You must be able to use retargeting effectively.

Do you see what I’m referring to?

According to Google, retargeting may increase sales by as much as 50%.

This means that you may be missing big if retargeting doesn’t form part of your strategy. There’s no reason not to.

This guide will show you how remarketing works, and how you can put it to use for your business. There is no fluff or complicated techniques – it’s just what works.

Okay, let’s get started.

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting allows you to show ads to people you have previously seen. This includes people who have already visited your site or given you their email addresses.

This distinguishes retargeting from other advertising types. You can target people using other strategies, such as retargeting based on presumed interests, demographics, and search queries. Retargeting, on the other hand, requires data to be gathered from your target audience before you can use it.

Collecting data for retargeting campaigns

All retargeting campaigns, as I have mentioned, require data collection and audience building. This can be done in one of these two ways:

• Use a retargeting tag/pixel
• Retargeting lists can be used

We’ll show you how to use each method in the next section.

How does Pixel-Based Retargeting work?

Simple. Simple. A pixel, tag, or tag transmits a cookie to the browser of any user who visits your website. You can then follow them with ads on any website or app they use.

You could also say cookies, I suppose. Warm chocolatey delicious cookies…

Mmmmm… who doesn’t love cookies?

OK, those cookies are not allowed. Tracking cookies are tiny pieces of text that are sent to people’s web browsers and stored there for retargeting purposes.

Advertising platforms can use cookies to deliver targeted ads to users. Cookies use information from browsing history, preferences, and interests. Cookies make it possible to retarget. They are almost as delicious as their edible counterparts.

A tracking tag must also be set up on your website. A tracking tag, also known as a pixel, is a small code piece that you place on your website. This code sends information to a server and then places cookies on the browser. This allows you to create a campaign for retargeting. Make sure you have pixel tracking installed if you don’t have it.

Pro tip: If multiple advertising platforms are used and you want to organize your tracking, I recommend Google Tag Manager.

How does List-Based Retargeting work?

List-based Retargeting lets you build an audience by using customer email addresses.

To use list-based retargeting you only need to upload your email contacts to the ad platform. You can then start serving targeted ads to everyone in the list.

Retargeting via a list is a great way to get people who have downloaded your content to subscribe to your blog or make a purchase.

Pro tip: Check that people on your list are willing to give you their email. Retargeting is not effective if you buy lists or send ads to cold prospects. Retargeting works best when you have an authentic, previous engagement with your audience.

How to Create Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting campaigns work in the same way regardless of platform. We’ll skip the detailed tutorials for each platform and just get to the good stuff.

We’ll break down the key rules and give you a variety of strategies to ensure your remarketing campaigns succeed.

The Most Important Rules To Follow

I would advise you to test everything and ignore all rules. Every business is unique, so what might work for one company may not work for another. There are some rules that everyone should adhere to when it comes down to retargeting.

• Convertors Excluded – Create an audience, to begin with. Everyone who visits your confirmation page, or completes your conversion event should be included. You can then either remove these people from your retargeting ads or move them to another audience. You should make ads for customer nurturing, upselling, and other purposes if you have a new audience.

• Limit frequency – You can set a limit on the frequency of your ads. Limiting your audience’s exposure to your ads will prevent a smaller percentage from paying for them. You can also limit the frequency of your ads to avoid people becoming bored.

• Segmentation of Audiences – It is not recommended to retarget everyone who visits your website. Remarketing should be limited to the most relevant customers. You will get better results and save money if you are selective.

Do you feel like you know the basics? Let’s now move on to the next retargeting strategy.

Retargeting Strategies

Once you’ve learned the best practices, it’s time for you to choose the strategy that is best for your business. We’ve collected 17 of our top retargeting strategies to make it easier.   

1) Highly engaged visitors

Retargeting solutions typically charge per impression (CPM). This means that you will be charged each time someone views your ad regardless of whether or not they interact with it. Your campaign’s success will depend on who you retarget.

Retargeting all site visitors, for example, includes people who bounced immediately and aren’t suitable candidates. This problem can be quickly fixed by retargeting only highly engaged users.

Set a goal to encourage visitors to stay for more than two minutes. This will ensure a better quality audience for retargeting.

Because it links to Google Ads, Google Analytics is our preferred method. This integration makes it easy to import any audience you create.

