Retargeting is a fantastic way to re-capture previous visitors to your website. In this session, Jay Stampfl of 3Q Digital, John Hamilton of Triggit  and our own Tad Miller from Marketing Mojo discussed their pro tips for getting the most out of your retargeting efforts.

Jay Stampfl Jay started out discussing the importance of retargeting. 96% of people who visit your site don’t convert on the first visit — retargeting can help that. There are, however, different barriers to entry with tagging. AdWords tags are pretty easy to set up and an easy way to get started. The YouTube tag is also fairly easy to implement. Just yesterday, Google announced that the Google Analytics tag will help power dynamic remarketing, so it’s likely the best, most flexible tag to use. Jay showed how you need to look at how visitors convert. In one case, customers may convert mostly on the first visit… in others, they may have a twelve day gap to convert. Also consider timing versus engagement. Figure out what stage someone will be at during a particular timeframe and tailor your messaging and creative to that stage. Jay also shared some really positive statistics about RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads). Consider separating out the RLSA group from the non-RLSA ads. This allows you greater flexibility with messaging and keyword matching options for people you know have already been to your site in the past. Dynamic remarketing is ideal for ecommerce. It requires a merchant feed and you need to provide an offer. YouTube remarketing has two options: target lists already created in YouTube or create a new Google Display Network list based on someone having viewed a video. With all remarketing, though, there are minimum list member requirements. Key takeaways included:

• Choose what tags will work for your business.
• Know your average click to conversion numbers.
• Create lists and combine to reflect your funnel.
• Break out your RLSA and expand match type.

John Hamilton Next up was John who focused on remarketing on Facebook. More advertisers are participating in Facebook ads, and the performance of these ads is greatly improved even over 2012. Dynamic creative is a must have for retargeting on Facebook. The performance differential and cost is not as feasible if you don’t use it. Dynamic creative generates 2.5x higher CTR and 2x higher ROI. ROI is a little lower increase because the CPC is increasing.  To participate in dynamic creative, you need to have a product feed and the ability to place an image pixel or Javascript on the product level page. These can prove to be significant barriers to participating in dynamic creative for some advertisers. Retargeting on the newsfeed is also key. It yields a 20x higher CTR, 30% increase in conversion rate and 50% lower CPA than advertising on the right hand side of Facebook. Direct marketers need admin access to the Facebook fan page and companies musts have the ability to provide at least a 600 x 315 product image (or larger) to show ads in the newsfeed. Audience segmentation is key to success. Consider page/purchase intent, recency and other segments, such as new v. existing users. Segmenting your audience can yield 20% higher CTR and 10% higher ROAS. This requires pixel placement at the segment level to enable. Tad Miller Tad rounded out the panel and focused on combining LinkedIn advertising with remarketing for lead generation.  He started by discussing the challenges that paid search presents with keywords. For instance, when someone searches for “green vacuum”, do they mean the color green or an environmentally-friendly vacuum? How can you determine intent? The other problem in B2B is that keywords may not allow for specific audience targeting and there are “ham-fisted” bidders who just throw money at ads to be #1. For the term “marketing automation software”, cost per click to be on the first page of Google is $54/click! LinkedIn ads, however, provide a better option. Tad emphasized that the self-serve ads on LinkedIn work well for B2B marketing. There are two new members of LinkedIn every second! The key is that you can target by company, category of company, job title, job seniority and more. On whitepapers alone, conversion rates are 10-20% for conversion rates up to 600% less than search campaigns. But beyond LinkedIn conversions. every click through helps build a remarketing list. This group is an exact audience that has self-identified through LinkedIn. Once visitors are in the remarketing list, keep cycling new content assets with Google Display Network. Be careful not to go too far! Don’t ruin it by over-advertising to a group. And you can do the same thing as described for LinkedIn with other platforms like Facebook. B2C marketers can target a particular group, like dog lovers, and give them dog-related offers. Once they click, tag them with remarketing code and continue to give them dog-related offers over time. Editor’s update 3/18/2014: The slides from Tad’s SMX West presentation can be viewed below: [slideshare id=32453844&doc=pro-leveltipsforsucceedingatretargeting1-140318115956-phpapp01]