Retargeting is a broad marketing term that refers to advertising that targets users who have already interacted with your brand in specifically-defined ways. This includes a visit to your website, browsing social media pages or clicking a product.
Know How It Works
When guests take one of these actions, a cookie is set in their browser and they're served ads based on their previous behavior. For instance, if you own a local coffee shop and a user within a specific ZIP code is browsing your delivery menu, a retargeting strategy could deliver ads to this customer featuring the menu items they were looking at.
This strategy is already a popular tool in a marketer's arsenal. According to Ad Roll, 83 percent of marketers are planning to increase or maintain their retargeting expenditures in the next year. If you're just getting started, it can seem intimidating to get a strategy going. Fortunately, it's not as hard as you think.
Look At Your Customer Journey
To make this marketing tactic work for your business, consider your ideal customer journey. How do you think potential customers find you or should find you? Spending some time doing market research and perhaps enlisting the help of a marketing professional who specializes in retargeting could help nail down where your efforts could be best leveraged and help your new campaign get off to the best start possible.
Think About Where to Serve Ads
Even though you should have a concrete idea of where to start after the research phase, you need to know where you want to serve ads, as well. In recent years, Facebook has become a favorite thanks to its inexpensive and easy-to-use platform, but the social media giant's data reporting has had a few hiccups over the past year, which could make marketers a little nervous. The best approach may be to invest in multiple platforms and then do a cost-benefit analysis to see which platforms provide the best return on investment. From there, you can grow your strategy and analyze your own data for every campaign.
Getting started with a retargeting campaign can seem daunting, especially as there's a lot of moving parts to this marketing tool. However, by taking a broad look at your business overall, running some small-scale tests and enlisting the help of a marketing professional, you can make this technology work for you, growing your customer base and increasing conversions along the way.
