In the world of content marketing, retargeting refers to a strategy where customers are presented with specific, contextual online ads that are triggered by a small file – or “cookie” – that was automatically placed on their browser during a previous browsing, shopping or surfing experience.
It’s an important aspect of your inbound marketing strategy, but in order to clear any confusion of what it entails, let’s roll out a simple example.
A Retargeting Example: Meet Joe
Joe is looking for a new laptop because his current one is (gasp!) six months old, and his friends all have newer models. Joe finds this unbearable, so he heads out onto the web to hunt for a shiny new laptop.
During his browsing, Joe visits ABC Laptops’ website and looks around at the latest and greatest offerings. Since he’s not ready to buy at the moment – because he’s just doing some research and fact-finding for now – he leaves the website.
Now, fast forward a few days, and Joe is on Facebook, liking and un-liking various things with reckless abandonment. Then, on the side of his screen, he sees an ad that captures his attention. It goes like this:
Suddenly, Joe remembers that he was recently searching for laptops. He clicks the ad, heads to ABC Laptops’ website, falls in love with the Sony Envy X3, whips out his credit card – and within days, he’s back on top.
The Power of Retargeting
As this example attempts to explain, retargeting works because it’s based on the fundamental truth that customers aren’t always in “buy now” mode. In fact, the more significant the product or service they want to buy, the more they’ll want to research.
And when the scene shifts from a B2C context to a B2B context, the customer journey (sales funnel) gets even longer. Indeed, many people shopping around for business solutions can’t “buy now” even if they wanted to– because they need to get approval from their boss, or possibly, a whole bunch of bosses. That takes time.
And so, retargeting comes to the rescue by re-generating the customer relationship when it has been interrupted; not because customers fled a website in horror, but because, just like our friend Joe, they simply weren’t ready to buy.
Or perhaps, something else came up – maybe a phone call, a knock at the door, a last second meeting invite… the list goes on. There are many reasons why the customer relationship can be interrupted, and none of them have anything do with a seller/business doing something wrong. Life itself is full of interruptions.
Retargeting aims to bring customers back into the fold, and usher them forward. Sometimes, this will lead to a sale (as was the case with Joe). But other times, driving a customer towards downloading an eBook, scheduling a demo or carrying out some other desirable behaviour (a.k.a. “conversion”) is still a win.
Learn More
To learn more about how you can make retargeting a core part of your content marketing strategy, contact the inbound marketing experts at Leap Clixx today. For more tips on generating leads to your website, check out our free eBook!
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