If you’ve never heard of Retargeting OR you’ve been hearing about this but ignoring it then fresh up with a drink or something cool and lets dig in on this is a big one.
But if you’re already doing retargeting … Then buckle up to learn something new because 95% of business owners I meet that claim that they’re doing retargeting ARE DOING IT WRONG.
But first things first …
What is Retargeting ?
A bright and talented sales person finally gets the opportunity to pitch his product and service to his ideal client.
He prepares his pitch for days straight, he makes sure he has the answers to any kind of question that might come up.
He knows his product are great because he’s been working on them for years. He knows his skills are of value to his potential client because he’s been building them up for years.
The day comes and he sets his foot inside the door to finally present his pitch.
The pitch goes well. It goes great !
His potential clients were impressed. They asked questions, showed some interest and benefited from the whole pitch by learning new things.
After he’s done, the sales person hands out his business card and leaves his clients to think about his products and services.
Then …he leaves the office, and never return.
Never call.
Never follow up.
And never check up again on his prospect.
He never hears from his client again and … lost the sale.
Looking at it as an outsider, it sounds like a totally crazy move not to follow up, doesn’t it ?
If you were the employer of this sales person, you’d probably fire him straight out of the door.
But … not so fast. You’re probably doing the same thing with your online business.
Your website is your sales person. Its your store, your representative, and your pitch. Its the face of your business that your prospects interact with.
When someone comes in: they’re interested.
After they leave, they never hear back from you and … you lost them forever.
We’d all like to think that every single person that comes in contact with our website follows a straight path to fulfill the goal of the page.
The goal of the page could be anything from purchase of product to submitting an optin form with their contact information in return for a free ebook, report or any type of content.
Well, let me be the one who breaks it to you …
The truth is that 98% of visitors to your web site leave WITHOUT converting or even returning to your site.
Yep, thats 98% of prospects who showed some kind of interest in you and your brand are gone …forever.
But … its not your fault. Its no ones fault. But, between you and I, if we need to find someone to blame and take this off our chests, well … we can all blame the internet.
The internet is a fast paced medium for content consumption. With all the different types of information and funny cat pictures thrown at us constantly, our attention span drops to a minimum.
Research has shown that the internet alone is responsible for the massive decrease in the attention span of most adults.
Our behaviour while browsing the web is very different from reading a book or watching tv.
In those mediums, our attention is fixed on one source of information for a long period.
On the web, we are easily distracted by shiny attractive things that are trying to grab our attention.
Attention has become a very scarce commodity on the web. This scarcity makes it a valuable asset to brands and businesses who are increasingly trying to grab more of it.
Everyone online is trying to grab our attention away from others – towards them.
Everyone including me, you and all the visitors and prospects coming to our website.
But … what do we do ? How do we grab and retain attention ? (Spoiler alert: No, you won’t have to wet yourself with gasoline and light yourself up for attention)
Retargeting is what we do to grab the attention of our visitors back to us and put them back on track to complete our desired goal.
Unlike your typical Facebook ads or banner ads, retargeting ads are served to people who have already visited your website or are a contact in your database.
You see, the reality is that the buyer’s journey is not so linear.
People visit your website then leave. Two days later, they discover your latest blog article, and then decide to download that free ebook.
A few days after that, they decide to check out another blog post.
Maybe a week passes by then they decide to check out your product page or get in touch with you, and it might take several more weeks to come to a decision to buy.
Same end result, but the process is not so linear and it requires several points of contact with your brand at different stages of the journey.
Retargeting ads are the medium we use in order to bring them back again and again to our site so we can create more touch points with our prospects.
How does it work ? I’m glad you asked…
How Retargeting Works
It’s actually very simple. When someone comes to your website for the first time, a cookie or “pixel” is dropped on their browser.
When they leave your site and surf the web, that cookie (pixel) notifies retargeting platforms to serve specific ads based on the specific pages they visited on your website.
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Have you ever been on a website checking out some random product and then after you left ads of that product started following you everywhere you went on the internet ?
Yep, you’re being retargeted.
You probably have hundreds, if not thousands of cookies on your browser right now with the sole purpose of retargeting your with ads about pages you visited previously.
Before the internet, we used to call it stalking, now we just call it retargeting.
Funny thing ? Just by landing on my site, you were pixeled and you’ll probably see some sponsored blog post from me on your facebook feed or on other relevant sites on the internet. Now you know why ?
Installing a pixel is super easy. It’s actually a small piece of code provided by facebook ads platform or by Google Adwords that you just drop in the header of your website’s backend (give it to your dev it takes him 16 seconds to copy/paste it into your site) and you’re ready to go.
