What Does B2B Remarketing Mean and Why Use It?

If you’re searching for a cheap, effective way to get more leads, retargeting is probably just the right solution.

We know this well. We’ve created and experimented with thousands of campaigns at hundreds of clients that generated buckets of additional revenue using this tactic.

Needless to say, we’ve got it down to a science here at WebMechanix and now do it more efficiently than anyone.

And we’ve been doing B2B remarketing since the early days, so we’ve learned plenty of lessons over the years, too.

Now we’re saving you a bunch of time and money so you don’t have to learn it on your own the hard way.

If you are already doing it, there’s a good chance you may be doing it wrong.

Almost every time a new client who has used retargeting hires us, we find at least five new opportunities for improvement.

Yes, at least five.

This is the first blog post in a series of blog posts we will do on retargeting.

Want to know how we increase return on investment with retargeting? Keep reading…

Chances Are, Your Website Converts at Less Than 5%

That’s not great news, but it’s probably true.

In fact, the first thing we do with new clients is look for the low-hanging fruit to wrench up site-wide conversion.

Here’s the reality: it’s substantially easier to convert visitors who have already been to your site because they’re familiar with you. You’re nudging someone over the edge rather than starting from scratch.

And that’s why retargeting is one of our favorite Badass Tactics.

What is the Meaning of Retargeting / Remarketing?

You may be thinking, “Just give it to me straight and simple — What is retargeting?”

Remarketing (also commonly called retargeting, used interchangeably here) presents digital marketers with a unique opportunity to stay top of mind with buyers by serving up ads to site users on other sites after they visit your site.

So what does remarketing mean? It is dead simple:

A user hits your site. They take some desirable action or indicate a buying signal.

This action can be as straightforward as a single page view or when you add a product to the cart, but you can layer in nearly limitless other possibilities (more ideas and strategy a little later).

When a user either doesn’t become a lead or doesn’t move further toward a purchase, the user begins seeing ad messaging connected to their visit. Done correctly, the user re-engages with your brand and…

BOOM.

You save the sale.

Smart marketers love remarketing because it delivers a high return on investment (ROI). Done correctly, these ads are typically pretty cheap and highly effective.

By focusing on a smaller audience that you know is already interested and actively looking, you can offer very specific, highly-targeted messaging that connects directly with their buying signals.

Setting up a barebones campaign requires relatively low effort and will keep you top-of-mind while prospects are checking the boxes with your competitors before returning to you for the sale.

We will show you how it works whether you’re just getting started or looking to go next-level. We will also cover practical considerations that will help you pick who to target and what to offer.

Warning: As with most tactics in the digital marketing landscape, there are many opportunities for success as well as failure.

Nowhere is this truer than with retargeting.

We will give you guidance based on our vast experience, but recommend you keep a watchful eye on your campaigns.

Ad networks really want all of your money.

So they build a lot of what we call “gotchas” into their platforms.

Good news: the system can be gamed if you know what to look for like we do.

BUT… we can’t cover them all here. We just can’t. We are too busy knocking the socks off of our clients with our PPC services.

If you’re stuck at any point or have questions, drop us a line and ask for Chris Mechanic. He loves to talk about this stuff.

Be warned, he will probably try to give you something for free.

We ALL keep asking him to stop offering free stuff to strangers.

He never listens…

Remarketing Explained

B2B retargeting is like digital magic.

You can set up a campaign that “listens” for some specific action, say, a view of a certain page or a click on a certain element.

This is called a “trigger”.

When that trigger fires, the user gets “cookied” (i.e. remembered) and added to a retargeting list (also called an “audience”).

Then you can serve up ads to that audience however your heart desires.

You can also now create audiences based on a bunch of different metrics in Google Analytics, which is relatively new, super-powerful, and still largely underutilized.

For instance, you can now create retargeting audiences based on…

• Geography
• Age and gender
• Time spent on the site
• Device and browser type
• Number of pages viewed
• New vs. returning visitors
• Source and medium of traffic
• Page(s) viewed (or not viewed)
• A high-performing referral source

The possibilities are endless.

For example, WebMechanix gets a lot of high-quality traffic from a website called clutch.co, which ranks marketing companies based on customer reviews.

Since our customers absolutely adore us (their words not ours), WebMechanix is ranked as the #1 digital marketing agency in the region.

They send us a lot of traffic.

Roughly 10% of visitors from Clutch.co convert on our website, and they’re very high-quality leads. But what about the other 90%?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to get back in front of that high-value audience with a specific message that we knew would be relevant to them?

Well, now we can.

We could set up an audience that says…

Traffic source = Clutch.co AND

Goal completions = 0 AND

Country = United States

And voila! There’s our list.

Then, we could create an ad and landing page to the tune of “Find Out Exactly Why Clutch.co [Reviewer] Loves Us!” and offer a case study highlighting how we move the needle for that client.

That’s just one example of a golden opportunity, and you will find several other “recipes” in our blog series about this topic.

Why Use Remarketing?

Remarketing is almost always the top source of the highest quality leads at the lowest price.

This is because you are targeting users who have already visited your site and are already familiar with your brand rather than a cold prospect you have to win over.

So if your remarketing game’s not on point, you’re leaving a pile of money on the table.

Note: Email can trigger ads and work in conjunction with them. Moreover, email is commonly used as a standalone medium for retargeting. Think of that time when you bought those shoes and a few days later you got an email suggesting other shoes you would love based on your last purchase.

For our purposes, however, we will stay focused on retargeting strategies that rely primarily on ads.

But don’t people hate remarketing ads though?

I won’t lie to you. Yeah, some do.

But some don’t, especially if you make the ad engaging and useful to them. Plus, they can be effective in boosting sales.

WordStream recently found that they were able to cut cost of conversion from $325 to under $100 with retargeting.

An article published on PPC Hero claimed that retargeting accounted for 16.61% of all conversions in the past six months at only 12.93% of the total cost.

Retargeting ads accomplish two main goals for your business. First, they promote conversion. Second, they reinforce your brand.

Conclusion

In the digital landscape, content is king.

Blank space, especially in the virtual world, is rapidly becoming a relic of the past.

The average American sees 5,000 ads a day.

Think about that for a second.

Let it really sink in.

It is mission-critical that you find a way to cut through all that noise as an advertiser.

With retargeting, we can serve up a specific offer, connected to previous user behavior which we can be confident will entice the prospect to convert.

But ad impressions matter. A lot.

Retargeting gets your brand back in front of a prospective buyer passively while they are doing other things during the research phase. That ups the impression count and strengthens brand awareness.

A campaign can work subtly or not so subtly depending on when and how you set your ads to appear.

Possibilities for placement are nearly limitless. You can buy retargeting ads on other websites, social networks, YouTube, search engines, and mobile apps.

If you would like to see a more in depth breakdown, check out our article on b2b retargeting best practices.

Pro Tip: Be very careful though … the same person seeing an ad too many times can be annoying and is likely to reduce buyer intent. Retargeting is *usually* best when subtle and useful.

AdWords has a feature we love called Frequency Capping, which enables advertisers to limit the number of ads served by either user, ad, or campaign.

Now, I want to hear from you:

Why are you interested in remarketing? Leave a comment below. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

P.S. If you’re stuck at any point or have questions about retargeting for B2B SaaS, feel free to reach out and ask for Chris Mechanic, the CEO of WebMechanix. He loves to talk about this stuff.

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