Retargeting Ads Explained

While getting eyes on your site is of course a vital aspect of marketing, the battle for conversions doesn’t stop there. With a whopping 97% of first-time site visitors leaving without taking any action, brands are tasked with coming up with new ways to keep them engaged.

Modern shoppers can slip away for a variety of reasons – they may get distracted, have second thoughts, they may want to do some research or check product reviews, etc. With larger purchases, buyers often need a little time to contemplate and debate before they can come to a purchasing decision. 

What you don’t want is potential customers going away and forgetting about the conversion altogether. Worse still, completely forgetting you and heading over to a competitor. You’ll want to be right at the forefront of their minds when thinking turns to buying. 

That’s the purpose of retargeting ads. 

What Are Retargeting Ads?

Retargeting ads are a form of paid acquisition explicitly aimed at those who have already expressed an interest in what you have to offer. You would retarget these “window-shoppers” who have previously visited your web pages without engaging with them, with online advertising displayed on other websites, such as search engines and social media platforms. The idea is to entice them back with direct and personalized ads based on the kind of content they were already perusing on your site. 

Retargeting often gets confused with remarketing. While the overall goals are the same – to get disengaged potential customers back into a buying frame of mind – the tactics differ. With retargeting, you’re using paid ads to reach people who almost bought. With remarketing, you’re using email campaigns to target those who have already done business with your brand. Both are vital parts of a successful long-term marketing strategy, and returning customers are arguably more crucial for brands than new ones. 

Are Retargeting Ads Effective? 

Paid advertising methods raise brand awareness, pique interest, and get people into the sales funnel. That much we already know. However, retargeting ads work even better, with the average click-through rate of a retargeted ad being ten times more than that of a regular display ad. They also boost brand awareness, website interactions, and, crucially, conversions, too. 

Here’s why: 

Retargeting ads cut through the noise

Web users have become desensitized to ads after years of being inundated with constant ads, deals and promotion. It’s not that they don’t get annoyed with them any longer; they simply don’t even acknowledge them. That makes it increasingly difficult to get knowledge of your products or services out in the world. That being said, people are far more likely to notice adverts for items that have been, or, better yet, still on their minds—retargeting plays up to this. 

Retargeting ads get your brand seen 

An interesting phenomenon documented within psychology is the “mere exposure effect.” Namely, individuals develop a preference for something simply from seeing it often. They don’t even need to consciously pay attention to the object for it to happen. It simply has to be there. Research shows this to be the case with ads as with anything else. In sum, regular exposure to your ad will foster positive feelings in buyers towards your brand. 

Retargeting ads hit the right audience

In retargeting, those seeing your ads have already expressed interest in your products and/or services. More importantly, they invested time and effort in visiting your site and may have gotten far along the sales funnel before exiting. Therefore, in the audience you are retargeting, you have a ready-made market for whom you can promote bestsellers, introduce new collections, showcase slow-moving inventory, and build overall brand awareness. That’s why, when done right, retargeting ads offer very high ROI.

How Do Retargeting Ads Work?

Retargeting makes use of a cookie-based technology whereby small pieces of data stored by a web browser “remembers” users who visited your webpages. You can then use this information to serve up ads to these individuals, reminding them what they are missing out on. There are a few other ways this can be done, but this is the most common. 

Reasons Why Retargeting Might Not Work For You

The basis of retargeting is understanding that potential customers didn’t convert simply because they decided it wasn’t the right time to do so for whatever reason. Drawing them back works because there were no barriers to the purchase outside their own minds. However, if you find your retargeting ads aren’t as effective as you thought they would be, the issue could lie with your website or the checkout experience. 

Short bounce times could indicate a problem right at the start. Often this is to do with your site’s optimization and the impact on the overall user experience. Is the website slow to load? Is the design confusing? Are there navigation issues? These are all things to think about. 

If you’re losing people right at the critical moment of making a sale, the issues could be with the purchasing itself. Are you asking users to create an account or provide a lot of personal information? Both could be off-putting to those wanting something more simple and convenient. 

So, you think retargeting ads might work for you and are curious to learn more how they can be integrated into your marketing strategy to amplify your sales? Here at Firon Marketing, our passionate team of digital marketing experts can help you optimize your customer acquisition costs with our paid acquisition services including a full range of different advertising types, creation, and management options.

Get in touch for a free audit today!