What is Website ReTargeting and How Does it Work?

Contrary to what we may picture out every time we target specific groups of people, they do not readily follow a straight path towards the next move that we’d like them to take. This is basically why retargeting ads exist. But, do we truly understand what they are and how they function?

It’s good to stay positive and think that prospects will easily become customers and make their immediate purchase. But, the reality is that sometimes we do need to review and make some adjustments so as to reinforce our messages through the use of retargeting ads. 

Perhaps a deeper definition and exploration is needed in order to fully understand what it means to retarget and how it really does work. What exactly are retargeting ads? Let us dig further and see its definition in its simplest form.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN YOU SAY RETARGETING?

More than your average typical banner ads, retargeting ads come as a form of online targeting advertising that are offered to people who have a previous record of visiting your website or those who have made an inquiry in your database before such as a lead or a past customer.

Retargeting can also be called re-marketing where you can get advantage of this second opportunity to work on your bounced leads who previously went in but left your site immediately. Because no matter how we put in much effort, the reality is that only 2% of web traffic will most likely be converted during your audience’s first visit to your site. Retargeting ads are designed to connect with the rest of the 98% who failed to convert the first time.

If you have never encountered or have never worked with retargeting ads previously, then we will tackle all the basic elements about retargeting so as to fully understand how retargeting ads really work.

UNDERSTANDING THE TYPES OF RETARGETING AND HOW THE ENTIRE PROCESS IS DONE:

There are two main types of retargeting campaigns –

1. Pixel-Based Retargeting – a method in which you may redisplay your material to any anonymous visitor that comes to your site.

            It is the more common type of retargeting that works like this:

• Your potential customers visit your site
• As the user enters your site, this JavaScript or pixel is then placed on their browser to make it cookied.
• So whenever they leave your site and go to other areas of the web, those cookies will notify retargeting platforms to serve specific retargeting ads based on their initial purpose why they visited your site in the first place.
• Your ad then recaptures the user’s interest and bringing them back to your site.
• Once they are satisfied with the solution that they found on your site, they convert into happy customers.

• List-Based Retargeting – this type works after you have already gained the contact information of the particular person in your database.

Here’s another specific process on how to do retargeting on Facebook:

1. Start by creating or acquiring that list you have of your existing contacts or gather specific groups from pixel on your website.
2. Add that list that you’ve gathered into Facebook’s Audience Manager.
3. Find and decide on your destination URL.
4. And because not everyone has the same needs, create a variation for your ads that is meant to target specific audiences.
5. You may then prepare and set your budget for those ads.
6. Develop that ad that you have designed.
7. Then finally, monitor and track the progress of your campaign.

Now that we have an idea of what retargeting ads are and how they work, the next time that we encounter them, we may as well give more emphasis on how to improve and provide more specific ads in order to gain a positive result from our efforts in doing the retargeting in the first place.