Retargeting - The Art of Converting Lost Opportunities

We’re almost out of football preseason, and last week I was browsing a few online NFL apparel type stores for a new Arizona Cardinals jersey. I wasn't ready to buy just yet, but I'm definitely close. To be honest, I'm trying to determine which retailer has the best price and shipping options. Plus, I was hoping to find a cool throwback jersey not everyone and their dog has.

More Harm Than Good

This week, I was reading a few marketing blogs and I noticed I was being stalked by a Dallas Cowboys blanket from a site I visited when I was looking for a Cardinals jersey. As someone who spends the majority of their day discussing advertising tactics and keeping up on digital marketing, I couldn’t help but count the number of times I saw the ad chase me around the web. I’m a firm believer that retargeting, or “remarketing,” is an excellent solution for any business to advertise online. However, this static retargeting campaign not only stalked me with an ad for a team I despise, and a blanket in the middle of a Phoenix summer, but they completely over served me to the point in which I don’t want to spend money with their business. This is a perfect example of why companies are reluctant to use retargeting as a solution for advertising their business, and a great example of why it’s important to have a professional marketing agency running this solution.

What is Retargeting? 

Retargeting, often referred to as “remarketing,” is the ability to serve ads to potential consumers who left a website without converting into a valuable customer. Econsultancy, an online community of digital marketing professionals, states 98 percent of Internet users visit a website without converting into a customer. That means just about every person who visits your business’s website leaves without completing the action you intended them to do – become a long-time customer.

Dynamic and Static Retargeting

There are two approaches to retargeting: dynamic and static. Static retargeting ads are very basic; they’re similar to an online billboard with basic messaging that follows any online user who stumbled across your website. Static ads often alert users about a great deal a company is running that month or a service they provide. Static retargeting is usually the culprit for leaving consumers with a bad taste in their mouths. They’re not bad, or stalker-like, if the campaign is run correctly – it all depends on the service provider you choose.

Dynamic is the intelligent, strategic and analytical approach to retargeting. A proper dynamic campaign, in reference to my Cardinals jersey browsing, would have served me an interactive, eye-catching ad that not only reminded me about the great deal on the jersey I put in my shopping cart, but it would have also directed me to a Cardinals beer helmet, flags to fly on my mini-van (nothing says cool like flags on a mini-van) and foam fingers to add to my shopping cart. It’s like a digital cashier that up sells me without even trying.

Careful Management is Key

As a marketing geek, I think retargeting ads can be a highly productive advertising solution for any business. By putting a strategic pixel within a website or landing page you can understand why potential customers didn’t convert, and you can learn how to lead them back. Any retargeting ad campaign can over serve potential customers if it is not properly managed, but if done tastefully these ads can be an excellent way to capture lost opportunities and increase your return on investment.

By Mike Hines