Begin by setting a goal for visitors to stay on your site for at least two minutes.

You can create a goal in Google Analytics to determine the session duration.

Once you have completed the above steps, you can import your audience into Google Ads or other ad platforms that are linked to Google Analytics.

Pro tip: You can use this strategy alone or in combination with other strategies on the list.

2) Funnel-Based

This strategy is most suitable for high-ticket products and services. Higher pricing usually results in a longer sales cycle. Customers must also take multiple actions before buying.

This strategy can only be executed properly if you know what actions your visitors should take and in which order. This knowledge can be used to create a series of ads that will guide users through your buying process.

Here’s an example:

1. Customers visit your blog
2. Retarget blog visitors by placing an ad for a whitepaper download
3. Everyone who downloaded the whitepaper should be sent a confirmation page
4. Retarget every person who visits the confirmation page to offer a free trial or product.
5. To confirm, send everyone who signs up for the free trial a confirmation page
6. Advertise to new users to encourage them to upgrade to the paid version. This is a good time to encourage upgrades. Offer a discount for anyone who signs up before the trial ends.

You can combine several retargeting campaigns for a greater goal, as you can see.

Facebook funnel-based advertising

We’re now excited about the potential of retargeting. How can we set it up? Let me show you how you can use Facebook Ads.

Log in to Facebook Ads Manager, and navigate to the Audiences section.

Once you are there, create a new custom audience that only includes blog visitors. Facebook Ads Manager Audiences Page

Next, create a second audience to distribute your whitepaper to people who have downloaded it. This audience can be retargeted on blogs.

Create a third audience by including people who have signed up for the free trial.

And we’re done! This is just one way to set up a funnel-based, retargeting process. The above examples can be a good starting point. However, there are many other ways to target your audience via Facebook.

3) Time Delayed

Retargeting that is delayed in time is one of the most flexible strategies. It can be used by almost any business regardless of the product or service it offers.

Here’s how it works.

• 1st Week – Show visitors #1
• 2nd Week – Show visitors #2
• 3rd Week – Show visitors #3
• etc.

Let’s suppose you are a dentist trying to attract new patients. This strategy allows you to switch between several ads at once, gradually increasing the value of your offer.

Your first ad might showcase testimonials from patients to build trust and value. A second ad could offer discounted cleanings for new patients. Your third ad might offer a limited-time discount and free whitening.

You can, of course, change the timeframes and number of ads. This is only one example.

One caution: If you use this strategy you must exclude users that convert in the earlier weeks from your target audience. Exclude users who convert on ad #1, from the ad 2 audience, etc. This will ensure that customers who converted on previous ads don’t see later ads and feel ripped off by the lower offer.

It is simple to add exclusions. You can create your retargeting campaigns in Google Ads. Next, create your retargeting campaign in Google Ads.

4) Cross-sell & Upsell

Retargeting ads don’t work for customers who have never bought from you before. Studies show customers who have purchased from you in the past have a 60% to 70% chance of converting.

Are you still not convinced?

Imagine if I said that repeat customers have an average order value of 3 to 5 times higher than first-time shoppers.

Your best customers are repeated customers, that’s the bottom line. You can trust them and make it easier for them to buy again.

We created a retargeting campaign for one of our clients to cross-sell customers from the past. These ads feature new products and explain the benefits to customers based on their initial purchase.

Have a look at these results:

This strategy is not limited to eCommerce businesses. This strategy is also great for companies who want to upgrade existing members of a subscription service. It almost doubles the return on ad investment (ROAS).

Let’s take, for example, the SaaS platform offers three pricing tiers. You might consider customizing a campaign to retarget customers and upsell them to higher-priced products.

Pro tip: Highlight the benefits and additional features of an upgrade when you upsell customers. Cross-sell and up-sell retargeting campaigns offer you the chance to show customers what they are missing.

5) Specific Location

Geographic retargeting is a great way to increase your chances of success, regardless of whether you are a local business or an international corporation.

Because it’s convenient, it works. People are generally aware of where they live and seek out products and services that are close to them.

Let’s take a look at it. First, open your geographical report and sort it by impressions.

I recommend choosing the location with the most impressions. Google Ads geographic report

Next, create geo-specific ads. You can customize the ad copy and images to reflect the location that you are retargeting.

