The Power of Retargeting: How to Re-Engage Your Audience Effectively

Alicia Natal

Min. Read

October 18, 2023

In this day and age, it has become increasingly challenging to engage and retain consumers due to the highly competitive digital world we’re living in. The average person sees between 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day, making it easy for your business to get lost in the shuffle. In order to gain an advantage in this market, The Moran Group recommends utilizing retargeting as a way to stay in front of those users who have already shown interest in your brand.

What is Retargeting?

The average person needs to see an ad multiple times before becoming a customer. Retargeting is a digital tactic that efficiently delivers ads multiple times (frequency) to people on the verge of converting. By definition, retargeting is a method of paid advertising, allowing advertisers to retarget people who have either visited their website and/or previously engaged with their advertising. For example, retargeting those who have been exposed to your digital video advertising with display ads is a great way to efficiently increase frequency and further drive them down the funnel to conversion. Another example of retargeting is to target people who have previously been to the advertiser’s website, taken an action on the website, or viewed a specific page. In doing so, this positions the advertiser top of mind with customers who have shown interest in the brand or product but have not yet converted.

How to Create Effective Retargeting Campaigns

The first step in creating an effective retargeting campaign is segmentation, which helps to reach customers based on how they have interacted with the advertiser’s website. Since audiences are not all created equal and are on varying levels of the purchase funnel, it’s important to segment the audience based on previous website interactions. For example, you could create various audiences that include users who have abandoned their shopping carts or those who clicked on specific product pages. When looking at segmenting your audience, we also recommend removing users who have already converted, as to not minimize waste on an audience who is not actively in-market for the product or service.

After the audience has been defined and segmented as necessary, it’s time to personalize the ad content. Personalization is key to successful retargeting strategies. With this in mind, it’s important to align the creative and messaging with each audience segment’s behavior and preferences. For example, if you are a Toyota Dealer and are retargeting users who have visited your Highlander pages, you will want to make sure your ad is featuring Highlander offers since this is the vehicle that the user has expressed interest in. It is important that the creative includes eye-catching visuals and enticing calls to action. Another option is to utilize Dynamic Creative, which allows advertisers to feature the specific product(s) that a user was engaging with on the website. This is a great way to create a highly personalized consumer experience, in addition to the possibility of showing similar products that the user may be interested in.

Finally, with all of the benefits of retargeting, there is a risk of poor brand perception and user experience by retargeting a user too much. It’s important to set and manage frequency, which allows the advertiser to control how often and how many times ads are shown in an effort to prevent ad fatigue and ensure an overall positive user experience. At The Moran Group, we customize frequency caps for our clients based on product/service being sold as well as past campaign performance to ensure that we are helping to drive conversions.

Why Optimizing Landing Pages is Important

The retargeting strategy is in place; now what? The next step is to optimize the landing pages to ensure they are being sent to a relevant, high-converting landing page. Here are a few optimizations you can make to improve your website:

Mobile Friendly- having a mobile-friendly website instantly boosts sales and conversions due to the ease of accessibility. Additionally, due to the accessibility of your brand, customers are more likely to be retained for a long period of time, which is crucial to a business’s success.
User Friendly- providing a user-friendly experience takes into consideration the ease of finding information, font sizing, color palettes, and more. The goal is to have a concise website that’s easy to navigate and easy to read for the consumer.
Clear Calls To Action- now that the customer has reached your landing page, it’s time to close the deal! It is important to have clear calls to action, such as call us today, buy now, etc.

Cross-Channel Retargeting

Don’t miss the opportunity to reach your customers on multiple channels. It is important to target the audiences across all paid digital media channels to gain the most from a retargeting strategy. Reaching the audience across channels and devices further reinforces brand awareness, increasing chances of re-engagement and, ultimately, conversion.

Analyze & Adjust

This last step in the process is simply to track results as they relate to the advertiser’s goals and adjust the strategy accordingly. The Moran Group is regularly monitoring campaigns in an effort to continue to optimize and boost performance. Recommendations and optimizations may include adjusting creative or landing pages to help drive better on-site engagement or shifting some budget to better manage frequency and drive conversions.

Overall, retargeting is a powerful component of digital marketing strategies, allowing advertisers to re-engage potential customers who have shown interest in their brand. By personalizing the ads, optimizing landing pages, and leveraging cross-channel retargeting, advertisers can effectively and efficiently re-engage audiences and boost conversion rates.