Even before the days of digital marketing, placing a single ad in one location or publication was never enough. Customers needed to see ads on television, in magazines, on busses, and on billboards, and they needed to see ads multiple times before actually making a purchase.
When people hear a statement over and over, they gradually begin to consider the statement more trustworthy. Marketers have a term for the number of times customers need to hear marketing messages before making a purchase: effective frequency.It’s the reason targeting 10,000 people five times tends to have a higher ROI than targeting 50,000 people one time. It’s also why retargeting needs to become a bigger part of your digital advertising strategy.
Retargeting Can Boost Ad Response as Much as 400 Percent
CMO.com compiled stats about the effectiveness of ad retargeting. The verdict: retargeting customers is one of the smartest ways to spend your marketing budget.
- Get more from existing ads. Retargeting boost response to ad campaigns by as much as 400 percent. The average click-through-rate (CTR) for display ads is 0.07 percent; for retargeted ads, the CTR is 10 times higher.
- Build brand awareness with customers. Three out of five online buyers say they notice ads for products they’ve looked up on other sites. Also, 30 percent of consumers have a positive reaction to retargeted ads.
- Stop missing opportunities. Forty-six percent of search engine professionals surveyed said retargeting is the most underused online marketing technology. Only 1 in 5 marketers have a dedicated ad retargeting budget.
If you’ve reached the end of your fiscal year, and you need to spend the rest of your marketing budget, experiment with online ad retargeting. Use them to acquire new customers, build brand awareness, and increase engagement with your content.
Smart Retargeting Strategies
Ad retargeting isn’t just another way to spend money. It’s a complete rethinking of your marketing output. By sending fewer messages to more people, you’ll decrease overall cost-per-conversion.
Target Smaller Segments
In marketing, it’s tempting to always try to target your message to the most people possible. Instead, you’ll get a bigger ROI—and faster feedback about ad effectiveness—by retargeting toward smaller segments based on each customer’s lifetime value (LTV).
LTV analyzes specific customer behaviors on your website to determine which sequences of behaviors leads to maximum spending and loyalty. For example, you might discover that someone who watches five videos and visits your Contact page twice has more LTV than someone who reads your blog. Focus your retargeting efforts on the customers most likely to deliver the greatest LTV.
If you’re not already calculating customer LTV, here are some steps to get you started:
- Add parameters to destination URLs.In addition to adding dynamic tracking URLs for your campaigns, talk to developers about storing the URL parameter information to a cookie. Cookies can then track to customers’ billing records instead of getting lost the moment the customer visits a second page.
- Collect data. Learn which behavior flows, search terms, campaigns, and channels that deliver the highest value customers.
- Set up retargeting lists. In AdWords, you can use templates to create retargeting lists based on visitor behaviors. On Facebook, you can retarget ads to Custom Audiences.
- Monitor and adjust. Once you’ve chosen a segment, show a few versions of each ad to learn more about which types of ads work best for retargeting. Additionally, tweak ads for higher specificity and relevance depending on which segments respond most and deliver the most value.
Beware of Boredom
Many agencies feel as though they’re letting clients down if they’re not constantly producing new work. They also assume sticking with the same message bores the customer, or they decide the message is ineffective.
The reality, on the other hand, is that customers can take years to respond to a marketing message. It takes time to break apart entrenched ways of thinking, and some messages take a while to resonate. Try creating fewer marketing messages and repeating them more often, particularly when it comes to online ads. Don’t question your messaging unless ad retargeting doesn’t give you the ROI you want.
Expect Good Results
Kimberly-Clark reports a 50 to 60-percent ROI on its ad retargeting budget. If you’re assuming customers get a good message the first time around, you’re leaving money on the table.
Jack Daniels ad by Refe Real Life Photos from Tumblr (public domain).
Market segmentation concept image by Jirsak from Shutterstock.
Bored woman image by Samuel Borges Photography from Shutterstock.