If the first campaign is successful, you can continue to move down the list and create a new campaign for each location.

Pro tip: Pair your retargeting ads and a specific landing page for each location to get the best results. dynamic content replacement is a great option if you are retargeting multiple locations. This tool saves time and eliminates the need to create multiple pages.

6) Search Ads Remarketing Lists (RLSA).

Let’s suppose that someone visits your site. They leave your website after browsing a few key pages but without calling you or filling in contact forms.

 This is where Remarketing Lists For Search Ads (RLSA), comes into rescue.

The same person searches for your competitor a few days later. Boom! Boom! It sounds pretty cool, right?

It’s quite sweet and possible with RLSA.

Retargeting is primarily about following users with video ads and banners. RLSA is different. You can target past site visitors using fully personalized search ads.

RLSA does not follow social media users or passive web browsers. RLSA ads are only shown to users who are actively searching for relevant information.

Remember how RLSAs used information from site visitors in the past? This audience already knows your brand. This makes them more likely to click on your ad. This familiarity allows you to do things you might not normally do with your search ads:

• To appear higher in search results, raise your bids
• Customize your ads headline, description, etc.
• Offer to bid on terms of competitor
• Target broad keywords
• Buy expensive keywords

You can create an RLSA campaign using Google Ads by adding remarketing audiences or creating a new campaign.

You also have the option of choosing between Targeting or Observation. Targeting will restrict your ads to people within your retargeting list. Observation allows you to observe past visitors and adjust your bids without limiting your audience.

Pro tip: RLSA can be used for Shopping ads as well as search. To attract comparison shoppers back to your site, offer discounts and promotions.

7) Dynamic retargeting

Dynamic retargeting can be your best friend if you sell products online.

Dynamic retargeting campaigns automatically populate product information using templates or product feeds. This allows you to show customers ads for products that they have viewed recently without having to manually create hundreds of thousands or even thousands of ads.

You will need to create a product catalog to create Facebook Dynamic ads. Then, create the retargeting campaign. Facebook Ads will do all the rest.

You will need a Merchant Center Account to display retargeting with Google Ads. You’ll then be able to create a dynamic advertising campaign.

Pro tip: Dynamic Retargeting works best when it is paired with upsells, limited-time discounts, and cross-selling.

8) Discount and Down Selling

You can either use discounting or downwelling as a standalone strategy, or add-on to existing retargeting strategies.

For eCommerce, SaaS, and product-based businesses, down-selling is easy. If someone visits your website and shows interest, but doesn’t convert to your offer, you can retarget them with ads that show a lower-priced product, package, or model.

If you are a lead generation company, duplicate the above process with different price points or service options.

It’s easier to discount. It’s still easier to implement, but it can be more difficult financially. Dropping prices too low can lead to advertising costs that exceed profits, which would defeat the purpose of advertising. Many businesses will avoid them.

There is a way to give insane discounts without losing any money.

Here’s how to do it. You should stop offering flat discounts like 30%. Instead, you should charge full price and give a gift certificate with every purchase. BOGO (buy one, get one) deals work well too. This method proved to be more profitable and effective than flat-rate discounts, according to our tests.

This discounting strategy is effective for three reasons: The BOGO offer is extremely tempting

1. First, gift cards are rarely redeemed before their expiration date.
2. As we have mentioned, second, customers will be more likely to make a bigger purchase the second time around.    
3. Third, customers may give their gift cards to family and friends. This not only increases your brand awareness but also means that many customers will spend more on gift cards than they are worth.

Pro tip: Discounts or down selling should be used as the final step in sequential or time-delayed retargeting. Deals could be the last push someone needs to purchase.

9) Referral Retargeting

Referral programs are often cited as the best marketing method, and for good reasons. A survey by HelpLama found that 84% of U.S. internet consumers are influenced in their purchase decisions by the posts of their friends on social media.

This lucrative form of referral marketing can be made profitable by retargeting campaigns.

You convert every new customer you acquire. Instead of excluding them, you will target them with ads that are geared toward generating referrals.

Referral campaigns should be based on incentivizing your existing customers to get the best results. It’s a great idea to offer money, free stuff, and discounts. This is what companies like Uber, Lyft, and Robinhood do well.

