Last year I went camping. I spent a while online buying supplies and watching videos on different aspects of outdoor survival. Soon the video feed became full of bearded men teaching me how to tie a knot and start a fire with an axe and a toothbrush. As time went on all this marketing dissipated.

This year, before I had even thought about camping, the adverts for tents, boots and Kendal Mint Cake started flashing up on my screen.

This is retargeting! These sellers knew that I was at least interested in the idea of camping so when the camping season rolled around again, they wanted to make sure that their products were front and centre at the most opportune time.

Why retarget?

Retargeting is a process where previously interested people are encouraged to re-engage to get them to take the final step.

There are two options for a business looking to increase its number of customers just as there are two options for charities looking to grow the supporter base. They are:

Option one – Target a new audience

This seems to make a lot of sense. If you make perfume for women in their 20s, why not broaden your target market and include teenage girls too, effectively doubling your target audience.

Porsche has done this. When I was growing up, the only people who drove Porsches were car fanatics who liked going fast. You could be pretty certain that you would turn heads if you drove down a street in a Porsche. These days they produce SUVs and it seems to me that every third person drives a Porsche. They look almost indistinguishable from other cars on the market and they’ve lost that elite appeal.

Targeting a new audience will give you a broader appeal but it is going to be expensive to create something that keeps such a broad audience happy, it’ll dilute unique elements and may risk alienating the loyal core market. It goes against what marketers have learnt about target audiences.

So, if option one is only practical for charities and businesses who have either deep pockets or are needing to shift their target, we must consider option two.

Option two – Retarget

First of all, to retarget, you need to be keeping a track of your (potential) customers/supporters through cookies or a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). This does require some effort but it’s something you should be doing anyway.

With only 2% of website visitors converting (taking the action you want them to take) on their first visit, there’s 98% of visitors who’ve the potential to be converted. These people have already expressed a degree of interest in your offering which means they’ll be more likely to convert in the future.

By retargeting, your marketing will inevitably appear more personal. You can show that you know what your target audience is looking for even after they have left your website. If they weren’t interested, they’d have never ended up on your website in the first place.

On top of this, you are keeping your marketing cost effective. Targeting those who have already expressed an interest will always offer a better return on investment. If I have been on a particular company’s website looking at walking boots, it is likely that I’m in the market for a pair of boots. Therefore, it is an easier task for that company to target me and sell me a pair of boots than it is for them to sell a pair of walking boots to someone who has never had any intention of walking anywhere.

Key steps for retargeting

Hopefully, you are convinced that it is worth retargeting potential customers and supporters. The next thing to think about is how to go about it. Here are the key steps (but please remember that the stages will vary according to the type of retargeting you are doing).

1. Identify those who need to be retargeted – You can use a CRM to identify those who’ve stopped engaging or you can cross reference an email list or track your cookies. Be careful here, you don’t want to retarget those who have already been converted by mistake.
2. Figure out why they stopped engaging – There are a load of reasons why someone stops engaging. Often they hit a barrier and they simply don’t have the inclination to push through. Some typical examples of these barriers are: confusing messaging, failure to convey the benefits of a product or service, price, a convoluted website layout. If you can identify the issue, not only can you help those you are retargeting to overcome it, but you can remove the barrier for future supporters or customers.
3. Re-engage the right way – When you know what probably caused someone to fall away, you will want to re-engage them in a different way. It sounds obvious but if someone isn’t convinced to join a mailing list with a promise of a PDF report once, it is unlikely to work on a second try.
   Make sure that your retargeting engages without overwhelming. Too little effort will be missed but too much will irritate.
4. Measure the results – This is the essential element for all marketing work: anything you try, measure it to demonstrate its value. By measuring how successful your retargeting is, you can refine your marketing, avoid barriers next time and learn how best to retarget.

Conclusion

Retargeting has great potential to reach people who are close to converting which makes it well worth the effort. If you would like to find out how Aubrey can help you retarget your target audience, get in touch to arrange a free no-obligation chat.