Every brand has encountered this unfortunate situation; visitors come to their website but leave without making a purchase. Even the best e-commerce websites fall victim to this daily. In fact, most of the visitors to your website leave without making a purchase. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO END THERE. These individuals have shown an initial interest in your brand, for that reason, they are (or should be) seen as valuable to you. How can you turn that interest into something? The quick answer? Retargeting! You have probably heard of this before and are likely been retargeted yourself. You know what it’s like; you browse something on a website one day, the next an ad for that very product pops up on an entirely different site.
Retargeting is a great tool that all brands should utilize in an effort to increase conversions. Due to its success, there are numerous platforms and strategies that you can use for your retargeting efforts. If you want to get started but aren’t entirely sure where to begin, keep reading to see 5 different ways you can retarget your audience.
Website Retargeting
You are probably used to hearing about and seeing this first type of retargeting. In short, ads are presented on various websites displaying products or websites a user has viewed previously. The objective here is to retarget individuals who visited your website or viewed your products but left without converting in an effort to get them back to your website where they will hopefully make the purchase. These ads can range from very broad to very personalized, it’s all up to you and how you create your specific ads.
If you aren’t sure what we mean by that, an example of broad retargeting would be to retarget everyone who has visited any part of your website all at once. Known as anonymous retargeting, this is a common practice, but may not be the most effective, especially in this current era of digital marketing that is dominated by personalized advertising. For this reason, consider taking a more personalized approach by grouping visitors together and retargeting them based on a specific area of your website that they visited. For example, you might consider creating a group comprised of users who have viewed your blog and retarget them whenever you publish a new blog post. Or, target individuals based on the specific products they have viewed on your website.
Image from: http://www.experienceux.co.uk/ux-blog/2010/10/04/does-web-retargeting-benefit-or-just-scare-users/
Furniture store Made.com utilizes personalized retargeting by displaying specific items users looked at in their retargeted ads, as seen in the above example. Another website retargeting tactic you should keep in mind involves the areas where you choose to retarget. While retargeted ads can show up anywhere, they don’t have to. You may decide to retarget based on the relevancy of other websites, for example. Displaying your ads when a user is looking at related content is a popular way to go about this tactic.
Email Retargeting
While it is not as relevant as it used to be, email still remains an effective marketing platform. It also serves as another popular location for retargeted ads to pop up. This is very similar to website retargeting, but in this instance, somebody visits your website without converting and is then retargeted via an email that is sent to them. If you already use email marketing as part of your current marketing strategy, you should definitely consider email retargeting. Plenty of brands still use email incredibly well and boast an impressive number of subscribers. If you fall into this category, you should absolutely take advantage of this type of marketing.
Social Media Retargeting
Image from: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/05/23/facebook-ad-examples
Social media dominates the digital marketing landscape, and so, therefore, placing your retargeted ads on popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is a great option for brands looking to make a big impact. You’ll typically display personalized ads, like the above example which retargeted a user who was previously shopping for grooming products. In this case, it was personalized in terms of a specific product that this user was shopping online for. This can be very successful if you have a lot of products for sale. A user may simply be unaware of other products you sell (in this case, razors) and this might spur them to return to your website to keep looking.
This retargeting technique is only continuing to grow in popularity as more and more platforms start offering this type of advertising (Instagram just rolled out retargeted ads last May). Depending on your industry you can decide which platform, or platforms, will work best for you.
Video Retargeting
We all spend a lot of time online watching videos. YouTube can easily hold my attention for hours on end, and I know I’m not the only person that feels that way. The stats back me up too, as an impressive 1 billion YouTube video views are accumulated every day just on mobile devices. Video is only continuing to grow in popularity, both on YouTube and increasingly on other social media platforms. Thankfully, you can take your retargeted ads to this platform as well. You have a lot of flexibility when it comes to the type of video ads you can show, including video ads that play before selected YouTube videos, banner ads that pop up at the bottom of videos, or display ads which are seen next to videos.
Be cautious with video ads, however. They are not always the best option for all brands. Instead, you’ll likely be more successful if you are used to (and capable of) producing quality video content. If you’re able to though, there are good odds you’ll be successful. Research shows that 90% of people find videos to be helpful when making a decision about a product.
Web Push Retargeting
Last but not least, a great way of retargeting your audience is via web push notification. Since their introduction in late 2013, these push notifications have helped brands retarget their audience in powerful ways. Even better, they are so easy to set up both for users and on your end. With numerous retargeting opportunities, 2017 should definitely be the year you get started with web push if you haven’t already.
The process for a user to start receiving your web push notifications couldn’t be easier, which is one of the many reasons they have been so successful. Once a user agrees to be sent your push notifications (which consists of them pressing one button- that’s it!) you can retarget them based on just about anything. Retarget visitors who view your website but never return, place items in their cart but don’t complete the purchase, sign up for your newsletter but stop interacting with your website, and so much more. If you’d like to learn more about growing your business with website push notifications visit https://aimtell.io/browser-push
These push notifications, which appear on both desktop and mobile devices, display your message and, when clicked, drive users back to your site. Best of all, a user does not have to be on your website to receive the notification. For all these reasons, web push notifications are one of the most highly effective ways to engage and retarget visitors to your website.
Author: Rebecca Keyes
