Retargeting should be a core strategy for any digital advertising campaign. But what is the key to the success of your retargeting campaign? Segmentation. One of the main culprits in failing retargeting campaigns is the poor or no use of segmentation. To maximize your return on investment, read below to find out how to use segmentation can help!
First off, what exactly is segmentation?
Segmentation (also commonly referred to as audience segmentation) is a term that describes who is being targeted and served ads. Through audience segmentation, you can tailor ad messages to users in different stages of the purchase funnel to effectively retarget them.
What does the process of audience segmentation look like?
Simply put, you can design your ad campaign to target people based on the actions that they took on your website. To do this, create segments that correspond to specific pages on your site. Then, when a person visits that particular page on your website, you can serve them with a personalized ad.
For example, for customers that visit only the homepage of your website, you can target these potential customers with a general branding message to reel back in. For customers that visit a specific product page, meaning that these potential customers viewed a particular offering of the product (like a specific pair of shoes), you can serve them an ad that contains that product. Lastly, for a customer who went to the shopping cart, using advertisements that have the products in their shopping cart and an active call to actions can entice them to go back and purchase them. Regardless of what page your audience visits, audience segmentation guarantees that you are serving relevant and engaging ads to complete that conversion.
The funnel approach to retargeting can help explain the levels of user interest. The top funnel or awareness stage is comprised of audiences who are browsing and are not fully engaged with your brand, with behavior like entering the website via the home page or through a secondary page. The mid-funnel or consideration stage describes a potential customer who has visited several of your pages already or a more specific product page, indicating that they are interested and are searching for more information within your website. Lastly, the low funnel or purchase stage are those who have not converted yet, but perhaps have opened a shopping cart or expressed interest through visiting many different parts of your website. These funnels provide you with different categories of segmentation.
A large part of audience segmentation is creative. Because you’re looking at different segments, you have to create ads to fit each one to more effectively send web traffic back to your site. Creative that is directly linked to the content centered on what the user was looking at will be the most successful for your campaign.
Using segmentation in your retargeting campaign can significantly increase the success of your campaign, and thus your RIO. By strategizing and taking the time to design strong creative that corresponds to each segment, you will be able to generate valuable campaigns for your brand.