Here we are to shed some light on the mysterious ads that keep popping up on your social media platforms, mobile devices, browsers and so on.
You can’t help but wonder how they end up chasing you pretty much everywhere.
According to the latest data, %96 of the site visitors don’t actually end up making a purchase.
Regardless of the reason, digital marketers had to come up with a not-so-explicit way to get these buyers to convert.
That’s how retargeting was born, and became one of the top strategies that businesses push forward to attract more buyers.
Retargeting Explained
At the very core, retargeting aims to bring the buyers back to the website that they once visited to complete their purchase.
However, retargeting can be extended far beyond your typical display ads (although we will touch on that as well).
An effective retargeting strategy incorporates a variety of touch points across different channels (web, phone. email) with buyer segments.
Blessings of modern technology, marketing pals will collect loads of information on the site visitors throughout different marketing campaigns.
Although some find retargeting creepy, the strategy succeeds to keep your message top of mind both in B2C and B2B.
Segment.com is a popular tool for aggregating all of these various touch points.
Now, not everyone is familiar with these concepts, so let me set the scene for you.
- We have a potential buyer: Jane Doe.
- Jane uses her mobile phone to surf online and bounces from one website to another.
- Jane lands on your website. She visits your how it works and pricing pages, but doesn’t necessarily request a quote or demo.
- Next day, Jane is on her laptop. She magically sees recurring banner ads of the same product along with some other related items.
- Jane remembers why she was originally interested in your product, goes back to the website and this time, converts.
Et voila! Display retargeting-mission accomplished.
The marketing world refers to this as pixel-based retargeting.
Pixel-based retargeting is effective if your website has inbound traffic because if not, there is no information collected, therefore, one to retarget.
Are you still left in the dark and wondering how this engine really works?
The logic boils down to one thing: cookies!
Your website should be set to drop a cookie on your visitor’s browser.
This will enable tracking across the web properties and tag specific interests, which will then help with categorization and segmentation along the way.
In the B2B world, an interested lead is an undisclosed opportunity for value and information.
Keep in mind: it is highly unlikely that these leads randomly end up on your website.
These high-intent, well-informed buyers know what they need, so it would be a shame not to run a few awareness campaigns and remind them of your product’s value.
Per CSO insights, half of B2B purchasers have already identified a specific solution for their pain point before getting in touch.
This brings us to our first method.
Identify High Value Visitors (Reverse IP Lookup)
This technology initially determines the exact geographic area (city, country etc.) of the IP address as well as a few more details on the visitor, which then enables the marketers to identify the owner.
Basically, you can unlock the host-name of an IP address using this technology.
This is especially useful for B2B companies, as it provides clear data on who their prospects are from.
LinkedIn’s who viewed your profile feature is a good example of this. Ah, don’t we love to creep on who creeped on us?
Jokes aside, knowing your audience will further-inform your sales & marketing operations drastically.
Too technical? Not-to-worry, there are hundreds of tools out there to help you identify your interested buyers bouncing back and forth on your website.
Tools such as albacross.com & leadfeeder.com are quite popular among the marketing community!
Taking this one step further, you can customize the experience on a per prospect basis using email & CRM retargeting, so buckle up!
Email & CRM Retargeting
As marketing & sales became more data-driven over the last decade, we are seeing the value of leveraging email to learn about buyers’ intents.
Increasing competition obligates better messaging and high personalization that appeals to the unique needs of potential buyers.
So, your strategy as a B2B company should be to master your outbound email campaigns.
This way, you can acquire more quality customer data and instantaneously improve your outbound marketing efforts.
Quick note: No matter how on-point you are in your targeting and messaging, the ugly truth is that not all of those leads will end up converting.
What happens is that you have a bunch of high-quality leads responding to your emails with “not now” or not responding at all.
Question is that will you let those ones fall through the cracks?
I’d say a big NO.
This is where your sophisticated, high-cost CRM tool comes into play, so why not get the most out of it?
CRM not only brings organization to your sales operations but also accumulates a chunk of customer data that is segmented by their online or offline behavior and interactions.
This refers to list-based retargeting.
Unlike pixel-based retargeting, list-based retargeting doesn’t necessitate any action on behalf of the potential buyer as long as you have stored their email address.
This way, your marketing team can serve highly-relevant & customized display ads to each and every person on your email list, and consistently nurture your marketing automation sequences.
Retargeting with CRM could look as simple as this:
Adroll is an easy to use platform and connects to many of today's most popular CRMs.
This allows you to automate workflows and keep your audience engaged.
Retargeting is meant to keep your audience top of mind and is usually the most cost effective on an impression basis compared to Facebook or Google ads.
Depending on your sales funnel, cycle and audience, there are hundreds of different ways you can leverage workflows to push contacts down the funnel and ultimately to convert.
If you are intrigued to know more about ins and outs of CRM retargeting, you should take a look at What Is CRM Retargeting and Why Is It a Necessity for B2B Digital Marketing?
This brings me to my other point: finding a retargeting medium that makes most sense for your business.
What Medium to Use for Retargeting?
As we keep pointing out the goodies that will come out from a well-structured retargeting strategy, it is likely that you get overwhelmed by the myriad of options and alternative strategies to execute in the market.
Scale your retargeting efforts down to one or two mediums.
Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter seem to be the place to advertise in B2C, Linkedin, Quora and Google stand as the main go tos for B2B retargeting.
Build a funnel. It would be negligent to simply place an individual banner with minimal branding and hope to grow brand strength over time.
Have your customer go straight to your landing page by using dynamic retargeting and hyper personalization.
A lead that visits your website for the sole purpose of reading a piece of content should be segmented way differently than the one inquiring about pricing.
Ask yourself, “what is this prospect thinking when viewing my page?”
Investigate the buyer journey and feed your prospects with the appropriate content.
Further investigation on your prospects’ behavior will not only allow you to retarget them in the right place at the right time but also provide you with invaluable insights regarding your ICP.
See this article we found, if you’d like to get into the nitty-gritty details on dynamic vs. static retargeting.
Retargeting’s Journey to Digital Sales
Did someone say buyer’s journey? So, what about it?
Whether it is for driving brand awareness or increasing conversion rates, understanding your digital customer journey is paramount when building predictable systems.
To understand and interpret which prospects are engaging with your web content the most at which point of time, Ubico uses a tracking pixel.
Embedding these 1×1 pixel graphics in each email sequence enables us to trace the behavior of a potential buyer after they’ve opened an email.
This is quite similar to planting a seed and watching it grow overtime. Once the plant is fully grown, it is time to harvest the crop, that is, either retargeting the customer and driving conversion.
Is retargeting an effective strategy?
The short answer is YES.
Though, one shall not forget that regardless of your retargeting strategy, you have to keep in mind that these are the leads that didn’t agree to buy from you in the first place.
This only tells us one thing: offer them something relevant, something that adds value to what you present on your website.
The purpose is to engage your audience with relevant content, and convince them to convert.
Life happens, if you end up not seeing a significant ROI, perform an A/B testing. Shake up a few things involving your offer, the frequency, and content.
In no time, you will see results!
In the light of this, I can proudly say that Ubico helps you empower all these workflows and more by integrating directly with your existing marketing and sales stack.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or are simply curious to know more about what we can do for your company!