10) Intent-Based

Since these visitors have not heard of you, we are unsure if this qualifies for retargeting.

It’s simply too good to not include.

Intent-based Retargeting allows you to retarget people who search for keywords related to your products or services.

Log in to Google Ads and create a new campaign. Click on content marketing to open your ad group settings. Select keywords from the dropdown.

Google Ads: Creating intent-based audiences

Enter the keywords that you wish to retarget in the “People who search Google for these terms” section.

Google will display your ads to anyone who searches the keywords you have targeted after you’ve created them.

You can personalize your ads by knowing which keywords people are searching for.

Pro tip: Intent-based Retargeting can reach high-value customers at a fraction of the cost of search campaigns. This strategy is a good option if your industry has a high CPC.

11) Time-Sensitive

It is a great way of increasing conversions and reducing the time it takes to convert.

Are you unfamiliar with this term?

The conversion time lag is the time gap between users viewing your ad, and when they convert. The time lag is an important factor in retargeting campaigns.

This strategy is not just about understanding data. You need to create a compelling offer that encourages urgency for the best results.

FOMO (fear of missing out) is one way to incite customers to convert.

Pro tip: Never try to deceive customers by making false claims. People are smarter than you might think. They will catch onto a 24-hour sale that lasts two months. Brand trust will be destroyed if there isn’t transparency. Future offers will also be less effective.

12) Hyper Specific

Consumers are now exposed to more noise than ever before. It’s not surprising that personalization has become more important.

What is my point? It won’t suffice to show the same generic retargeting advertising to each site visitor to get their attention.

Facebook Ads makes it easy to segment your audience using hundreds of criteria.

• Localization
• Age
• Gender
• Relationship Status
• Work
• Language
• Education
• Ownership of a Home
• The situation of the parents
• Life Events
• Interests
• Behaviors

This is the best part: you can include these targeting details in your retargeting campaigns to get extreme granularity.

Layered retargeting is a way to segment your audience and create more targeted ads.

Start by choosing the retargeting audience that you wish to segment.

Retargeting audience selection in Facebook Ads

Then, you can add additional targeting criteria to it. Let’s take, for example, the retargeting of Spanish-speaking male runners aged 35 to 55.

You can now create ads specifically targeting Spanish-speaking male runners who have visited your website within the last 90 days.

Pro tip: This strategy can work great if you know your best customers. Your more general remarketing ads can be run. You can save your hyper-specific audience, and then exclude it from other retargeting campaigns.

13) Changes in the Offer

Don’t be discouraged if your social ads and paid search aren’t performing even with retargeting. Sometimes your ads campaigns fail, regardless of how careful you are with them.

 Don’t lose heart. Your targeting or ads may not be the problem. Conversions are often affected by the landing page offer.

It could prove ineffective to ask visitors to book an appointment or to demo your product the first time they visit your website. This is a classic example of asking too many questions too quickly. This is why you should include a less intimidating offer in your retargeting campaign.

Instead of asking them for a demo, give them a gated lead magnet, such as a guide, and ask them to book one.

Seismic has a guide that is free for its lead magnet

Lead magnets can help you educate your customers and increase your chances of converting them to your original offer.

14) Partner Retargeting

This strategy works well for airlines, hotels, and travel websites, as they often offer complementary offers. You will probably need to book a Las Vegas flight if you want to stay in Las Vegas. Why not work together to share retargeting audiences

Retargeting ads with partners

Partner retargeting doesn’t just apply to the travel industry. Partner retargeting can be used by any company offering complementary products or services.

Facebook Ads make it easy to share audiences. Log in to Facebook Ads Manager to access your audience dashboard. You can then select and share audiences with any business in your account.

Facebook restricts audience sharing to accounts that you manage. Remarketing to visitors of other websites becomes more difficult due to this limit.

Platforms like Perfect Audience are a great way to connect with companies that don’t have a business manager account. You simply need to create an account and select a partner website. Then, tap a button. You can retarget site visitors instantly if the site owner consents.

Pro tip: Partner Retargeting via these platforms is 85% cheaper and has higher lifetime values than Google Ads.

15) CPR Retargeting

Do you want to bring back your customers?

This retargeting technique can be used to raise them from the dead.

This retargeting strategy works best for subscription-based businesses, but it is also useful for those who have a list of ex-customers.

