What Is Retargeting And How It Works

The percentage of visitors to your website end up leaving without buying or taking an action.

You have probably experienced this, and it can be frustrating putting effort to drive traffic to your site, but bear no fruit.

The thing is, people need a number of convincing for them to make a decision. That is why it is a good idea to know your customer's purchasing journey and create content based on the stage they are in. These include:

1. Awareness stage

2. Consideration stage

3. Decision making stage

It takes 7 interactions with a brand for a customer to make a decision to purchase. This means that you can't afford to be inconsistent in your content marketing and marketing in general.

Other than that, you need a way to bring back visitors to your site, and the best way to do this is by Retargeting.

Retargeting is a tactic that involves advertising to "lost" visitors. These are visitors who come to your site, but leave without performing an action. 

Have you ever visited a website and browsed a few pages, then left without performing an action, only for you to go to another website such as your Facebook account and see an ad from the previous website? 

That is what is called retargeting. The ads are shown across different websites. It is an effective marketing strategy because these visitors are already interested in the products/services.

Retargeting has the following benefits for your business:

1. More sales

2. More leads

3.Boost brand awareness

Here's how retargeting works:

1. Visitors enter your website from multiple sources (Google search, paid ads, social networks, direct visits, etc)
2. The majority of them leave your website without taking an important action
3. By adding the proper tracking code on your website, advertising platforms (like Facebook and Google) can associate website visits with user accounts on their platforms
4. Through retargeting campaigns, you can segment and target your audience with ads
5. As a result, many of them will come back to your website and some of them will convert

How Do You Retarget?

Retargeting works by gathering data from your web visitors. This data includes which pages they have visited, how much time they spent on the pages etc. 

This data is picked up by a tool such as a pixel. 

The pixel is a tracking code installed in the backend of your website. This code uses small pieces of data known as cookies to remember the users that visit your site.

The cookies are stored on the person’s web browser. As the person views other websites, the cookies will notify the retargeting platform.

This can trigger the platform to show the person your retargeting ads.

Whether or not they show depends on the specifics of your retargeting campaign.

With pixel-based retargeting, you are displaying your ads to anonymous people as you do not have the person’s name or contact details.

Another popular way to retarget is by using lists. If you have a list of email addresses of past customers, you can upload these to platforms such as Facebook and Google and create Ads to be shown specifically to them.

Choose a retargeting platform that is within your budget. These platforms include: Facebook, Google, etc. The next step is to install a tracking code in your website.

Facebook provides for a tracking code called "Facebook Pixel" which can be installed in the backend of your website.

Retargeting provides a way for you to convince visitors that they should purchase from you.

If you are running an ecommerce store, you can turn your abandoned cart ( abandoned cart is where a user adds items in the shopping cart but doesn't proceed to checkout 

Image: Max Pixel

You can retarget to those who have abandoned their carts, buy uploading their details in either Facebook or Google and running targeted ads to them.

Have you ever used Retargeting? How did it work out?