What is Retargeting?
Retargeting is a powerful tactic for reaching users who have already engaged with your brand to continue their customer journey.
This blog post dives into the power of retargeting in paid media and different types of retargeting options to consider.
Why is Retargeting Valuable?
People who have already engaged with your brand are more likely to convert on your ads than cold audiences who have never interacted with you.
Because you are targeting a more qualified, higher-intent audience, your retargeting campaigns will likely achieve higher conversion rates at a lower cost per conversion than your prospecting campaigns.
Retargeting Audiences to Consider
Retarget Website Visitors
If you have the LinkedIn pixel applied to your website, you can create website visitor retargeting audiences. You can either retarget visitors from your entire site or specific pages. Additionally, you can do this on Facebook/Meta if you have their pixel applied to your website.
Retarget Your Internal Database Members
Your first-party data is marketing gold! ✨
On LinkedIn, you can upload a list of people you want to retarget. I recommend including first name, last name, email address, phone number, job title, and company in the file that you upload. This will help you to achieve the highest match rate on the platform. It is okay if you do not have all of this information. However, the more you input, the more likely LinkedIn will be able to match the people in your list to users on the platform.
Facebook/Meta
You can also upload a custom contact list to Facebook/Meta or import one from Mailchimp. Similar to LinkedIn, the more identifiers you provide, the higher the match rate may be between your list and targetable Meta members.
Marketo
If you use Marketo, you can create a Smart List that you can push to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google for retargeting (instructions here). However, note that this will be a static audience and you will need to manually repush the audience to refresh it in the ad platforms.
Demandbase
I’ve also had success creating people-based audiences in Demandbase and pushing to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google for retargeting (instructions here). Unlike Marketo, the audiences you push to ad platforms from Demandbase are dynamic and will get refreshed/updated.
Retarget Previous Platform/Ad Engagers
There are a lot of opportunities to do this, with some examples below:
- LinkedIn
- You can retarget users who have visited your company page on LinkedIn.
- If you are already running ads on LinkedIn, you can retarget the ad engagers, video viewers, lead gen form openers, etc. with the next best offer.
- You can retarget users who marked themselves as “attending” your LinkedIn event.
- Facebook/Meta
- You can retarget users who visited your Facebook page or Instagram account
- You can retarget video ad viewers and lead gen form openers.
- You can retarget people who attended your Facebook event.
- Google
- If you are running YouTube ads, you can create YouTube users lists for remarketing purposes through Display and Video 360.
- Content Syndication
- Many content syndication vendors offer multi-touch programs. This allows you to drive guaranteed leads who have received more than one asset. Some content syndication vendors also offer complimentary display campaigns to show your leads display ads to continue their journey and offer another way for them to consume your content.
Potential Retargeting Challenge: Low Match Rates and Scale
Retargeting audience match rates vary by platform and reduce available audience sizes. Expanding the criteria for your retargeting audiences and increasing the fields you include can help improve match rates. You may have your contact’s business email addresses but they use their their personal email addresses in their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google accounts. If this is the case, you may see lower match rates.
You can increase the scale of your retargeting campaigns by combining audiences. For example: retarget your database members AND website visitors AND previous ad engagers.
The Importance of Exclusion Audiences
Want to improve lead quality? Exclude people who are not in your target audience. This will help you to better direct your media buy toward people who are most likely to convert to become a customers.
Here are some recommendations for audiences to exclude:
- Competitors
- Students
- Your own employees
- If your goal is net new leads or net new customers:
- Exclude database members or current customer accounts
In conclusion, retargeting is a powerful tool for re-engaging your audience and improving the conversion rates of your digital marketing efforts.
