The power of retargeting – how to move your customers from wanting what you have to offer to needing it

My fiancé was at home a few weeks ago and decided to go onto her favourite online shopping store as she needed a new pair of running shoes. In her head she was back and forth at the time, should I buy these? Should I wait for a better deal? Or should I look for a new brand to try out? Decisions, decisions. All of these doubts caused her to leave the site without making a decision or a purchase, needless to say she was still thinking about these shoes late into the night. Eventually falling asleep and forgetting about these shoes for a while, she woke up in the morning and decided to catch up on the latest news, as she does every morning. She opened News 24 and scrolled through the news bulletins only to find an ad of the exact same shoes she was browsing last night?

Later that day she checked out her Facebook timeline, guess what? The same pair of shoes were staring at her and at that moment she thought it must be fate, she went from being interested in those shoes to needing them and making the purchasing decision there an then.  And once she bought them, the ads stopped appearing.

It’s quite simple, it was never the internet trying to convince her to buy those shoes or google watching her, it was a retargeting marketing campaign set up to track her interest, follow her online while showing her images of the item she was interested in and ultimately persuading her to make the purchase.

If you are not yet doing this for your business, you are clearly missing out on a key step in the decision making process.  Here’s a quick overview:

What is retargeting?

It’s a tool used by many brands to follow potential leads around the internet until a purchase decision is made. When a user visits your website, that user is tagged with a piece of code, known either as a cookie or a pixel. To allow us to retarget these users, the code follows web users around the internet displaying ads in both top and side bars of various platforms. These platforms include all social media pages these users may have access to as well as all Google affiliated websites.

Why use retargeting?

With approximately 4.1 billion active internet users around the world, digital advertising has never been more important. The opportunities facing brands out there are endless but building trust with an online audience is a lot more tricky today than ever before.  Building trust and brand loyalty is key to online success and that’s where retargeting plays a big role. According to Connectio, retargeting ads are 76% more likely to be engaged with because a potential customer has some level of knowledge of your brand after visiting your website or using your app.  Following this initial connection, it makes for easier purchasing decisions to be made versus trying to sign them up on first impressions.

 Keep calm and let’s get retargeting

Retargeting should be a no brainer and should be utilised by all brands that are looking for new customers, want to engage with current customers and ultimately get customers to purchase from them, not once but on-going. It’s a simple, yet effective tool for any brand looking for numbers in the green.  Agencies, such as Stratitude, can quickly set this up and run your campaigns.  Speak to us today.