What do you think of when you hear “retargeting”?
Most would say that it’s a tool used to bring people back when people abandon shopping carts.
At least, that was the original intent when this concept first came about, and that’s how people were conditioned think.
However, as entrepreneurs, our job is to use whatever means necessary to bring the bacon home… which in online marketing world, would be conversions (cash in the bank baby!)
If you stop associating retargeting with the term “shopping carts” and started associating it with “opportunities”, you’ll notice that there are LOTS more places where you can use retargeting.
In fact, don’t think of it as anything other than continuing where your potential customer left off.
Take a look at this traditional diagram of a sales funnel:
Now, I chose this picture because this ACCURATELY depicts what happens in each PHASE of marketing. The white line between each “slice” represents a friction point where you might (and probably will) lose people.
In your lead generation, does every person that comes to your squeeze page sign up?
Probably not.
Does every person that comes to your sales page buy?
Probably not.
Does every person that comes to your upsell page take up on your offer?
Probably not.
Retargeting “narrows” the gap by bridging the slices together.
Here are some interesting ways to use retargeting
1) Complete Sign Up
The way companies usually generate interest in their product or service is usually with some free offer.
Problem is, no matter how GREAT your sales page is (which, by the way, has TONS to do with storytelling), you won’t have 100% conversion rate.
In other words, some people will just NEVER sign up on your first try.
So why not?
However, if you are offering something “good”, the odds are that you can probably increase your conversion rate 10-200% depending on how compelling the offer is (i.e. is it free? free trial? whitepaper?), how good your original targeting is (i.e. keyword / demographics / personal targeting), how well known you are (i.e. your brandability), what you are asking in return (i.e. form length and what info you are collecting).
I personally recommend that the basic info you should be asking for is his/her email. Why? Use common sense. If you go on a first date with someone from online dating, do you ask for his/her ENTIRE life history on the first date? No, you just get their BASIC contact info.
Use retargeting to get them to COMPLETE the form and you have jumped through the first “crack” in your funnel.
2) Close Deals
If you have properly nurtured your lead and your product or service is compelling enough, you will probably be making a sale proposal to sign up.
In the world of online sales, retargeting can be used to gently nudge them to sign up.
In the world of offline sales, more often than not, you will be sending them a sales proposal for them to sign and send back with a nice check.
But of course, as with ALL sales, you’re going to lose some of them.
Why not use retargeting to remind them about your sales proposal?
In fact, we use this technique to close many deals for our franchising clients.
By this phase of the funnel, more often than not, you have his/her email address so you can use the multi-prong approach of email automation (your CRM should probably have this feature, if not use www.totalbusinesscart.com) AND banner display retargeting.
3) Upsell / Cross-sell
It’s a proven fact that someone who’s buying or has bought your product is exponentially more open to upsells and cross-sells.
Why do they ask you if you want fries in fast food restaurants?
Because fries are a NATURAL cross-sell to burgers.
(Yeah, burgers and artichokes don’t mix.)
So why not offer them something ELSE, or something related, when you have already done all that hard work of awareness, interested, decision, and action?
You’ve made the first sale, so you might as well offer them something of value that they’ll also need.
With online, if they go to your “thank you page”, you can cookie them with a different set of tags that will now retarget them for your upsell opportunity.
With offline, it’s a bit trickier because your “thank you page” is done offline.
More often than not, you’ll try and upsell them over the phone.
If you make a sale, great.
If not, you can send them something (like a “download receipt/contract” page) where you can use that to cookie their browser and now you can retarget them.
4) Referral / Viral Marketing
This is probably the most ingenious of all… but you have to do it “right”.
Whether or not you make a sale, more often than not, we try to get our clients online referrals.
And why not?
This method can double, even triple, your email optins, raise tons of revenue, and give you more visibility.
You can retarget people who’ve come to your referral page, as with abandoned shopping carts, abandoned sign up pages, abandoned etc…
Problem is… unless your online referral process is smooth as a baby’s butt, you’re gonna have a HUGE drop off.
Sure you can use your thank you page as a way to get more referrals, but at this point it might be too early in the stage for them to risk their reputation in recommending you, especially if they’ve never used your product/service in real life.
Use caution: if you ask too early, your retargeting will be a source of annoyance.
It’s best to send that original “hey can you refer us” link to existing customers who’ve used your product for a while and retarget them. But, set a very low frequency cap on display retargeting / email automation STOP once they’ve given you the referrals.
Sidenote: No matter what retargeting you do… if you retarget someone and he/she takes your desired action, NEVER forget to take them off your retargeting list. Otherwise, you will 1) spend money on wasted impressions, and 2) annoy the hell out of your loyal customers.
If you do it right, you’ll get tons of referrals.
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