Retargeting is a life-saving pill for business

Retargeting is a set of works on setting up the display of advertisements for an audience that has visited the site at least once. Is this Internet marketing tool useful and can it become a panacea for falling sales? The term remarketing is often used in the same context, but first things first…

Retargeting or remarketing?

Let's immediately deal with the "pharmacological group" and the confusion in terminology. Remarketing in the classical sense is the search for alternative methods of revitalizing demand, changing the marketing strategy to increase sales. Google equated retargeting with remarketing by launching its ad targeting tool on the Display Network and, more recently, the Search Network. With a light feed from the web giant, remarketing has become a household name and is often used as a synonym for retargeting.

Users rarely make a purchase or order a service when they first visit a site. There is nothing unnatural in this, often before making a choice, consumers compare several options. Retargeting is just invented in order to remind "about yourself", return the user to the site and turn him into a regular customer.

Retargeting services are provided by various platforms and banner networks. The most popular in Ukraine is:

• remarketing in Google AdWords;
• growing retargeting from Yandex;
• banner ads on Facebook;
• short videos before watching videos on YuoTube.

How retargeting works

The composition of the "tablet" is very simple. Thanks to a special code that is installed on each page of the site, and the so-called cookies, information about the visitors of the resource is collected. Further, in accordance with the goals of the advertising campaign, retargeting lists are created for resource visitors who:

• stayed on the site for a certain amount of time without making a lead (registration, placing an order, subscribing to a newsletter);
• performed a certain conversion action;
• placed an order;
• added an item to the cart but did not complete the purchase;
• visited several pages of goods, thereby demonstrating the scope of their interests;
• by registering or participating in the survey, they indicated demographic, geographical and other data.

All of this information can and should be used to properly target ads to different groups of potential customers. For example, a visitor who has made a purchase of a tablet can be interested in offering related materials and accessories (cases, stands, protective films, and so on).

Retargeting has been successfully used to treat the painful symptoms of online business and allows you to:

1. increase sales;
2. improve site conversion;
3. positively influence the image of the company;
4. increase brand awareness;
5. increase demand for a little-known product or service;
6. increase the return on investment in advertising.

Applying retargeting

The ad targeting tool for specific groups of resource visitors allows you to create unique offers for a segment of users interested in buying. The CTR and conversion of such ads are much higher than those of ads without retargeting.

Almost any company can recommend this marketing tool, but online stores with the right audience segmentation achieve the greatest results. At the same time, you should remember about doses, the attendance of the resource plays an important role: to launch each retargeting list, you need to collect at least 100 cookies.

Blaming only advertising for the lack of sales is a common misconception. Retargeting will not help attract customers if the site:

• low attendance;
• huge bounce display;
• poor quality service;
• poor usability scores and outdated design.

In this case, retargeting is powerless. Radical measures and complex "treatment" are needed - redesign of the site and painstaking work to improve the service. After correcting errors in the usability of the site, sales will certainly increase, but, as you know, there are no overdoses and side effects from an abundance of orders. Well-configured retargeting will add customers to a site with an updated design, good functionality and prompt service.

Let's stop on literacy for now. Retargeting is certainly an effective tool to increase sales, but only if the goals and settings of the advertising campaign are thought out to the smallest detail and clearly built. We will cover the main mistakes in using retargeting in our next article.