You created relevant content, improved the user experience, your website traffic is up and conversion rates have increased. You're done, right? Mission accomplished? Not quite. Even though some success has been achieved, new opportunities that will allow you to make even more significant growth are just around the corner.
You start to wonder if you're losing any users during the consideration phase and dive into your analytics. The data shows you that a certain number of visitors spent time on the site, clicked on calls-to-action (CTAs), but ultimately did not convert. Retargeting an audience is one of the best strategies to implement when a user has started down the buyer's journey but has not converted. Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that allows you to keep your brand in front of your potential customers. One of the ways to do this is through paid social media. After a user has visited your website, you can market to them when they are using their social media accounts. It provides one of the best methods to identify the audience you want to retarget and also helps make lead nurturing campaigns more successful by increasing conversion rates. While every unconverted web visitor is a candidate for retargeting, a way to target specific segments is to tie retargeting campaigns to specific pages where a visitor has indicated an intent to convert or purchase. Recent studies show that retargeting campaigns have 37% higher click rates and 32% higher post-click conversion rates.
LinkedIn and Facebook’s advertising accounts each provide a tracking code that you can install for free. LinkedIn refers to it as an Insight Tag and Facebook calls it a pixel. The end result is the same: they will gather the website traffic information necessary for you to execute your plan.
The retargeting message that you should craft depends on the various reasons a user might have exited your site. Maybe the buyer was not ready to be contacted, in which case the message can be along the lines of "Are you still interested?" Or, perhaps a form they viewed asked for too much information and created a bad user experience. You can then create a simplified form structure and message for this audience.
Whichever message is needed, it needs to be concise, and the CTA needs to be eye-catching to reengage this audience. Remember, they have already been on your website, so the message has to make them want to reconnect with you and finish their buyer's journey.
In addition to identifying the proper audience segment and messaging, you should also create multiple versions of your ad to test against each other. This type of testing is called A/B and is a tactic in which you find out which headline, body copy, image, CTA or combination of variables works best to engage your target audience. LinkedIn and Facebook will automatically show your ad variations to your target audience as long as they are in one campaign. Based on the results, a more refined retargeting campaign can be developed for the future.
Retargeting is an effective B2B social media strategy. Utilize the fact that the audience you are marketing to already knows who you are and has been on your website. Provide them with valuable content that matches where they are in their buyer’s journey and they’re likely to reengage.
If you need help planning and executing your retargeting campaign, we can help. We offer B2B social media strategies that generate leads and attract prospects. You may also be interested in our article, “4 Fail-Proof B2B Social Media Strategies.”