In the era of online advertising, you have to be consistent with your efforts, have patience, and test your creativity to see a strategy yield results. So, when you start a marketing campaign to attract, qualify and convert visitors into leads, you should also follow up with retargeting to avoid losing your potential customers. To do this effectively, you’ll need to deploy marketing automation tools or marketing automation services to retarget visitors that haven’t bought, or taken the next step in your customer lifecycle without much of your effort.
Continue reading as we will explore retargeting with automation in detail, including its benefits and some handy tools to get started.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting is a reinforcement marketing strategy aimed at website visitors or potential customers who failed to take the preferred or any form of action with your brand before leaving the site. It could be buying a product, filling out a form, or subscribing to a plan/course.
You’ve already got their attention, but couldn’t quite get them to take the plunge. So, you advertise to them again and encourage them to take action they almost took before.
The winning idea behind retargeting marketing is that – since these visitors have previously indicated an interest in your site or product, it’s easier for them to take action when you remind them vs attracting new visitors.
Retargeting with Marketing Automation
Now, about automation.
Retargeting with automation is simply deploying a digital tool/software to carry out the retargeting and reduce time and effort. All you have to do is:
- Choose a pricing plan
- Purchase or download the software
- Install it
- Set it up according to your campaign and preference
- And watch it deliver results
If you’ve seen ads follow you everywhere on the web, even when the ads are unrelated to the site or content you are viewing on the new site, that’s the magic of retargeting with automation.
The person who set that ad on your tail didn’t have to do it each time you visit a new page or site, marketing automation tools made that possible. Sometimes, you authorize retargeting when you click on “allow cookies”, and sometimes, you don’t need to.
Retargeting Marketing Methods and How They Work
There are two main methods of retargeting: Pixel-based Targeting and List-based Targeting.
1. Pixel-based Targeting
Pixel-based or web retargeting marketing is for tracking unknown site visitors. When a person visits your site, a pixel (a piece of Javascript) automatically loads, collects data and adds a cookie to their browser without interrupting their experience.
When that visitor leaves your website for other sites, including social media, the cookie informs retargeting systems in these web locations to display specific ads to the visitor based on the pages they visited on your site.
Pixel targeting is an excellent way to increase brand awareness as the ad follows your site visitors around the web, including social media where they may hang out more.
While pixel targeting sends ads to people who may not need them, it’s automatic, increases impression rate, and is timely.
2. List-based Retargeting
List targeting marketing isn’t for tracking unknown web visitors like the pixel method. It’s for people with one form of engagement or the other with you or your website. We call these known visitors or contacts.
If you already previously have a list of social media handles or email addresses that you’ve collected and sent periodic information to, then you are already practicing list-based marketing. The difference here is you are retargeting to that list for a specific next action, based on their previous actions.
However, this method is not fully automated like pixel-based retargeting, at least not the contact list compilation or lead generation technique which you must do to collect the emails and upload them to ad sites.
On the bright side, it allows you to target people that have not only visited but engaged with your site or product in the past. This is cheaper and more effective because it’s easier to sell your products and services to a familiar audience than cold selling.
Beyond targeting previous prospects, list-based retargeting marketing helps you segment ads for specific audiences based on their preferences. Facebook retargeting and Google ads are good typical examples of platforms you can create segmented audiences on.
Marketing Automation Platforms for Retargeting
With automation, you can effortlessly retarget customers and leads, even while you sleep. Some of the handy automation tools for retargeting marketing include:
1. Google Ads
Google Ads is a popular advertising platform for digital marketers and businesses. It comes in handy for web retargeting where site visitors unknowingly accept cookies as they arrive on your site and receive personalized ads across the web. When you include the Google remarketing tag on your website, all site visitors automatically move to a distinct audience group based on the pages they visited on your website.
So, the unique audience group helps you retarget ads to its members based on their interests. The highlight of using Google ads is that; Google has a massive audience, increasing your potential to reach more people than ever. Also, you can run ads in text, video, and image formats, which gives you multiple retargeting options.
Pricing here depends on your ad budget and other factors unique to your needs.
2. AdRoll
AdRoll is an excellent retargeting SaaS software and a marketing automation platform that helps businesses retarget site visitors or buyers of products on their website who failed to initiate an action. It helps them complete their buying journey by reminding them of the product waiting for their engagement. The AdRoll advertising platform integrates with more than 500 networks. So, you can retarget your customers and prospects across the web, from Google and Shopify to all social media platforms and emails.
