Retargeter

How to Use Retargeting for Lead Generation

Despite the misconception that retargeting is best left to ecommerce companies, targeted and retargeted display can be powerful lead sources for B2B companies.

If you aren’t yet using display in your lead generation efforts, there is much to be gained from incorporating targeting and retargeting into your media mix. Like other B2B marketers (including the marketing team here at ReTargeter), you can leverage display to drive relevant traffic and to generate more leads.

Driving Qualified Traffic

If your primary challenge is driving initial traffic to your website, display can be an invaluable source of new traffic and ultimately new leads. Focus ads on the right types of prospects in the right fields by leveraging the hyper-focused data segments available through some display providers. In the B2C space, focusing on the ideal audience often involves demographic parameters like age, gender, income, or geographic variables. Not so for the average B2B marketer. Instead, you can focus your advertisements based on industry or job title.

If you’re currently using other channels like paid search or SEO to drive leads, display can be an effective supplement to boost inbound interest.

Turning Traffic into Leads and Leads into Customers

For B2B marketers, one of retargeting’s most valuable applications is improving lead generation. Retargeting is the perfect tool for B2B marketers because it can help you stay in front of leads during longer than average buying cycles.

If you have strong site traffic, but aren’t seeing the conversion rates you’d like, retargeting can help. Visitors to your website are your most valuable audience, but far too often, we don’t do enough to encourage conversions because we’re too focused on driving initial traffic. More often than not, people don’t fill out a lead form on their first visit. But that doesn’t mean they’re not interested, it just means they’re not ready. By serving display ads to this highly qualified audience, you keep your brand top of mind and create additional opportunities for conversions.

Not only can retargeting help generate initial leads, it can help you convert existing leads into customers. Once someone fills out a lead form, they’re probably still at the beginning of the purchase process.  In the B2B space, this process involves significant research and comparison shopping, much of which is likely to be done online. Retargeting can also help you stay top of mind during that process, and convert existing leads into happy customers.

Increasing Channel Volume

It’s not always easy to generate a high volume of qualified leads using display. Here are a few tips for increasing the number of leads you can capture using this powerful channel:

Experiment with Targeting

Though we typically recommend precise targeting to make sure you’re focusing your budget on the most relevant audience possible, there is such a thing as too much targeting. Adding too many targeting parameters or being too specific in your targeting will seriously limit your reach. Of course, the tradeoff of broader targeting parameters is a potential decrease in relevancy which could result in lower lead quality. The key to succeeding with display is finding the right balance between over- and under-targeting. If your lead volume is low, broaden your parameters to increase total lead volume. Make sure you allow enough time to pass to reliably measure the impact of your changes.

Adjust Your Budget

Try different combinations of targeted display outreach to see which techniques are most effective for reaching your lead gen goals. For example, using targeted display to drive new traffic can work incredibly well in conjunction with a retargeting campaign designed to convert existing site traffic, resulting in more qualified leads and ultimately more sales.

Display can be a valuable channel for bringing in the right kind of leads. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to get started.