There are several ways to promote your site and generate traffic and sales, and paid advertising is one of the more popular choices. If done right, the return on investment can be huge, which is why so many companies are bombarding us with ads from every angle.
Retargeting is a growing trend since retailers know that 98% of visitors to your website leave without converting. Retargeting is one of the answers.
What is retargeting?
Retargeting converts customers that are “just looking” into buyers. Only about 2% of shoppers convert on the first visit to an online store. To bring back the other 98%, retargeting is used. Retargeting works by keeping track of what people looked at on your site and displays your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online.
How does retargeting work?
All that is needed is a JavaScript tag placed in the footer of your website. This code creates a list of people that visit your site by placing anonymous retargeting “cookies” in their browser. This allows retargeting vendors to display retargeting ads to your potential customers as they visit other sites. Customers can then click on the ad and purchase the item they looked at previously, bringing the customers that are “just looking” into buyers.
The following are a few companies that specialize in retargeting:
AdRoll
AdRoll is best known for their retargeting plans. AdRoll works with advertising partners like Facebook Exchange, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, allowing you to reach 98% of sites on the Internet. Using AdRoll as your platform, you can segment visitors based on their actions, create segmented groups of visitors based on purchase intent, and set up advanced conversion tracking rules.
AdRoll makes retargeting a simple process with easy to understand analytics. AdRoll is an official Facebook partner and provides one of the easiest and best platforms to use for retargeting customers on Facebook, especially the news feed ads.
AdRoll is a little on the pricey side, but the service and ease of their platform make it worth your marketing dollars. AdRoll is easily a favorite when it comes to retargeting platforms.
Chango
Chango specializes in search retargeting (although they offer site retargeting solutions as well). Search retargeting doesn’t require a customer to visit your website before your ads start appearing on their screens. The ads are based on customer interest and relevancy by a recent search they performed on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. If someone does a search for a product or service on a search engine and they click on a website that is part of Chango’s data network, Chango will target the user and let you advertise to that user with relevant products and services.
While Chango prides itself on having a huge network of data partners, Chango isn’t for someone just starting out with retargeting. With the price tag starting at 10k, it may be wise to use one of the other platforms before you dive in with Chango.
Perfect Audience
Perfect Audience provides a retargeting platform for those who would like to keep it as simple as possible. You get to remarket your products or services to lost customers on Facebook. When a visitor leaves your website without placing an order, you will be able to retarget that visitor on Facebook. Similar to AdRoll, Perfect Audience offers both standard Facebook ads and the ability to retarget in the Facebook news feed.
Perfect Audience is a great options for small businesses that are eager to learn more about online advertising without spending lots of money. Perfect Audience doesn’t have a setup or maintenance fee which makes it ideal for businesses with a tight budget. Perfect Audience can be used with eCommerce stores using third party platforms like Magento, WordPress, or Shopify.
ReTargeter
ReTargeter offers a wide range of marketing and remarketing solutions, including site retargeting, Facebook Exchange, CRM Retargeting, emailing retargeting, search retargeting, just to name a few. ReTargeter is a service aimed for sites that have over 30,000 unique visitors a month. You can create targeted ads according to demographic, geographic, income or intent of your customers. ReTargeter isn’t only focused on a certain type of retargeting, so you will have the option to choose from a wide variety of retargeting options. For example, you can retarget visitors who have browsed your website, subscribers who have opened your newsletter or people who have engaged with you on social media.
ReTargeter is a great solution for larger volume sites. Their services start at $1,500 a month and all of the campaigns are managed by a dedicated account manager. ReTargeter has some great advertising solutions that will put you ahead.
Springbot
Springbot isn’t just a retargeting company, Springbot helps eCommerce stores grow revenue by taking smarter, data-driving marketing actions. Springbot is a Magento extension that is free to download and enables marketers to quickly obtain a snapshot of their store’s demographic data.
Springbot includes retargeting advertising with AdRoll. Using Springbot, you will be able to serve up to 75k impressions per month, reaching tons of customers! Springbot integrates with MailChimp to allow eCommerce stores to instantly create customer segments, using demographic, social and purchase history data, from their Magento store. Using these segments, users can automatically build weekly or monthly promotional emails such as Welcome Series, Abandon Cart, Post Purchase, and Win-Back campaigns. Springbot also integrates with social media, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Hootsuite and Social Calendar, among several other marketing features.
Springbot is a multi-purpose tool for Magento that can provide you with a great deal of data analytics about your products and customers while enabling you to take advantage of marketing automation channels.
What to look out for
- The most obvious disadvantage about retargeting is that it can be creepy. No one likes the feeling that their every move is being watched and tracked.
- Seeing an ad too much can lead to overkill – 55 percent of customers say seeing an ad multiple times can potentially turn them away from that company. Seeing an ad five times becomes “annoying,” on average. Ten or more times can make the customer “angry.” Luckily, it is easy to avoid. You can set a frequency cap to limit the number of impressions each of your users is served.
- On the other hand, not having enough impressions can render your retargeting campaign just as ineffective. The optimal number is approximately 20 impressions per user per month, which breaks down to about one impression every other day. At this rate, your users won’t be bombarded with ads, but your brand will be noticed.
- Another big issue is retargeting customers that already bought from you. Seeing an ad several times a day, from the same company, is aggravating to most. If the customer already bought a product from you, it is easy to remove users from a retargeting campaign once they have converted.
Conclusion
All of the above companies can improve your conversion by retargeting your customers. Whatever your niche or size of your site, there is a remarketing platform that will work for you. There is a great number of remarketing options available and one of the options above may help your company retarget customers to bring the other 98% of visitors back to your site and convert those visitors into buyers and increase your conversions.
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