AdRoll uses its pixel to track visitors on your site and create personalized ads for them. It can send personalized messages to email addresses on your email list based on their interests.
What’s more? The AdRoll software uses AI to retarget ads based on consumer behavior in the last ten years. This drives conversion faster because it can predict leads that will convert based on history.
Pricing starts at $72 monthly for 5,000 but varies depending on your site’s monthly visitors.
3. Facebook Custom Audiences
For Facebook retargeting, Facebook custom audiences allow you to create seamless and effective remarketing campaigns. Like other retargeting marketing tools, you’ll be able to send ads to Facebook users who have engaged with your brand previously. But you’ll have to do the initial setup using the following steps:
- Upload the contact list on the Facebook custom audience manager, or use the tool to find those that have visited your pixel.
- Create a new retargeting ad campaign
- Segment the ads for different audiences that you’ll create
- Set your marketing budget
- Create your ads
- Start tracking its progress
Pricing varies depending on your ad budget.
4. Convert Flow
ConvertFlow is another effective marketing automation platform for retargeting customers and online store visitors. It automatically segments site visitors into groups based on their interests in your site and sends them ads accordingly. With ConvertFlow, you can retarget first-time visitors and customers with personalized ads. It takes the personalization up a notch with custom CTAs for each customer or visitor.
Pricing starts at:
- $99 monthly for 10, 000 visitors in the Pro Plan
- $300 monthly for 10, 000 visitors in the Team Plan, and
- $800 monthly for 100, 000 visitors in the Business Plan
A free trial is available in the pro plan for 14 days.
5. Criteo
Criteo is a viable option for retargeting marketing while keeping your hands free to focus on other integral aspects of your business. Like other automation tools, it collects data from site visitors and displays ads to them across the web based on their preferences when they visited your site. Beyond reminding your customers or site visitors of products they forgot to buy, this tool recommends similar products of your brand that customers may like. Thus, it helps to improve conversions and maximize your marketing budget.
It also creates personalized ads and custom CTAs that nudge customers to take action. The main catch for this tool is its ability to predict consumer behavior by telling which lead is likely to convert or not.
Pricing varies depending on your ad budget.
6. Retargeter
Taking a name after its specific job, this marketing automation software performs like its counterparts. Retargeter uses pixels to track the activities of site visitors, automatically add cookies to their browsers and bombard them with ads across the web and social media. It’s for advertisers who must include user privacy rules across the world, keeping privacy at the forefront of their operation. It only collects relevant data from a site visitor and ensures this data is safe as the visitor is retargeted.
One of the upsides of Retargeter is that: it uses search retargeting to push your products to web users searching for similar products on other sites. With this feature, you can get more customers including those who aren’t searching for your specific products.
Pricing is expensive at $1500 per month, and there’s no free trial.
7. Hubspot
HubSpot is a leading inbound marketing platform renowned globally for helping businesses streamline their marketing campaigns and skyrocket their ROIs. So, it’s also a great marketing automation platform for retargeting. With Hubspot, you can easily create ad audiences and be more specific about the people who see your Google ads, Facebook ads, and even LinkedIn ads. You can also build your website audience using its ad network tracking pixels for web retargeting.
Pricing varies based on marketing needs.
8. Ontraport
Ontraport promises a massive increase in ROI from your ads with its segmented audience creation feature. It’s fully automated and takes the job off your hands in retargeting after you do the initial setup. Ontraport syncs with Facebook Custom Audiences to help retarget specific audiences on your contact list with a high chance of getting more conversions. It helps to automatically send the list data to add or move people to specific Facebook ads after they have taken or not taken action. You can also automate retargeting ads on Facebook beyond page visits using Ontraport. If a customer likes a certain product, you can retarget them with ads about a similar product they may be interested in.
The real perk here is you are not wasting money and certainly not putting anyone off with the same advert. You’ve been there, seeing ads for a product you already purchased… not great.
Pricing starts at $24 per month for the basic plan and a 14-day free trial is available.
Effective Strategies for Retargeting
Now that you’ve been armed with information on retargeting types and helpful automation tools to achieve both—let’s look at some effective strategies to make the most out of your retargeting marketing strategy. Here are 3 of the best retargeting strategies for faster conversions.
