How to Bring Paying Customers Back with Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads hold the power to make an indecisive customer finally click the “purchase” button. After being shown a retargeting display ad, the user’s search activity rises by 155%. Get customers thinking about your business again with retargeting ads.

Ad retargeting is the practice of putting your brand in front of people who have shown interest in your company. Whether your potential customers visited your website or gave you their email addresses, ad retargeting allows you to stay in front of them. Customize and segment users based on their past behavior to create personalized retargeting ads.

So how do retargeting ads fit into your business’s advertising strategy? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you what retargeting platforms and strategies will work best for you.

Why Are Retargeting Ads Important?

By staying at the top of a person’s mind with retargeting ads, you can help move them from the consideration phase to the conversion stage of the marketing funnel. In a busy media landscape, it can be hard to grab your customer’s attention. Yet, up to 75% of people say they notice retargeting ads. A robust retargeting strategy increases your brand awareness and increases the likelihood of conversions among interested customers.

Understanding Retargeting

You’ve likely seen a retargeting ad while navigating the web, but you may not know how it works. Learn how retargeting ads can work for your business.

How Retargeting Works

When a user visits your website, they might consider using your product or service, but navigate off the page. Retargeting allows companies to serve ads to users who have shown interest in their web pages before.

Another way to retarget users is through your customer database. If you use a customer relationship management system, you can also retarget users based on the contact information they gave you.

Types of Retargeting

Consider the two methods for setting up your retargeting campaigns: pixel-based retargeting and list-based retargeting.

Pixel-based retargeting uses a snippet of JavaScript code on your website pages. The retargeting pixel allows you to add a cookie to your future customer’s browser. As they navigate the web, your retargeting ads can serve dynamically on websites with the same advertising network as you.

List-based retargeting, on the other hand, is the best choice for retargeting based on your CRM information. This method of retargeting is for people further down the funnel who provided you with their email addresses, for example. Upload this list into an ad platform to begin retargeting these users.

Importance of Segmentation

If you haven’t segmented your retargeting ad audiences, you’re missing out on leads. Segmentation is the process of separating your leads by commonality. From there, you can personalize your ad for this group. These commonalities could be demographics or life events. For example, a moving company might show different ads to people who just got married compared to those who are retiring and looking to downsize. These two groups are in very different points in their lives, so a personalized retargeted message will resonate with each respective group.

Some retargeting messages can also be segmented by where a person is in the marketing funnel. Say a group of potential customers got close to making a purchase at your sporting goods e-commerce store. They added a few tennis balls to their cart, but they navigated off the page. This group of people should get a personalized cart abandonment retargeting ad with the items they almost purchased.

Google Ads Retargeting

Google Ads retargeting is a powerhouse due to its vast influence on the web. Depending on your ad strategy, you can use either standard or dynamic retargeting. While standard retargeting ads show your brand again to people who visited your website, dynamic retargeting can make even more detailed ads. Show potential customers the product page they were previously looking at with dynamic ads.

Creating and Managing Campaigns

If you’re still learning how to create ads, follow these steps.

1. Log into your Google Ads account
2. Navigate to the Audience Manager tool and click + to add a new audience
3. Choose “website traffic”
4. Name the new retargeting audience and choose any additional characteristics that should be included.

Best Practices for Google Ads

After setting up a Google Ads retargeting campaign, follow these best practices for performance.

• Use Remarketing Lists: Remarketing lists or RLSA, is a function through Google search ads. RLSA is a Google audience that uses data from Google Analytics. This feature takes data from previous Google searches, such as the keywords a person used to find your site. RLSA then creates customized ads on Google during their next session.
• Optimize Bidding Strategy: Look at your top-converting pages. If a user spends time on your shopping cart page or contact page, you should optimize your bids to prioritize users who were on that page. Bidding strategies allow you to bid higher on the more valuable product pages and lower on pages less likely to foster conversions.
• Set a Frequency Cap: Google Ads allows users to set a cap on the frequency of your ads. No one likes seeing a retargeting ad they’re uninterested in. Frequency caps allow you to move on from a customer if they haven’t shown interest in converting. Set a frequency cap for a day, week, or month depending on your company.

Facebook Retargeting Ads

Facebook ad retargeting is an effective way to reengage users who have shown interest through the platform before. You can partake in list-based retargeting from your customer database or install a Facebook pixel on your website.

Effective Strategies and Tips

Try out these tips to maximize the effectiveness of your retargeting ads.

• Experiment with audiences: Facebook has multiple audience features like lookalike and custom audiences. Ever since the rollout of iOs14, users have been able to opt out of app tracking on Facebook. Marketers who use a variety of audience lists through the Meta platform and first-party email lists find they get a better ROI on their retargeting efforts.
• Focus on your Creatives: On Facebook, your brand is competing with pictures of friends and memes on newsfeeds. To stand out as an advertiser, use bright and engaging photos. Experiment with a mixture of photos and videos with different goals. For example, a person lower in the funnel could benefit from a how-to-video on how your product works, while a person higher in the funnel may be swayed by a user-generated photo ad with a testimonial.
• Run Advantage+ Ads: Once known as dynamic ads, Facebook’s Advantage+ ads are ideal for e-commerce brands. Retarget users who showed interest in particular products with customized ads. Advantage+ ads use machine learning to identify your top potential customers in real time.

Measurement and Analytics

Consistently check your Facebook KPIs to determine how well your retargeting ads are performing. Your top KPIs will depend on the goal of your Facebook retargeting ads. Some common analytics people consider are cost per click or return on ad spend.