Upload a list of your customers who are no longer active to an ad platform you prefer. Next, create a campaign to target this audience.

Remember that these customers canceled or became inactive because of a reason. You must offer a compelling offer to win them back if you are going to win their business.

Pro tip: Not all discounts are effective in retaining customers. You can change your offer completely by using upsells or cross-selling techniques (#4 on this list).

16) Video Engagement

You can retarget viewers who have watched your videos on platforms such as Youtube or Facebook, even though they have never visited your site.

Similar to funnel-based retargeting you can also use video series to guide prospects through their customer journey.

Let’s take, for example, a new product that you are innovating. This is how you could make a video-retargeting campaign.

Top of the Funnel 1st video – Promotes Awareness

• Mention your brand and demonstrate the problem that your product solves

The Middle of the Funnel– Second Video – Buildings Consideration

• Describes the workings of your product and why it is better than other options

Bottom of the Funnel 3rd Video – Creates Urgency

• Incentives viewers to purchase now with time-sensitive discounts and promotions

This will require you to create a series (obviously). The hardest part is creating the videos. Google Ads makes it easy to create video retargeting ads using ad sequences.

How to create Google Ads video-retargeting campaigns

Log in to Google Ads, then create a new campaign.

Choose a Video as the type of campaign you want

Next, choose the Ad sequence to be your campaign subtype.

Subtype of Ad Sequence Campaign

Upload your videos, and you can launch your campaign. That’s it! Google Ads will automatically display your video ads in the right order.

If you intend to use Facebook, however, you will need to create a retargeting audience based on video engagement.

Are you unsure how to do it? Here’s how I do it:

Facebook Ads: How to create a video engagement audience

You will choose a video from your content collection to create an audience. Next, choose a date range and choose viewing percentage or viewing duration. You could, for example, retarget those who have viewed at least 25% of the video within the last 30 days.

Specifications for engagement audience

This process can be repeated to show users video ads. Create an audience for each video within the series.

17) Mobile App Engagement

It’s easy to convince people to download your free mobile app if you have a business. Adroll reports that the average mobile user uses more than 100 apps on their smartphone.

It is difficult to get them to use it, not to mention push in-app purchases and upgrades to the paid version.

App engagement retargeting is a great tool. To encourage users to download your app again, you can create retargeting ads after they have downloaded it.

AppsFlyer data indicates that mobile app retargeting can be the most cost-effective and efficient acquisition channel. Retargeting campaigns are crucial to maintaining app users’ engagement.

Optimizing Retargeting Ads

Retargeting campaigns that are highly effective can become less efficient over time. Optimize your campaigns regularly to keep them in top shape. This section will focus on the most important optimizations that can be made to improve and maintain ad performance.

Avoid Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue is when your audience becomes bored with your ads and loses interest in them.

Ad fatigue could be characterized by a decrease in return on ad spending, lower click-through rates, and higher costs per-result.

Ad fatigue is common and can be easily treated. Here are some quick fixes:

• Your images can be changed
• Modify your ad copy
• You might try a different call-to-action
• You can use a different ad template

All sizes of ads are acceptable   

The wrong ad size can cost you a placement or even a customer. Research each platform thoroughly and make sure to design ads in the recommended sizes.

For a complete list of Google Ads display sizes, you can refer to our post.

Set frequency caps

A lower frequency can help you perform better. This applies to frequency limits for Google ads and Facebook ads. However, it is possible to convert if you only get a few impressions.

This is why I suggest testing both higher frequencies and lower frequencies.

Create landing pages that are specific to retargeting campaigns

A post-click landing page can dramatically improve your retargeting campaign’s performance.

Instead of sending people to your homepage, customize a page that matches your offer.

Always test

Failure is guaranteed when you run the same ads to the same audience with the same offer. You must test new strategies if you want your retargeting campaigns to succeed. Testing involves A/B testing ads and landing pages.

Conclusion

Retargeting is an integral part of any online marketing strategy. You’re wasting money if you don’t use it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that every retargeting campaign will succeed. You can only improve your results by learning from mistakes and trial and error. Keep trying new strategies. Persistence is the key to success.

Which strategy do you find most exciting out of all the ones we have covered? Did I miss any strategy? Please let me know in the comments!