Data suggests that as many as 96% of visitors who land on your website for the first time are not ready to buy. It stands to reason; browsing, learning more about what you offer and price comparison are all common for web visitors. Retargeting is a method of online advertising that enables you to show ads only to those people who have visited a specified landing page on your website before, bringing ‘window shoppers’ back into your sales funnel.

Because of the power of retargeting, the method has become a fundamental part of the advertising strategy used by many PPC agencies and online marketers alike. In most cases, knowledge of retargeting is also a prerequisite for those looking for digital marketing jobs.

How exactly does retargeting work?

To retarget visitors, the advertiser needs to place a tracking pixel (small snippet of code) to a landing page on their website. When the tracking pixel is installed, it deposits a cookie on the web browser of any visitor landing on that page. Those with the cookie then become part of your ‘retargeting audience’ and, in turn, are able to see your retargeting advertising.

One of the primary benefits of retargeting, as well as those seeing your ads being lukewarm leads; is that the price of retargeting ads is often lower than traditional PPC. That’s because retargeting uses real-time bidding (RTB), which enables you to bid for individual ad impressions from your ‘audience’. With an audience that are already aware of you, click throughs and engagement are usually well above average, resulting in a more cost-efficient advertising spend.

Retargeting can also work hand-in-hand with traditional PPC advertising. Let’s imagine you’re in an industry where PPC clicks cost more, such as loans or accident insurance; you only have one opportunity to convert your visitors. By building a ‘retargeting audience’ with those visitors, you can have a second chance at converting them at a much lower advertising price.

Where retargeting really comes into its own is in making your business look a lot bigger than it really is. If a member of your audience is ‘seeing your ads everywhere’; then they will assume you’re running a huge, costly advertising campaign. The thought of you spending huge money on ads will subliminally increase the prospect’s trust in you.

By placing different retargeting pixels at different points of your sales funnel, you can separate browsers from buyers and structure your advertising campaign accordingly.

If you want to know more, check out this guide from Hubspot.