.
Best Platforms for Retargeting
Did you know you can retarget your website visitors on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn?
Social media retargeting is very appealing to many business owners as people are more inclined to share, reply, and discuss your content on these popular social media networking sites.
Did you know you can retarget your website visitors with ads on over 2 million websites, including websites such as Forbes and Entrepreneur? This is made possible by our good friends at Google.
By using social media retargeting and website retargeting together, you are guaranteed to reach your target audience where they spend the most time.
Retargeting Goals to Keep in Mind
Most businesses have two goals in mind with retargeting: creating awareness and increasing conversions.
You have the ability to serve the same ads to all your website visitors, no matter which page they visited.
Since these ads are being served to anyone that has previously visited your website, a disadvantage to this type of retargeting campaign is that the served content is much less targeted.
You also have the ability to retarget ads that are specific to the pages a website visitor has viewed.
What businesses love about this type of retargeting is that it can be used to move leads through multiple stages in your sales funnel and is a lot more targeted to what your website visitor was looking at.
Best Practices for Retargeting
1. Establish proper frequency caps
For example, if someone hasn’t visited your site in over 90 days, they probably don’t want to see your advertisements all over the web – they are not a hot lead. As a rule of thumb, serve ads more frequently to those visitors who have viewed you sight in the last 15-30 days, then lower the frequency as time goes on.
2. A/B test your ads
Let data determine the ads that work best for your audience. A/B testing your ads will help you understand the best combination of ad copy, calls-to-action, and graphics that will bring you the most clicks back to your website.
3. Create new ads over time
Clickthrough rates decrease by almost 50% after five months of running the same set of ads. Be sure to update your ads with new graphics and copy to re-engage your audience.
4. Take advantage of audience segmentation
For example, if a visitor spent some time on your product page, you could serve them ads that were more specific to your product offerings. However, a visitor that just spent some time on your homepage may be better reached with ads that communicate brand awareness.
Does the Idea of Retargeting Have You Feeling a Little Overwhelmed?
If the idea of strategically placing code in your website, segmenting audiences, and creating ads is out of your expertise…
