How Ad Retargeting Boosts E-Commerce Conversions

Ad retargeting is an advanced form of marketing that displays relevant online ads to customers who have already shown an interest in a commodity. For example, let's say a person visits your apparel website and looks at a specific hoodie without buying it. Later, that person is browsing their Facebook and comes across an ad for the same hoodie. This strategy, when implemented correctly, can yield a 50% increase in sales! Here's how it can boost your e-commerce conversions.

How Ad Retargeting Boosts E-Commerce Conversions

Segmented Audiences

A successful retargeting strategy involves segmenting your audience based on their interests, intents, and shopping style. This can help ensure their experience is relevant and incentivizes them to come back to the site. For example, you can segment your visitors by how long it's been since they visited the site; someone who visited yesterday wouldn't see the same ad as someone who visited six weeks ago.

Segmented audiences also help you show different ads depending on the prospect's level of interest. For instance, ads with discount codes work very well for "cart abandoners," while carousel ads might be more effective for those who only visited your product page once.

Optimized Ads

Creating visually appealing ads is vital to a retargeting campaign. Many other factors go into crafting an effective ad as well, like an eye-catching headline, compelling copy, and a strong CTA. Split-testing different versions to discover which ones drive the most conversions is essential to optimizing the effectiveness of the campaign. For example, many brands find they have more success with ads that contain images of people than ads that don't.

Frequency Timing
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The timing of a retargeted ad is also crucial to the conversion rate. Showing too many ads is annoying and can result in "banner blindness" where the prospect no longer notices them. On the other hand, not showing them often enough means your message may not get through.

Although there's no "magic number" that applies to every company, the general rule of thumb is to set a lower frequency cap for raising brand awareness and a higher frequency cap for retargeting users who are already familiar with your product. Again, split testing can help you find the sweet spot that yields the highest conversions.

Ad Rotation

One marketing study found that sticking with the same ads for too long can decrease the click-through rate by almost half. This is once again a product of "banner blindness," where prospects essentially stop noticing your ad because they've seen it too many times. To avoid this issue, successful retargeting campaigns will rotate through multiple ad sets with different images, headlines, and CTAs every couple of months.

Burn Pixels

The burn pixel is used to remove customers from your retargeting campaign, so you aren't advertising to those who have already made a purchase. Essentially, it is a simple code embedded on the order confirmation page that removes customers from your target audience list. This way, you conserve your marketing budget by only showing ads to people who have yet to become customers.
 
Now you can see why so many businesses choose to use retargeting to boost sales; it's one of the most potent marketing strategies on the internet!  Need some help implementing your own retargeting campaign? Contact us at Go Lead Consulting today!