Retargeting basically means targeting visitors who left our website.

“Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that can help you keep your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website. For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t convert right away.” – Retargeter

Let’s say, Bob visited our site. He then visits the pricing page but he didn’t buy and left the site. With retargeting, we can “follow” Bob around the internet and show ads to him to get him to buy. The ads could be a 10% coupon, 30-day free trial, etc.

On the other hand, Molly visited our site but she didn’t go to the pricing page but to the features page and left the site. With retargeting, we can show ads to her like “How OwlGuru Can Help You Do X In 10 Minutes”.

The point here is we can retarget different ads to different visitors.

How good is retargeting

The average display banner ad will get around 0.05% – 0.1% CTR. On the other hand, a retargeted banner ad will get around 0.2% CTR. That’s 2x the standard banner ad.

According to CMO.com by Adobe, visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert.

“I’ve worked with clients where their typical site conversion rate came in at 2%, but retargeted traffic converted at 20%.” – WP Curve

Let’s say, we got 10,000 visitors who went to our pricing page but didn’t buy. Assuming, we got a retargeting campaign setup to give them a 10% coupon to buy now.

• 0.2% CTR of 10,000 = 20
• 20% conversion rate = 4
• Average customer LTV = $500

That’s $2,000 right there and we’re only paying for 4 clicks or 10 CPM.

Setting up a retargeting campaign

When I setup my retargeting campaign, I like to map that to the buyer’s journey.

In Bob’s case.

Bob visited our site. He then visits the pricing page but he didn’t buy and left the site. With retargeting, we can “follow” Bob around the internet and show ads to him to get him to buy. The ads could be a 10% coupon, 30-day free trial, etc.

He’s in the Decision stage so we will retarget him with ads in the Decision stage of the funnel.

Example of Decision stage retargeting ads:

• Case studies of real people and real results they got
• Testimonials from customers
• Product comparisons
• Discount coupons

If our users are still in the Awareness stage, we don’t want to retarget them with Decision stage ads.

For example: In OwlGuru, our Awareness stage visitors are students who are still choosing their career. They are not ready to choose their college yet. In this case, we don’t want to show ads on “Checklists: Choose A College You Love”. We want to show them ads like “How To Choose A Career That Fits You In 30 Mins”.

Summary

The best thing to do now is to place the retargeting pixel on the site now so we can start building that “list” of people who we can retarget.

The reason for that is because we can’t reach the visitors who visit our site if we don’t have a retargeting pixel setup.

After we got our retargeting pixel setup, we can start strategizing to create a retargeting campaign that converts and generate sales.

Here are 2 of my recommended reads on retargeting: 33 retargeting campaigns you’ve never heard before & 5 CRM retargeting ideas you should use.