Did you know that your e-commerce site can track shopper behavior to respond with a dynamic ad? And that you can use that to bring visitors back to your store, even after they've left to visit other sites? This is called “product retargeting”.
Product retargeting
Now let's explore that, how it works, and give you tips for managing your successful retargeting campaigns. Probably all of us have previously browsed an online store, put a product in our cart, but for some reason decided not to buy it.
Remember the last time you did this? Have you suddenly noticed seeing ads for this product that you didn't buy on other websites? Well, that's what we call "retargeting."
The way shoppers behave on an e-commerce site tells the store owner a lot about the products they are interested in, and even what they are about to buy.
This information is very useful for your business; It allows you to design very specific ads targeting those who have shown interest in specific products. This is what “product retargeting” or remarketing is all about.
Retargeting with information
Let's say someone is shopping online for custom-made furniture, visits your online store and falls in love with a beautiful kitchen table that you're showing off, but halfway through the checkout process decides to put off the purchase and see if another store has specials.
Fortunately, when the person was browsing your online furniture store you were using a “retargeting” solution, which is a little code placed on your pages that keeps track of the products the shopper is interested in on which of the pages.
This tracking code goes a secret way, no personal information is shared, but what happened is that your site followed a behavior and now it knows that the shopper wanted this kitchen table, and that he didn't actually buy it.
This online shopping behavior is great information to you as an advertiser, now that you can use that information to take action, which is when “product retargeting” solutions come in.
Retargeting by advertising
Now, you have several “product retargeting” options, all of which will allow you to collect information and later target audiences with ads tailored to that information.
Well let's say the shopper left your online furniture store and went to a news site, and is now reading an article.
When he turns his eyes to the right of the page, what will he see? Right, your online ad has a picture of the kitchen table he's been looking at recently!
It may also have a twenty percent discount written on it. This incentive may be enough to convince him to finally complete the purchase.
Basically, this is “product retargeting”, and there are many services available such as “Google Ads and Criteo” and these services share a number of basic functions, so we will talk about them now.
It starts with the code we talked about, which tracks shopper interactions, and then later sends that information to your service for “product retargeting.”
As an advertiser, you can go to your service to retarget the product, set rules and benchmarks, and when someone browses your site and meets those criteria, the service will start targeting them with ads across one or more online advertising networks.
And because the service knows exactly which products the shopper is interested in, those ads will be very specific and highly effective. Now let's look at a number of tips for running these types of campaigns!
Guidelines for managing retargeting campaigns
First, you don't have to offer a sale right away all the time, since in the previous example we considered price to be the reason a shopper didn't buy, there are actually a lot of reasons people leave sites without making a purchase.
If you continue to offer discounts on an ongoing basis, you may prevent yourself from realizing the full gains.
Then, it's good to know when to stop showing those ads; Because the buyer may have found the product elsewhere and bought it, or simply changed his mind and did not intend to buy it at any price.
Most “retargeting” solutions allow you to test and set limits on how often and for how long the same person will be shown.
With any ad campaign, you must measure and improve the performance of your “retargeting” campaigns over time, which means tracking conversion rates, testing new types of ads, adjusting your criteria, and using analytics to manage these campaigns.
Summary
"Product Retargeting" remains a great way to re-engage visitors who might not have come back again.
Knowing how it works, how to do it and improving it over time, these campaigns can be a great addition to your digital marketing plan.
See: How Do You Use Data to Understand Your Audience