Retargeter

A Simple Opportunity Most Businesses Miss Out On

This article will discuss one simple retargeting strategy that can help your business further maximize retargeting and generate an even greater ROI– flipping the funnel upside down. Digital platforms available to marketers today hold a bright future backed by increased real-time marketing abilities. Research predicts that digital ad spend will climb upwards of $28 billion by 2017. Marketers now understand the numerous benefits of retargeting and have widely integrated the tool into their digital campaigns. Traditionally used to nurture prospects down the funnel to conversion, you could be missing out on a larger opportunity with retargeting.

Retargeting is the practice of serving display ads to people who have previously engaged with your brand. The technology behind retargeting is cookie-based: a user visits your website, a cookie is dropped and stored in the user’s browser, that cookie gathers data from the user’s web browsing habits, and finally, enables the advertiser to serve ads to that previously engaged user across the web.

Retargeting the Funnel

Marketing activities can be characterized with the help of the basic funnel diagram, which illustrates the purchasing process that consumers undergo. In theory, all marketing activities should focus on a specific area of the funnel.  Retargeting can assist in any and all full funnel marketing efforts. Particularly at a time when 95% of users leave a website without converting, there is a huge opportunity to bring those users back with retargeting.  Traditional top of the funnel retargeting efforts can help drive more prospects to fill that pool of people to create larger brand awareness and to stay top of mind.  An even more alarming statistic is that 67.75% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts. Traditional bottom of the funnel retargeting efforts serve targeted ads to those highly interested users encouraging them to return to their abandoned carts and complete the purchase.

The Burn Code: Opening the Door to a New Funnel

Marketers are continuing to see success in encouraging users down the funnel with retargeting. Once a user converts, it is always a retargeting best practice to implement a burn code. Have you ever made a purchase online, then weeks later still continue seeing ads for the exact product that you already purchased? A burn code prevents this from occurring by ensuring that users who have converted will stop being served ads. A burn code works by dropping a pixel on the post-conversion page, untagging your user from the retargeting campaign and preventing them from being served ads for the product they just purchased.

The burn code is an extremely important practice in retargeting, but a conversion doesn’t have to be the end of the line. What are you doing with the data the burn pixel has compiled of those highly profitable customers?

Flip the Funnel Upside-Down

To flip the funnel upside down is to take existing customers that have already shown a special interest in your brand and expand their interest by targeting them with an abundance of greater opportunities to offer. This can be done in two different ways:

Internally: Create a ‘Loyalty Campaign’  

A ‘loyalty campaign’ using audience targeting will build the relationship with the buyer and drive in more revenue.  By taking the data of converted users, you can show exclusive ads or marketing campaigns to your valued customers specifically. The advantage is that rather than reaching the general public, your impressions are being used more efficiently and effectively to a highly profitable audience. Imagine you hold an annual conference. You could use the data collected from past conference attendees and advertise a special offer exclusively for those high-value customers to promote the upcoming conference. The initiative of recognizing their past experience at the last conference will encourage them to attend again, opening up larger opportunities.

Externally: Monetize Your Audience

Audience extension is a retargeting solution that allows you to generate revenue from your web traffic by sharing that access to other advertisers.  Depending on the specific demographic your audience attracts, that information can be used as highly valuable of data to share. Referring back to the conference example, every attendee that your burn code collected ensures that each person will be at that exact location on that exact weekend.  The value in that information is that those people will be traveling from all over and will need to book a place to stay.  By extending that audience to surrounding hotels, they will be able to serve their ads specifically to your attendees opposed to the general public that might now have that specific need to be met.

Your existing customers are a huge resource for upsells and cross sells. These are people who have shown valuable interest in your business, supported by concrete data collected from your retargeting campaigns. If you are missing out on this simple opportunity, why not further maximize your digital marketing efforts today and retarget the retargeted?