Best Practices For Retargeting

The latest buzzword in the digital advertising world is retargeting. So what is it all about? Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses a simple JavaScript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the world wide web.

By placing a simple piece of code /pixel on your web asset, you can track and follow all who visit your website. This allows you to recognize potential customers across the web and serve ads to people who have previously visited your site.

It has been observed that most user traffic leaves a website without taking any action that can lead to conversion. Retargeting enables marketers to follow such users throughout their web journey, and push specially tailored messages to them that encourage conversion.

Retargeting is a powerful digital marketing technique. Here are three best practices to help you build a powerful retargeting campaign:

Focus on Demographic, Geographic, & Contextual Targeting

Set the ball rolling with the right targeting techniques. You can target your audience based on a number of factors such as demographic or psychographic aspects. By targeting your users, you can reach out to only those sets of users who have the potential to convert into genuine users. This way, you ensure you don’t waste money on wrong impressions and maximize your returns.

Audience Segmentation

Place different pixels on different pages of your website. That way, you can track your users and send them tailored message based on their stage in the purchase funnel. For instance, you can target users who visit your main page with creatives on general brand awareness; and those who look at your product page, you can serve them with more specific ads around your product offerings. Regardless of users’ level of interest, audience segmentation ensures you are serving relevant and engaging ads.

Frequency Caps and Burn Code

Just because a user visited your website doesn’t mean that he/she would want to be bombarded with a huge number of ads. Continuously exposing your brand to prospects can lead to decreased campaign performance as prospects may begin to feel stalked with your brand following them all over the web.

To avoid overexposing your brand to prospects, it’s advisable to use frequency caps. A frequency cap will limit the number of times a tagged user sees your ads. This will prevent potential customers from feeling that your brand is encroaching upon their private space.

Burn code is similar to frequency capping. After a prospect converts, you would not the customer to see messages about the same product he just bought! Marketers use a burn pixel which essentially ‘uncookies’ the user and stops sending him ads. These users are still a part of your marketing campaign solution; only they don’t see ads for the products they just bought. This way, brands can serve them new ads, upsell or cross sell.

A/B Testing

Using the same creative over and over can create boredom and banner blindness, thereby decreasing your campaign performance. According to a ReTargeter study, clickthrough rates drop almost 50 per cent after five months of running the same set of ads. So keep rotating your images and creative frequently to add a touch of newness.

A/B testing of your creative will help you determine the optimal combination of ad copy, calls-to-action, and graphics. Simple A/B tests can provide the data you need to run campaigns with high-performing ads.