Today, advertising is more than targeting only gender or age. Now, marketers and advertisers focus on consumer patterns and behaviors to ensure they reach the niche audience. And behavioral retargeting is one of the most essential elements in advertising to increase conversions.
Behavioral retargeting helps you bring back people who have previously seen or interacted with your ads. It reminds them of your product, and they are more likely to place an order, increasing conversions.
So, the question arises: what are behavioral targeting techniques that help boost the bottom line?
This article tells you “Is Retargeting Behavioral Targeting,” and explains behavioral retargeting, proven techniques, and examples.
What is Behavioral Retargeting?
You might have seen an irrelevant ad on a different niche website and wondered, “What is this ad doing here?” But if you notice closely, it might be a product you recently searched for. That is what retargeting is!
Retargeting is an online advertising method that lets advertisers reach people who have already interacted with the website. It involves placing a cookie on the user’s browser when they visit the site. The cookie tracks their browser activity to show them relevant ads.
Ultimately, they see personalized ads when they visit other websites and social media on the browser. Retargeting is popular and important to advertising as the user has already exhibited interest in your product.
Reports show people who see retargeted ads are up to 70% more likely to convert.
Around one-third of consumers have a positive or very positive opinion of retargeted ads. Here’s how retargeting helps businesses:
Is Retargeting Behavioral Targeting?
Retargeting and targeting are often used interchangeably, but they differ slightly. Behavioral targeting refers to targeting a customer (for the first time) based on their browsing habits. Marketers use information like browsing habits, other visited sites, searches, and past purchases.
On the other hand, behavioral retargeting uses the same data to convert customers who have already viewed or clicked on a product. Businesses use browsing habits and past purchases to display customized ads to potential customers.
Did you know that retargeted customers are three times more likely to click on your ad?
Thus, user behavior data helps you increase sales through targeted ads, social media posts, and emails.
Types of Behavioral Retargeting
Site Retargeting
Site retargeting refers to showing retargeting ads to the users based on their browsing history. Websites use cookies to follow the users’ search history and display relevant ads. Site retargeting is the most favorite among marketers.
87.9% of marketers use site retargeting, followed by 64.9% search retargeting; 29.8% use creative retargeting, and 26.1% apply email retargeting.
Site retargeting offers an exceptional ROI as many people click on retargeting ads for better prices. Customers might prefer your product to the competitor’s, resulting in conversions.
Search Retargeting
Marketers use search retargeting to show ads based on the user’s search query. Your ads appear on a user’s browser after identifying what they are searching for.
Contextual Retargeting
Contextual retargeting takes the game up by targeting users based on the content they consume. This behavioral retargeting technique also helps when using AI for lead generation. It enables you to track the activity of those leads and convert them into customers.
Social Media Retargeting
Social media retargeting involves showing behavioral retargeting ads to people based on their social media interests. Besides browsers, brands retarget customers typically on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. However, many users also mention that they do not prefer social media retargeting.
Dynamic Retargeting
Dynamic retargeting is the most advanced type of behavioral retargeting that tailors the ads to match their choices. These ads have products that the user is interested in; they also contain details that will encourage users to convert.
Behavioral Retargeting Platforms
What are Behavioral Targeting Techniques?
Now that you know the types of behavioral targeting and platforms, here are a few tested and proven techniques to help you boost conversions:
1. Personalization
Personalization is the most important element of behavioral retargeting campaigns. It shows that you care about what the consumers are looking for. When they find what they want, the chances of conversions are higher.
2. Offer Incentives
Moreover, you can offer incentives to retargeting customers. It could include free products with purchases, discounts, or coupons. Most customers prefer retargeting ads because of low prices. So, you are more likely to get noticed when you offer discounts or better rates.
3. Refresh Offers
Studies show running the same ads for five months reduces the CTR by approximately 50%. Offering discounts or incentives is not enough; the customers may get annoyed seeing the same ads. Change and modify the ads over time to encourage users to click.
4. Create Attractive Ads
Your retargeting ad must look professional and interesting. Create attractive visuals with an attention-catching headline and easy-to-read copy. The call to action must be clear and easy to find. Ensure your landing page offers what the users expect when clicking on the ad.
5. Retarget Quickly
Usually, customers research for a few days before buying a product. Whether you reach them through search, site, contextual, or social media retargeting, do not delay. They must see the retargeting ad within a day or two before they buy the product.
6. Retarget Cart Abandoners
Besides retargeting potential customers based on content consumption and search, do not forget cart abandoners. Statistics show retargeting cart abandoners can increase the conversion rate by up to 26%. So, target cart abandoners with an offer or initiate urgency.
