Behavioral retargeting is one of the most important weapons relevant for those marketers who is searching to reach consumers that previously make an interaction with the relevant brand. With the current generation being characterized by short attention spans, behavioral retargeting assists brands in having users return and eventually seal their buyer’s journey. However, to get optimal results, one needs a well optimized approach towards it.
In the following article, let us discuss the most important aspects to consider with regards to the behavioral retargeting and the way to achieve further growth to the process.
1. Understand Your Audience Segments
It is crucial to segment your audience as the basis for the behavioral retargeting strategy in order to foster success. Not all visitors that you see visiting your website are at the same stage of the buying process. Some of your visitors may have only viewed your site while the others may have only put something in the cart without checking out.
When you divide your audience by behavior, it is easy to post relevant advertisements that address the needs of the people. For instance, you may retarget users who visited the product pages but did not purchase with ads that contain product deals or a gentle nudge. What is more, those who stopped the carts might be more receptive to the ads with limited-time offers.
Tip: This kind of tracking can be easily done with the help of such services as Google Analytics or retargeting services. It will be useful in creating a specific target group and showing specific ads taking into consideration the user engagement.
Also Read: 8 Strategies to Boost Your Target Affiliate Marketing
2. Personalize Your Ad Copy and Design
After the audience classification, it is crucial to match the ad creatives to the user action and the segment in which they were classified. Behavioral retargeting is most effective when the websites that display the ads seem sensitive to the user.
For instance, if a user spends some amount of time browsing through a specific category of products, then they should be served with adverts of those products. Similarly, if the user went to a specific service page, it would be invaluable to tweak the message to promote service benefits relevant to that specific page.
Personalization also includes aspects of ad display, what and/or how your ads will look like. Ensure that you employ images and CTA buttons that convey a message to the users urging them to come back. This way, for the cart abandoners, it will make use of a “Buy Now” button, and for the visitors who read through the blog, it will incorporate a “Learn More” link, and in this way, the design of the pop-ups ought to elicit a response.
Pro Tip: Dynamic ads can provide products or contents which the user has visited or interacted with on the company’s website. It may be worthwhile to consider integrating dynamic ad tech to make personalization more manageable.
Also Read: How to Identify Apple’s Target Audience
3. Optimize Frequency Caps
The major drawback of behavioral retargeting is that it may expose the user to an excess of advertisements, thus contributing to ad blindness. To avoid this, use frequency caps A frequency cap is a tool that controls how often an ad can be shown within a particular time frame to the same audience. These caps define how frequently a user will come across your advertised products or services, without being overbearing.
Frequency caps therefore need to be changed depending the objectives and targets of the campaign, the target audience in particular. For example, if you are setting up a retargeting campaign for flash sale, it might make sense to display ads more frequently during the flash sale. However, where the campaign is simply for raising awareness, there might be benefit in having a lower frequency cap as to avoid over-exposure to the campaign.
Tip: Experiment with frequency capping and determine what constitutes a good limit for each campaign. Review performance metrics to know when exactly your users are interacting with the ads and make the necessary changes.
Also Read: Behavioral retargeting
4. Leverage Cross-Device Retargeting
Consumers use multiple devices to access information – smartphone in the morning, laptop or tablet in the evening. To make sure your retargeting misses these users who use multiple devices, incorporate cross-device retargeting.
Cross-device retargeting means that one can target users based on their activity across their devices and in transition from one device to the other. This makes the possibilities of reaching out with your message to your target market at the various points available multiple with regards to the device used by the consumer at a particular point in time.
Use solutions like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or other cross-device tracking-supporting tools to enable cross-device tracking.
Key Insight: By leveraging on cross-device retargeting, users are reminded to complete the conversion regardless the device used, whether it is a mobile, desktop or tablet.
5. Use Time-Based Retargeting Windows
Not every retargeting campaign has to be a never-ending campaign either. It has been found out that, there are certain customer’s touch point in the customer journey where retargeting ads are potent. Organizing retargeting windows based on time guarantees that your ads will be shown at the time when users are most likely to perform a particular action.
For instance, if the user has abandoned a particular cart, then there are higher possibilities of the user converting within the first few days of abandonment. The likelihood all increases in the beginning until it reaches the highest value and then it starts reducing gradually. On the other hand, if the visitor saw a product without making a purchase, a retargeting ad after a week may revive their interest.
Tip: Experiment with various time intervals to determine when individuals are most receptive to the retargeting advertisements. It means that you can put more various intervals of retargetment depending on the user activity like the visit of pages, filling in the forms, or even abandoning a cart.
6. Test Ad Creatives and Targeting Options
In line with many other techniques in the context of digital marketing, testing is critical for behavioral retargeting as well. Split testing your ads let you to compare different ads and their elements, such as images, texts, promotions, or calls to action, to see what would have a better result.
In addition to experimenting with the creative parts of the ad, also experiment with the targeting options as well. Experiment with different audience segments, set limits on the number of times that your ads will be displayed to your audiences, and change the time period for which people that visited your site will be targeted to realize which strategies work best and yield better engagement and conversions.
Pro Tip: It is also important to assess various factors including CTR, conversion rates, and ROAS not forgetting the basic KPI of ads. However, you can apply these insights gradually in the process of optimizing behavioral retargeting campaigns.
7. Incorporate Exclusion Lists
Even though retargeting is very effective for bringing back visitors to the site, it is not always beneficial to continuously display your ads to all the visitors. For example, the audience that might have recently engaged with conversion or a purchasing intent may not require retargeting.
The use of the exclusion list makes it easy for one to avoid targeting users who are not likely to take the wanted action, given that they previously achieved the same.
Bonus Tip: Ad exclusion can be effectively used in avoiding targeting people who have no interest in the specific ad. It works well to make advertisements more relevant and campaigns more successful.
8. Monitor and Refine Your Strategy Continuously
Behavioral retargeting is not a one-time process or setup kind of thing, which can be assumed sometimes. In order to maintain optimal results of your strategy, observe the regularly such freebies as the performance of the campaign, the attitude of the target audience, and your or established key performance indicators (KPI). Seek areas that you can improve on in terms of user activity, conversion rates, and any other factors you deem relevant.
Looking at the retargeting data on a more frequent basis will allow you identifying new ways of the strategy improvement, for example, increasing bids, changing creatives, or selecting different audiences.
Key Takeaway: As we have seen the digital space is dynamic hence you should be willing to make changes to your behavioral retargeting tactically in order to keep getting the best outcome.
Conclusion
As for every behavioral retargeting strategy, it is significant to find out the best way in order to acheive higher rate and better ROI for the ads to be shown. In essence, by targeting your audience, personalizing the advertisements, regulating the extent and frequency of advertisement display, and frequently experimenting with your campaigns, you shall be in a position to enhance your retargeting and in the process result in improved customer engagement and conversion rates.