Why should you do retargeting Ads ? And why they’re going to change your business.
There are literally dozens of reasons why retargeting is powerful and essential to increasing your sales conversions and grow your business.
I don’t have enough space to write them all here in this post (as if space is limited), maybe I’ll write one in the future.
Here are my 3 top favourites that really matter to you:
1.Retargeting Gives you a Second (or third or fourth) Chance To Convert A Visitor.
Since Retargeting only targets users that have visited one of your websites or landing pages
then everyone seeing your ad has already been exposed to your brand and very likely your product or service. As a result, these visitors are more qualified and likely to be persuaded by continued marketing.
Retargeting allows you to continue marketing to those visitors to get them back into the conversion funnel.
Retargeting allows you to grab their attention back to you, making more touch points with your and your brand and ultimately creating a more intimate relationship.
2.Retargeting Build An Asset By Capturing Your Audience Data
Retargeting is the perfect complement to your SEO efforts. If you already have a steady supply of organic visitors coming to your site, you should leverage that traffic by creating your own retargeting list.
Since 98%of traffic are single visits and we all know that single visits RARELY accomplish a sale (and by rarely I mean never).
Then the ugly truth is that you’re missing out of 98% of people that were interested in your brand or product just because you failed to get in touch with them again and following up on their interests.
This is why a Retargeting list is an Asset. It’s made up of lists of potential buyers. They are the people that are most likely to buy from you because we know they are interested in your brand, product or service. This list contains some prospects that are so close to making the purchase but just need a little push that can be addressed by a retargeting ad that takes them to testimonial page or a retargeting ad offering them 10% discount or that answers the most common objections that they might have.
3.Create Illusions Of Grandeur
Now look at that title. Who wouldn’t love that ey ?
But seriously, Retargeting someone and following them around the web gives the illusion that you’re EVERYWHERE.
You have no idea how many times I’ve heard the sentence “I gotta tell you, I see your ads everywhere!”
Little do they know that my ads are only following them around the web and not showing up for everyone else.
Here’s where retargeting plays a huge role in building brand awareness for your target audience.
Retargeting Based on Interest.
Retargeting To Segments at every step of the funnel.
This is something that most people doing retargeting are missing out on. But not you.
Now that you get the idea of retargeting, what it does and the importance of it, it’s important to get to know how to use it properly to accomplish the incredible.
Simply retargeting a random web visitor with an ad taking them to your sales page will help you recoup some of your lost sales, sure, but its not the most effective way to do retargeting.
Why ?
Because it’s too broad, too generic and you might end up targeting someone with an ad that doesn’t really talk to them based on what stage of your funnel they are part of.
Creating segments for every stage of your funnel solves that by talking to each prospect differently depending on what stage they are in your relationship.
Here’s what I mean:
- Not all visitors are created Equal.
- Some visitors visited a piece of content of yours and left.
- Other visitors visited your sales page and left.
- Other visitors visited your comparison chart page then left.
while others might have added your product to their basket or reached your check out page then left.
Do you retarget all these people with the same damn ad ? Will everyone respond to the same kind of conversation you’re going to initiate with them next ?
Definitely not. Each one of these prospects is at a different level, and you should change your retargeting ads based on what they want to hear next.
This is why segment your retargeting list into different segements is crucial to making the most out of them.
Segmenting allows you to speak directly to your audience based on where they are in the funnel so that you can and help them make the right decision.
For instance, considering the prospects that only visited a blog post, you might want to retarget them with a page that raises their awareness about of your offers and show them what products or services you offer.
The ones that visited your sales page then left: you might want to retarget them with a page with testimonials to build social proof and help them make a more informed decision.
The ones that visited your comparison chart page, you might want to retarget them with your sales page or with a FAQ page that could handle their most common questions or objections they have.
The ones that have reached your checkout page: you might retarget them with an ad that brings them back to the check out page in case they missed it, or even offer them a coupon code to complete their purchase.
The possibilities are endless…
My point is, Segment your retargeting list based on their behaviour. Understand at what stage of the funnel they are and then retarget them with relevant ads to help them move forward to making the sale.
What now ?
Don’t be like that sales person that does all the hard work but fails to follow up with their prospect. You’re doing your prospects a disservice by not helping them make a decision (whether good or bad) about you and your brand.
Retargeting gives us such an amazing power to really track our prospect and understand where they really are in their relationship with our brand, by not using this power, we’re just creating a lose-lose situation for us and the prospects.
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