Cost per click is a measurement of how much each click costs you on average. If you’re noticing the cost is too high, this is an indicator that your retargeting campaign needs to be adjusted. Another important metric is the return on ad spend. Review how many conversions you received divided by how much you spent during a given campaign. ROAS helps you determine where you should be spending your dollars for maximum impact.

Plan Your Retargeting Campaign

At this point, you know about the different platforms you can use to run retargeting ads. Now it’s time to plan and create your own campaign for your business.

Objectives and KPIs

Before pushing any retargeting campaign live, you need a goal in mind. A smart strategy is to build out a full marketing funnel campaign with concrete objectives and KPIs. For example, you might start with an awareness campaign for your new real estate business. Because you want to get the word out about your services, you can track the KPI of page visits.

Next, you can build out a conversion retargeting campaign to gather contact information of potential homebuyers. The KPI for this conversion campaign would be leads.

Choose the Right Platforms

There’s a plethora of digital advertising platforms out there. Your industry and objectives will help you decide which ones to choose. Google Ads and Facebook Ads are popular choices. But you might go beyond the typical choices and opt for LinkedIn too. LinkedIn retargeting ads might be ideal for B2B marketing for your insurance company.

Build Targeted Audiences

Tap into user behavior when creating your target audiences. Besides the typical pixel-based and list-based retargeting techniques, you can customize your audiences. Retargeting ads allow for some creativity when building out your targeted audiences, so have fun with it! Create hyper-customized audiences from key page URLs on your website. Send out personalized retargeting ads to existing customers in your database who haven’t made a purchase in a while.

Create Compelling Ad Copy

Words matter when writing ad copy. In fact, persuasive ad copy can strengthen your brand loyalty and increase conversions!

The best tip to achieve great ad copy is to know your audience. You can achieve personalized and relatable copy by segmenting your retargeting lists accordingly. Skip the sales jargon and lean into marketing storytelling instead. From there, write concisely with a clear call to action. Eye-catching CTAs like “free shipping” will surely garner you some clicks.

Privacy Regulations and Compliance

Advertisers need to be aware of privacy regulations and compliance before running retargeting ads. Many consumers are concerned with their privacy on the web, so it is the advertiser’s job to ensure they are respecting that. Your location and the platform will determine the specific regulations you have to adhere to. For example, the European Union’s GDPR requires advertisers to gain the consent of users in the UK to collect their data for personalized retargeting ads.

Measuring and Optimizing Performance

Retargeting campaigns aren’t designed to set and forget. Stay engaged with your retargeting ad campaigns by continuously optimizing them for their best performance.

Key Metrics to Track

Keep several key metrics in mind when reviewing your ad retargeting. Look up your industry’s benchmarks to determine if your metrics are in an acceptable range or need more optimizations.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The click–through rate is the number of clicks you receive on your ad divided by total impressions. CTR is a good indicator of how interested your target audience is in learning more.
• Cart Abandonment Rate: The cart abandonment rate is an important metric for e-commerce companies. Find it by dividing finished transactions by initiated sales.
• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is the number of conversions received divided by total impressions. A conversion could be anything from filling out a form to completing a transaction.
• Cost Per Click (CPC): Cost per click is the measurement of how much you’ve spent on your advertisement divided by the number of clicks received. This metric helps you understand how much each click to your website costs you.
• Cost Per Thousand (CPM): Cost per thousand or CPM measures how much your advertisements cost per thousand impressions. Many advertising platforms use a CPM pricing method for brand awareness campaigns.
• Return On Investment (ROI): Return on investment is a classic metric you may be familiar with. Find the ROI on your ads by finding the profit you’ve made since the ads started running minus the cost. From there, divide the number by the cost to find an ROI percentage.

Analyzing Campaign Performance

Once you’ve analyzed your key metrics, go back to your main objectives. To determine if your retargeting ads are performing well, they need to adhere to their original objectives. See how many page visits and conversions you’ve gotten as a result.

Finally, you’ll also want to look at your sales to determine the overall ROI of your retargeting campaigns. If you haven’t seen a solid return on investment yet, it’s time to make some optimizations to spend smarter and achieve results.

A/B Testing for Optimization

If you struggle to make decisions, let A/B testing take the guesswork out of the equation. A/B testing is a smart way of testing a new addition to your ad. Set up an A/B test and only switch out one element such as the ad copy or the image. Run the test and see which one has the higher conversion rate so you can make data-informed decisions.

Adjusting Strategies Based on Performance

As your retargeting display ads float across the web, you’ll learn more about how they perform over time. Check your UTMs, Google Analytics data, and web traffic regularly. Keep up with industry changes and seasonal shifts to keep your retargeting strategies both current and engaging.

Real-World Examples and Case Studies

Successful retargeting ads look different across industries. Check out these retargeting ad examples to learn what an effective one looks like.

Travel company Expedia does an excellent job creating customized ads for people who have shown interest in getting away but haven’t booked a flight yet. In this retargeting ads example, the ad copy and enticing image create a sense of urgency among vacationers on the fence.

Luxury brand retargeting looks a bit different though. Mediaboom created a successful retargeting campaign for cosmetic and dermatologic company, Qazi Cosmetic Clinic. This retargeting campaign led investors back to the landing page to schedule a free consultation. The proper segmentation and enticing imagery led to a 48.7% increase in conversions.

Hire a digital marketing agency now

Effective retargeting ads can increase your web traffic, and conversions, and shoot your ROI through the roof. But a detailed understanding of your audiences and segmented messaging is crucial for it to work.

At Mediaboom, we’ll take the heavy lifting out of your retargeting ad strategy. Let our seasoned experts across industries maximize your ROI with retargeting.