1. Visitor Segmentation
While you can retarget every visitor on your website, you may want to pay attention to those in the last stage of the “buyer’s journey”. A buyer’s journey is the various stages a potential buyer passes through before making payments. It typically involves three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Most potential buyers find themselves in the consideration stage before being distracted. So, while retargeting first-time visitors, channel some of your retargeting resources to those in the consideration stage as they are more likely to take the action of the purchase. Remember that point when you see a product, click on it and ponder whether to buy it? For whatever reason you didn’t click on that buy button, a reminder can get you to change your mind and take action. That’s what visitor segmentation does.
2. Don’t Retarget Converted Users with the Same Ads
If you want to maximize ROI with marketing automation, you have to focus on the potential buyers. Those users who either clicked on your site, read some half information, didn’t complete a video, never signed up for a newsletter, or added products to the cart but didn’t make a purchase are your potential buyers. Converted users are already buying from you and helping you stay in business. You’ll turn them off when you follow up with them using the same ads that got them invested in your product or service. However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid them in ad campaigns. Keep them engaged with your brand with constant ads. But the ads should be different from those that persuaded them to take action. You can push ads with similar or better products to these converted users. This also calls for segmentation – grouping converted users so they don’t receive the same retargeting ads as those prospects about to grow cold feet or considering the buy button.
3. Url Retargeting
Instead of retargeting every web visitor on your site, you can focus on specific URLs that indicate how much interest users have on your pages. While it’s always easier to retarget every visitor, conversions won’t be massive compared to when you niche down your retargeting marketing efforts. If your site has a blog, you can pay attention to the category your visitors are reading and retarget them based on that interest. So, if a blog post enjoys much patronage from visitors, create ads in line with that specific post and automatically send it to them. Beyond blog posts, there are other pages on your website where you notice lots of impressions and engagements. Focus on these URLs and create ads in line with them. Most automation tools can help you niche your retargeting marketing campaigns for more conversions. Beyond marketing, they can also help you successfully scale your entire business. Facebook Custom Audience, for instance, has a segmentation feature, so you don’t target everyone at once.
Benefits of Retargeting with Marketing Automation Tools
Some benefits of this marketing strategy:
-
It Drives Conversions and Increases Marketing ROI
Retargeting ensures your marketing efforts and investment generate results. When potential customers fail to take action, it isn’t always because they hate your product or aren’t interested. They could have forgotten; humans forget a lot, especially with so many distractions on the internet. They may have also gone to explore other options, and you can’t blame them for that. Retargeting constantly reminds your site visitors and potential customers of the action they forgot to take before leaving. It increases the chances of them becoming customers because consistency will always yield results if done the right way and retargeting can’t be wrong in marketing. When this happens, your conversions increase, and more ROI on your marketing investment.
2. Improves Brand Visibility
Automated retargeting increases your brand’s visibility and chances of getting more conversions. Although some of your targets may not have an interest in what you’re offering at that moment, the repetition will make your brand top of mind. So, when the time comes to use a product/service you offer, they know and remember where to go. It’s like an awareness campaign to convert leads into customers. Remember pixel-based retargeting? That’s its job.
3. Limits Cart Abandonment
It happens all the time. A customer adds a product to the cart and forgets to make payment before leaving. Retargeting reminds them of their products waiting in the cart for order completion. Again, it’s not their fault. The distractions on the internet are one of the many reasons. So, it’s your job to follow up with your potential customers with persistent ads and ensure you don’t lose them to distractions because that translates to losing money.
4. Increases Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is the amount of financial value you can squeeze out of a single customer in the course of their relationship with your business. It, therefore, means that retargeting doesn’t end with conversions. It never ends actually. You use it to extract more value from converted leads and increase CLTV by constantly displaying tempting offers before them.
Conclusion
Retargeting marketing is simply reinforcing your marketing to boost your ROI. It is cost-effective and has a high potential to yield conversions. Since you’re retargeting people who know your brand already, it’s easier to convince them to take action. Marketing automation tools take the job off your hands(after the initial setup). You are left with the easier task of tracking the progress, testing creative offers, and counting your conversions.
While your marketing team can help set up basic automation for your retargeting marketing strategy, you’ll need extra hands should you fancy more comprehensive setups, customizations, and better results from your campaigns. If the latter aligns with your goals, we’ll be glad to help.
