Retargeting is based in human psychology. It follows people’s normal online behavior and gives them additional opportunities to interact with your company further down the line. Retargeting only targets people who have visited your site before, beckoning them back into your brand after they’ve moved on to other searches and sites.
Because retargeting is a fairly new aspect of inbound marketing strategy, marketers sometimes have a hard time deciding how to use it. To help, we’ve gathered 5 of the most compelling types of retargeting we’ve seen. Here’s a rundown.
Ad #1: Dynamic Retargeting by Product
Which are your hottest products or services? You probably find that many site visitors pop onto your products pages to check out your top sellers, then disappear back into the vastness of the internet.
Dynamic retargeting, also known as dynamic remarketing, can help you capture these interested looky-loos before they get too far away. It features the same products/services the person viewed previously, forming an instant visual bond with them.
This means that if they looked at the 5-ounce organic peony-scented body lotion on your site a little while ago, they’ll see the same exact 5-ounce organic peony-scented body lotion again in your product retargeting ad. It might be 10 minutes later, 10 hours later, or 10 days later, depending on how you set up your retargeting plan.
Google is a big fan of this method because it would love to sell you Google remarketing ads. If you go that route, you’ll get Google’s analytics into who’s viewing your site, where they’re heading afterward, and all of the other insights Google gathers.
Ad #2: Website Retargeting for Site Visitors
For businesses that are more services-focused and less products-focused, there might not be one or two most-visited product pages. Visitors might bounce around from page to page, looking at the various services you offer.
Sometimes retargeting works best when it more broadly encompasses anyone who visited the site. Your retargeting efforts can cut across all categories of visitors – whether they bought, didn’t buy, or just glanced at a landing page that didn’t quite convert them.
Website retargeting allows you to reach back out to previous site visitors with fresh offers that might have fresh appeal. You can retarget them by interests and pages they continue to visit long after your site.
So, for example, let’s say you’ve noticed that you’re getting high visibility on a certain blog post about coconut oil for wrinkles. After someone jumps away from your blog to another site or search, you can retarget them with something else about coconut oil and aging skin. Suddenly, you’ve caught their interest all over again.
Ad #3: Retargeted Cart Abandons
It’s a little heartbreaking when you’ve wooed someone all the way into the shopping cart process, and then they suddenly click away from the page. This is called cart abandonment, and it’s something all companies experience, from the smallest businesses to behemoths like Amazon.com.
88% of us have abandoned a shopping cart at some point, without ever going back to complete the process. Cart abandonment happens for many reasons. Here are a few examples:
- Perhaps the person wasn’t 100% sold on your product features, and a competitor interrupted their purchase by making a better offer.
- Maybe they got nervous about the price and backed out. Price is one of the top 2 reasons people abandon carts.
- The timing might have just been bad for them, and they abandoned the cart while intending to come back later for another look. Timing is the other top 2 reason for cart abandonment.
- Maybe there was something about the site performance or checkout process that turned them off.
- Often, it has nothing to do with your company at all – their baby started crying and they had to go offline.
When you retarget cart abandons, you focus your efforts on people who were already so close to buying, all they needed was a little nudge. After they leave your site, you can remind them of what they liked before, and give them another chance at a successful purchase.
Ad #4: Retargeting Previous Purchasers
In all our scrambling for new customers, sometimes we forget our best prospects: previous buyers. Retargeting of existing customers sounds easy – after all, you already sold to them before – but it’s a little trickier than it seems.
Companies often think of their previous customers as people who 100% love their products and aren’t in need of convincing again. However, sometimes your existing customers can be your biggest skeptics. Maybe they received a damaged shipment or incomplete order. Maybe they’re waiting to see if you send them a coupon for a future purchase.
Make sure previous buyers are a consistent part of your retargeting plan. Remember, 79% of current customers would switch to a competitor within 1 week of experiencing a problem, like poor customer service on a previous order. They might need some fresh reassurance.
Ad #5: Urgent Retargeting
Here’s another type of retargeting you might not have tried yet: limited-time, or urgent, retargeting. This strategy focuses on an extremely narrow field of recent site visitors – those who browsed within the last few minutes.
This method uses the same theory behind point-of-purchase sales, limited-time offers, and the so-called “falling into the rabbit hole” experience of becoming intensely interested for a short time. It’s all about immediacy.
Urgent retargeting puts your offer in front of someone in as many channels as possible, all within a short time frame— usually 15 minutes or less. If they checked your site’s price on hair extensions, it’s probably because they want some for an upcoming event. Reconnect with them right away or lose the sale.
Need even more retargeting tips? Crush My Market is a growth-focused agency that helps propel your company forward rapidly. Read more on the Crush My Market blog.
