13 Jun What is Retargeting and How Does It Work to Boost Customer Traffic and Sales?
Business owners who have invested in a quality website, and consistent social media marketing, can become frustrated when it comes to converting that traffic potential, into sales and revenue. If your website and digital properties are tooled to gather customers, the next step is to design a retargeting strategy to keep them engaged with your brand, and compel them to make a purchase decision, to buy your product or services.
Whether your business is a brick and mortar location, or an ecommerce model, customers require a more complex (but easy to navigate) user experience, to help them choose your business over other competitors in your niche (locally, or nationally). In this article we’ll explain how it works, the channels of customer engagement, and how all businesses regardless of size can leverage retargeting to grow revenue.
Start with Analytics
Evaluating the bounce rate of your website, is one criteria that digital marketing experts use to determine the first problem. Search criteria may be tooled to help customers find your business, but how many pages of your site are they reading or clicking on, before moving on to another website? And when they do leave, what sites are they going to?
There are a variety of tools that agencies and business owners can use through Google Analytics to gain insight and diagnose the problem. Google Analytics can tell you far more than how many visitors you had on each page, it can tell you where you are losing your traffic, and what pages and content are resonating best with customers.
Another valuable tool to determine why visitors to your website are not converting into customers, is heat map software. Depending on the provider you choose, the heatmap will generate a graphic depiction of where your customers go, and the elements, content and images that they click on once they arrive.
Using heatmap review, you can track the flow of your website customers, and when combined with pixel tracking for remarketing, you can track what websites your potential customers are heading to, after they have searched through your site. If your customers are heading to other websites immediately after, what aspects of content, visual display and user experience are your competitors using successfully, to recruit that traffic and feed the sales funnel?
Website Pixel Integrations for Effective Retargeting
Installing a retargeting pixel on your website, allows your business to capture web traffic and use that information for both advertising and email marketing. Pixel based retargeting offers your business the opportunity to tag a visitor so that your brand may continue to communicate and market to them, on a variety of different platforms.
A general pixel (often Java Script that does not slow or impede website performance), tracks the visitor with a ‘cookie’ or IP based tracking. If you have ever searched for a new smartphone on a website and found that the brand was ‘following’ you with display advertising, even as you browsed for unassociated products or services, that is a good example of pixel tracking in application.
The idea is simple; if the consumer or business was compelled to visit your website to source a product or service they are interested in (but left without purchasing), gentle reminders may influence a return to your website, where they may choose to buy from your business, at a later date.
The Facebook Pixel integrates with Facebook Business, and functions much in the same way for businesses who are regularly allocating pay-per-click budget on Facebook ad’s. The unique code is installed on a website, ad begins to track site visitors.
The Facebook Pixel can collect website visitors and organize them into four main target categories, which businesses can then use for pay-per-click advertising campaigns, within the social media network.
Custom Audiences on Facebook can be organized into these top three remarketing opportunities:
- Individuals who have visited your website within the past 24 hours. These are some of the highest conversion potentials, while the brand impression and memory of the website is strongest.
- Individuals who have visited your website in 180 days but have not returned in the last thirty days. These consumers have some familiarity with your brand (and cannot be considered a cold lead) but they may have a weaker conversion and engagement rate than those that have visited your website more recently.
- Customers who have visited a specific page on your website. If your business is providing a special offer or landing page that is tailored to a unique product, service or event, you can target your Facebook advertising specifically on that audience.
It’s important to note that prior to 2015, businesses had to install multiple Facebook pixels on different high-traffic pages (in a website audit, we can determine if you have Java scripts or redundant tracking codes installed that can impede site load and navigation speed).
Only Google AdWords and optimized Google My Business customers are able to access the global site tag for Google remarketing. But once the snippet has been installed on all pages of the website (it consists of both a global site tag and an optional event snippet), Google Analytics will be able to track all remarketing events and opportunities. It will also start putting your business, products or services directly into Google Advertising spaces on virtually every URL or social network your business has targeted for PPC; directly under the nose of your customer, to passively suggest a purchase or site revisit.
The Google global site tag was updated in October 2017. If you have previously installed the AdWords tag using the JavaScript version, you can continue to use the tracking software. However, if your tracking is set up with a non-JavaScript image tag, developers recommend that you remove it, and start again with the new global site tag.
To learn more, visit the Google Support Community.
Email Marketing Tactics
One of the oldest and most commonly used retargeting tactic, is the email subscription form. By offering an incentive (such as a free sample, coupon or special offer) for subscribers, businesses can rapidly grow an email opt-in list of potential customers that they can market to.
How many emails is enough, or too much for the average consumer? Remember that you want your new subscribers to remain connected to your brand, but what you do not want, is to overwhelm existing or potential customers, with emails that are too frequent, or lacking in valuable content.
A recent report published by the Direct Marketing Association, almost 40% of marketers say that they limit emails to less than (3) direct communications per month. The average was 1-2 at maximum, to keep customers informed, without prompting an opt-out.
The nature of your emails should always be informative and add value to your audience. Remember to balance promotional information (such as an event, sale or new product or service launch), with information about your brand, corporate culture and helpful tips that can be applied to benefit everyday lives of your customers. Marketing retargeting as a practice, involves many aspects of content management and strategy. Contact our creative team at The Threadgill Agency to schedule a consultation. Let’s talk about the opportunities available to target, market and convert your website traffic into increased revenue for your business.