8 Ways to Use Retargeting Ads to Drive Repeat Visits to Your Local Business
When building a customer base, your goal isn’t to get a customer to visit once. It’s to get them to return and do business with you again and again. You must offer a great branded experience that helps you stay top-of-mind with customers so they come back and continue to do business with you for years to come.
One strategy that can help with this goal is retargeting ads.
Let’s look at how retargeting ads can be useful in keeping your brand in the mind of customers and driving repeat visits to your business.
What Are Retargeting Ads?
Retargeting ads are digital ads that target customers who have already engaged with your brand online. For example, you can identify someone who has visited your website and present them with a display ad on another website or on Facebook.
Retargeting ads are powerful because they get in front of people who have already shown interest in your brand. The ads are a remarketing tactic that targets warm leads or past customers who are more likely to respond to your ad than a cold, unfamiliar audience.
To set up digital retargeting campaigns, you add a tracking code on your website that tags users when they visit your website. It tracks what pages they view and when they last visited your website. You can also set up tracking codes on your social media profiles and tag users who visit your page and interact with your content. For example, you can show an ad to someone on Facebook who viewed a specific video on your Facebook page.
8 Best Practices for Retargeting Ads
Now that you know what retargeting ads are and why they are so powerful, let’s look at a few ways to get the most out of this type of digital advertising and how to use it to increase customer frequency at your local business.
#1) Create ads targeted for specific products and information.
The more specific you can get with your retargeting ads, the more effective they will be. Instead of creating a general brand awareness ad that you show to everyone who visited your site, get more detailed. Show an ad for burgers to someone who visited the burger menu on your website and present an ad for happy hour specials to someone who visited your happy hour menu.
#2) Mirror on-site messaging and branding in your ads.
Customers are more likely to remember a brand or message if it is consistent across multiple platforms. Consistency will help your brand stick in the mind of customers. Reinforce your brand by displaying the same colors, logos, and messaging in your ads and webpages. When you create your ad, make it as similar to the branded touchpoint the customer just saw. For example, if a customer just viewed a page with burgers on it, create a retargeting ad with the same burger photo.
#3) Target customers based on where they are in the sales funnel.
To create an effective retargeting ad strategy, connect the ad, the audience, and their place in the sales funnel. When you create an ad, know what point of the buyer’s journey the target audience is in.
- Are they in the awareness phase and briefly looked at your online pages, but didn’t make a purchase or visit your business?
- Are they in the decision phase and spent time looking at multiple pages on your website or added something to their cart, but didn’t purchase?
- Are they in the post-purchase phase and they already bought something from your brand?
Match the ad copy and call-to-action to the phase of the buyer’s journey your audience is in.
Related: 7 Audience Segmentation Examples and How to Use Them
#4) Turn off retargeting once a conversion is completed.
When a customer converts, turn off any ads that drive them to take an action they have already completed. For example, tag a user when they go through your online purchase process and automatically stop them from seeing ads promoting that action. If the retargeting ad includes a CTA to make a reservation for a Mother’s Day and the user goes through the action and makes a reservation, add a pixel on the thank you page that turns off the ad for that user.
#5) Use retargeting for up-sells and cross-sells.
Retargeting ads are the perfect way to drive additional purchases after a customer has already done business with you. Take what you know about the customer’s purchase, and target them with an ad that is a cross-sell or up-sell on their purchase. For example, if someone booked a weekend getaway at your hotel, target them with an ad for adding a meal plan to their stay or booking an excursion through your property.
#6) Add urgency.
Retargeting ads are powerful because they get in front of customers while your brand is fresh in their mind. The audience has shown that they are thinking about doing business with you. They may be just a step or two away from purchasing or visiting. You can use retargeting ads to nudge them to take the next step by adding a sense of urgency in your ads. Offer a time-sensitive offer or deadline to push audiences to take the next step.
#7) Offer discounts and coupons.
A desirable offer in a retargeting ad is also a good driver for getting viewers to take the next step. Offer a discount or coupon to move interest prospects into buying from you, visiting your location, or signing up for your email or text marketing list. Deals and discounts are a smart way to drive conversions from a warm, interested audience.
#8) Adjust your ads based on your analytics.
What works in retargeting ads for one brand might not work for another. Each brand needs to create campaigns, review their results, and adjust based on what they learn to create the most effective campaigns for its unique brand, audience, and products. Regularly review your results. Optimize high-performing ads and audiences, and remove or tweak low-performing ad sets until you find the formula that works best for your business.
Recommended: Digital Marketing for Restaurants: 8 Ways to Attract Customers Online
Use Retargeting Ads to Drive More Visits to Your Business
Don’t work to get a customer that visits your business once. Use remarketing strategies like retargeting to stay top-of-mind with customers and drive them back to your business again and again.
Learn more about how you can launch remarketing campaigns that increase customer frequency and customer lifetime value by signing up for mySuite by MyArea Network. Our free marketing suite offers educational resources on remarketing and tools to help you set up campaigns right from your free account.
Sign up today or get your free demo.
