This is the final installment of our four-part series on digital marking, and we’re going to finish up by talking about retargeting efforts through paid advertising.
One of the most frustrating parts of the marketing process is watching potential buyers walk away, and this is what the retargeting process is all about – getting those interested parties to come back and look at your site again, with the aim of converting them. Retargeting is a powerful tool with a proven track record for bringing back customers who just weren’t ready to buy the first time around. You have to be careful how you proceed, though, or you risk either alienating visitors or wasting money on tactics that get you nowhere. Here are a few guidelines to keep you on the right track.
Be clear on your objectives. Not all retargeting is about pushing sales – you can also use retargeting to raise awareness for certain products, aspects of your brand, or even information that you provide on your site. When you’re setting up targeted groups for your ad campaigns, be clear on what you want each ad to achieve, so that you’re not sending mixed messages to the wrong groups. Using retargeting for lead generation or even just to get eyes on your blog can be a great long-game strategy when combined with more direct sales tactics.
Keep your focus specific and relevant. One of the biggest mistakes with retargeting efforts is that they can easily be too general. While it may seem like a good idea simply to use one ad campaign to cover everyone who has visited your site, you’ll find that the conversion rates are not much better than they were the first time around. If you take the time to retarget for particular actions on your site – for example, visits to specific product pages or blog posts – you’ll find not only better engagement, but better results in terms of ROI.
Don’t overdo it. One of the main arguments against retargeting is that it can quickly get overwhelming, and end up annoying the very customers you’re trying to entice. This is why there are plenty of tools out there to help you control how your ads are displayed. Most social networks offer frequency caps so that your ads aren’t shown too often to the same targeted users, and burn codes can help you exclude redundant ads for users who have already gone back to your site and made a purchase.
Since most visitors to your website won’t convert on the first visit, retargeting is an important part of the conversion process. As with most marketing techniques, experimentation and testing is key, so be sure to keep track of what you’re doing and check in regularly to see how things are progressing.
It’s no secret that where modern marketing is concerned, digital is where it’s at. Over the past twenty years or so, companies have slowly shed their traditional marketing tactics in favour of email, web advertising, and more recently, social media.
That said, enough time has passed since the dawn of digital marking that it is no longer a “new and different” offshoot of traditional strategies. Digital has now been around long enough that it is actually the center of what marketing is all about, the default of what we mean when we’re talking about reaching customers and building relationships.
This is why it’s time to stop thinking about strategies in terms of “digital” as a separate thing, and just focus on the most effective marketing techniques that will help you find the customers who need you, and who can help you grow your business. The digital part is now a given.
You can already see this mental shift happening in the way that search engines are prioritizing results. Gone are the days when you could use coding tricks and workarounds to fool the system into ranking your page higher than your competitors. Now, the search engine algorithms are smart enough to understand what quality content is, and to reward those who provide real value rather than those who simply try to plug in some kind of magic formula.
Internet users are becoming more savvy, as well. Today’s online consumers are smart, and they see through blatant attempts to have products and services pushed on them. What they actually want and need are for companies to step up and provide comprehensive information, opportunities to communicate, and products that help them solve problems in their daily lives.
The good news is, this provides an opening for smart marketers to stop worrying so much about the digital aspects of marketing, and start honing in on raising the value of the content they’re providing for their audiences.
That’s not to say that the technical factors of marketing aren’t important – of course you need to pay attention to your analytics tools to make sure you’re on the right track. But that’s just what they are: tools to assist you in your marketing journey, the goal of which is to make real, human connections that lead to customer relationships. It’s a means to an end rather than the end itself.
Digital marketing is no longer the new kid on the block. It is now firmly established as the norm, and it’s time to start thinking of it as such. Just as with any other type of marketing, focus your energy on helping your target customers, get your knowledge and expertise out there, and provide the best products and services that you possibly can.
COGO Interactive is an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in online marketing strategy, web design, SEO and social media marketing. We work with clients in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and across the nation.
