How many new deals fall through because no one followed up? If you’re running a B2B website, chances are it happens more than you think.
B2B websites have a 70% or higher bounce rate, which means people visit and leave without going to other pages. And 97% of website visitors never come back.
What if you knew how to get a second chance to capture these missed opportunities? What if there was an ad with a 300% greater click-through rate than normal digital ads, and those who clicked it were 70% more likely to convert? And, best of all, 30% of people enjoy seeing these ads.
That would be B2B retargeting. And 46% of marketers say it’s not used enough. We agree. There’s no easy way to say this: If you don’t retarget, you miss out on significant revenues.
What Is Retargeting?
In B2C, sometimes all it takes is one fancy ad to make a sale. But B2B is different. A potential customer needs to see your product between seven and 15 times before becoming a customer, and you probably have multiple decision-makers in the company.
If the hard truth is that 97% of website visitors don’t return, these numbers don’t work in your favor.
B2B retargeting is an ad that only people who have visited your website see. You have two basic kinds:
- List-based – You send highly specialized ads to people you have on a contact list using Google or Facebook.
- Cookie/Pixel-based – You obtain a piece of code from the Google Display Network or Facebook Ads and put it on your site. Now, when someone visits your site, the code places a piece of JavaScript on the browser of the visitor. This code communicates to Google or Facebook what pages they have visited on your site, allowing you to personalize the ads they receive across the partner networks of Google or Facebook.
Because the ad is personalized, people see it. And they see it several times across websites. This accomplishes several marketing objectives at once, guiding and often speeding the B2B buyer’s journey.
How are Retargeting and Remarketing Different?
Lots of businesses think retargeting and remarketing are interchangeable terms and function. But look closer. Retargeting uses paid ads to re-engage users after they visit your site, page or social profile. Remarketing focuses on re-engaging past your customer who have already done business with you. You may not have seen them in a while. But you can – and should – re-engage by remarketing to them.
Why Does Retargeting Matter?
Most B2B businesses have terrible conversion rates because, unlike most B2C, the business buyer’s journey takes some research and consideration — often by multiple people.
If you’re relying on one website visit to generate a B2B customer, you’re not aligning your B2B strategy or retargeting best practices with how B2B buyers actually make decisions. Knowing how to retarget website visitors is key to meeting vital marketing objectives, including:
Increase Brand Awareness
They may have just visited your site in passing and not really paid attention to who you are. Now, they’re seeing you repeatedly, so you build more top-of-mind awareness.
Sustain Brand Awareness
Visitors may forget you within seconds of leaving your website. Through retargeting, you extend that brand awareness to get them to consider and engage with your brand seriously.
Nurture Leads
You’re building trust, familiarity, and affinity through repetition and relevance. All that amounts to lead nurturing. Retargeting is an effective way to redirect and guide B2B customers through the buyer’s journey.
Recapture Lost Leads
Maybe you were close to closing the deal on a new B2B account, but then that contact disappears. Often, it’s not that you did anything wrong. The contact just got busy and distracted. Retargeting brings the contact back around.
Examples of Retargeting
- Automated Emails – Welcome emails have an 80-90% open rate compared to 20% or less for normal emails. Timing matters. And this is just one type of automated email. Leverage it to get the buyer to return to your site now or buy now.
- Display Advertising – Display ads typically show an image related to pages the person visited on your site or where they are in the buyer’s journey.
Retargeting Best Practices
To use B2B retargeting effectively, you need to target many key personnel rather than a single person. Getting multiple decision-makers to your website is part of the retargeting strategy.
You’ll also retarget at each stage of the buying process. Once you have generated awareness, you need to progress with ads that provoke consideration and discussion among key decision-makers by getting in front of them simultaneously.
It’s critical to segment the audience into precise target lists because this allows you to personalize ads based on the roles and levels within the company.
You should always create unique landing pages for specific user segments. The page that speaks to a CFO, for example, may not to the CEO or the accounting manager. These individuals have slightly different goals.
It’s important to show social proof to build expertise and trustworthiness. One of the most effective ways to do this in B2B is testimonials.
Create your retargeting PPC ads using Google Display Network or Facebook. They’re easy to set up, but optimization is important. Be sure to review your data to improve the effectiveness of your retargeting efforts.
Do you know how to retarget website visitors and recapture these missed opportunities? We can help you get more out of your B2B marketing budget. Contact us to learn more.
