Retargeting has now been talked about for years in the marketing community and is now widely used by B2C companies. B2B businesses, on the other hand, have not been as quick to adapt. The main obstacle for most has been creating a long-term strategy and implementing it to acquire new leads and sales.
More recently, B2B businesses have been catching up with the B2C industry in terms of their use of retargeting. In fact, over half of all B2B businesses now use retargeting as one of their marketing tactics.
If you are still yet to try out retargeting in your marketing strategy, you should be thinking about how you can connect with your prospects in the future.
Retargeting has actually been proven to increase the conversion rate of visitors to your site, says Wishpond. When compared to those who are not retargeted to with display advertising, there is a 70% increase in likelihood to convert. This combined with focusing on brand awareness, lead nurturing, and content marketing will make a huge difference in staying in the minds of online prospects. Retargeting combines these 3 sales channels together, which is vital when considering the now 22% longer sales process.
If you’re thinking about giving retargeting a go and want to build your acquisition rates, especially if you’re a B2B marketer, here are four effective tips for you:
1. Split your visitors up into categories
Think about what part of the sales funnel your site visitors will be at. Based on their level of intent, you will need to target visitors with a different tone and angle of content. Those at the top of the funnel are lower intent and will require a bit more from you to get to the conversion stage. Higher intent customers just need a little push to take action, so you will need to adjust targeting styles accordingly.
Take a look at your website and work out which areas of it correspond with different intent levels of people visiting your site. The blog and articles on your site, for example, will be attracting a mid-level intent audience as they have shown interest but are not yet ready to buy. Those on your order pages would be lower down the funnel (high intent), as they are thinking about purchasing something or taking action.
Once you have split your visitors up into categories, you will be able to think more closely about the type of messaging you deliver to them. If you can narrow down these categories and further refine them, you will be able to tailor your approach to be more customised to them.
You can also use your customer e-mail lists to create categories, based on how much they know already or what of the sales funnel they are currently at.
2. Make the most of your sales funnel opportunities
After you have split your visitors up into categories, you can start to use these to help you. You will need to think about 3 things when looking at each of these categories:
- What the level of intent is for this customer
- What level of intent I want to get them to
- The best type of information that will take them from A to B
Thinking about these 3 things will help you decide what your CTA (call to action) will be for each of these categories. You may even have a few choice for each category, which is even better. It can be very helpful to A/B test those call to actions side-by-side to determine which is the best option. You could also try displaying different CTAs at separate times to see if this will further help your conversion rate.
You will need to ensure that your call-to-actions get straight to the point. This means telling the visitor what you want them to do when they get to your site or going into detail about what they will receive when they get there. You may get a higher click-through rate from more vague call-to-actions such as “Listen to more” or “Improve yourself”, but more explicit call-to-actions like “begin your trial” or “download a free e-book” will often get better conversion rates.
3. Tell the story of your brand
Marketers sometimes make the mistake of thinking that those they retarget to already know a lot about them and the products they have to offer. Often though, those who are being retargeted to will not know a lot about the business. You may need to reinforce the image of your brand and the details of your products. It has been suggested in a Salesforce article in 2015 that you may need to take 6-8 or even more touchpoints with a potential customer before they even have a chance to convert to a sales lead. Retargeting can be used to display your message to prospects so that you can warm them up and build a higher level of intent in them. This is often done through creative content that:
- Represents your brand in the correct way
- Lets people know about the features you have and how you differentiate yourself from the competitors
- Gives your prospect enough resources
- Focuses on the goal of high intent
You will always need to think about the audience you’re targeting and which content will work best with them. Make the most of the categories you have split visitors into so that you can tailor the content to them accordingly.
4. Analyse the results and frequently refine your approach
You will need to learn quickly, and edit the finer details often. Get ready for your expectations to be shattered often, it’s common for people to expect one result and end up with another. This is why you will need to look at the data often and test out different creative content. This means images, theme, call-to-actions, or text. Every element can have an effect on click-through and conversion rates.
The future
The main thing to take away from this article is to think about how to personalise the experience for your audience along every step of their journey. Keep in mind the audience categories you have set out and how you will create a connection with potential customers so that you can maximise your sales and revenue.