You Can Quit Retargeting Me Now
By Jay Marwaha
A leading e-commerce company has just been named the most innovative of 2017, in its ability to deliver more, faster and smarter than any other company. Yet, a recent experience on their website highlights their failure to execute one of the most basic marketing strategies: retargeting.
What is Retargeting?
Display retargeting is a form of online advertising used to target consumers who have previously engaged with your web content in some way. Maybe they’ve downloaded something from your website, or added a product to the cart but never checked out. Retargeting will remind the visitor to take the next step and ultimately complete their purchase.
Earlier this month, my wife ordered a foam roller from this e-commerce company, mentioned above. It appeared to be a great product and reasonably priced at $11. She added it to her cart, hit check out and paid for it right away.
A few minutes later, while surfing another website, she noticed an ad appear half way down the page, advertising the very product that she had just purchased moments earlier – the foam roller – and the ad was coming from the very same company. Worse yet, it was being advertised at a different price point – this time for $27.
Luckily she got the good end out of that deal, but this retargeting ad left her confused and asking a whole lot of questions. And it certainly had a negative impact on her customer experience.
Why did she get an ad for a product she already purchased? Why are some customers paying less, and others paying more, for the exact same product from the exact same company?
These were just some of the many questions running through her head, and now are running through mine.
If you want your retargeting efforts to be successful, don’t let your seams show. Don’t advertise a product that has already been purchased, and definitely don’t amp up the price on it.
Retargeting is one of the most effective marketing tools out there. It will target those customers with the highest likelihood of purchasing while helping your company drastically cut ad costs.
Take Lenovo as an example. It was spending millions on retargeting efforts. They decided to experiment with algorithmic retargeting and the new retargeting campaign resulted in enormous savings and higher conversions.
But the most “innovative” company in the world couldn’t accomplish this.
Do you have a similar experience? Tweet at me and also let me know if you attended Adobe Summit last week!