7. A/B Testing
One ad does not fit all of your potential customers. Thus, it is best to try and test different visuals, headlines, copies, and CTAs to find ads that perform well. It will help you make data-driven results and optimize ads per need.
8. Do Not Over-Do
When it comes to behavioral retargeting, less is more. Retarget your customers in time, but avoid showing them ads more than twice a week. Around 95% are unhappy with six or more remarketing attempts in one week.
How to Create a Compelling Retargeting Ads Campaign?
Identify and Segment Your Audience
Identifying your audience is inevitably the most important part of behavioral retargeting. It is critical to decide your audience subset to create ads that interest them. Moreover, you must also keep in mind that the ads must be tailored according to different audience sets.
Set Your Retargeting Goal
You can have a successful behavioral retargeting campaign only when you decide on campaign goals. You must decide whether to increase brand awareness or convert potential leads. Eventually, the campaign success will depend on the results you want to drive through retargeting.
Select Advertising Platform
You can retarget your potential customers on various platforms like Google, social media, and email. Deciding the advertising platform will help you reach your desired audience. The platform must be based on your customers’ demographics, behaviors, and platform of interest.
Data Collection
Behavioral targeting require collecting user data, including searches, previous interactions, and purchases. You can either create manual lists or use pixels to gather information. Using pixels can be challenging if you are not tech-savvy. But you can use manual email lists to organize and use data.
Create and Optimize Ads
Your behavioral retargeting campaign will pay off only when the ads compel the users to take action. Create relevant, catchy headlines and copy with images suitable to the campaign. Optimize the campaign according to your target audience and goals.
Combine Retargeting with Other Strategies
Moreover, you can combine behavioral retargeting with other marketing strategies to reach your campaign goals. It will help you reach a wider net of audience and convert them into customers. Some of the common choices to combine with retargeting include:
- SEO (Retarget people who visited your website organically) i
- Social media (Reach people who interacted with your social media account)
- Email marketing (Retarget leads who have not yet converted after interaction)
- Content marketing (Target potential customers who viewed your content)
Is Behavioral Retargeting Better than Display Ads?
The average click-through rate (CTR) for display ads is 0.07%. On the other hand, retargeted ads have a 0.7% CTR.
So, retargeted ads bring you 10 times better results than display ads.
Unlike display ads, behavioral targeting shows your ads across all websites that take ads instead of particular sites; it allows you to reach your niche audience without restricting to a few sites.
This works for over 14 million websites that accept ads through Google AdSense.
Thus, behavioral retargeting is becoming more popular, and a large fraction of marketers keep a fixed budget for retargeting.
Benefits of Behavioral Retargeting
Behavioral retargeting works better than targeting and helps you achieve multiple benefits. Here’s how you can leverage this method for your business:
Conversions
Most marketers use behavioral retargeting to convert potential customers into customers. Ad personalization based on consumer behaviors encourages them to purchase.
Brand Awareness
Retargeting shows your ads to people who have already seen your brand. It helps them recall their visit to their site and remember your brand. Even if they do not convert, potential customers are more likely to think of you when looking to purchase.
Website Traffic
Besides obtaining organic traffic, retargeted ads can bring more people to your site. They remember your brand and might want another look at the product.
Niche Targeting
Behavioral retargeting ensures your product reaches interested customers instead of a wide audience. That allows you to avoid wasting the effort on users with a low conversion possibility.
Cross-device Targeting
54% of marketers retarget on mobile, showing strong confidence in cross-device performance. You can also advertise across platforms through behavioral retargeting.
Potential Risks
Behavioral retargeting is undoubtedly an excellent way to bring back customers who liked your product. However, it might not always show positive results. Often, people do not appreciate retargeting ads because of privacy intrusion. Some of the concerns related to behavioral retargeting include:
Privacy Issues
While 25% of online buyers enjoy retargeted ads, 11% oppose them. A major reason is using cookies and pixel tracking for data collection. Most companies mention that they protect user data. Yet, the risk of a data breach is always there.
Limited Audience
Behavioral retargeting shows your ads to a specific group of people. You might miss out on other potential customers not seeing the retargeting ads. While it’s usually beneficial, you some businesses might feel FOMO.
Ad fatigue
53% say one remarketing attempt per week is acceptable, while only 19% find twice a week acceptable. So, your potential customers might experience ad fatigue when seeing the same retargeted ads repeatedly.
High Cost
Bidding on high-value keywords can take a lot of your budget when retargeting. Thus, it is important to manage your budget carefully, ensuring you do not overspend on retargeting.
Discrimination
Sometimes, a user might visit websites related to a particular region or ethnicity. Eventually, you might retarget them for those specific ethnicities or races only, leading to discrimination.
Future Trends in Behavioral Retargeting
Just like other aspects of marketing, behavioral retargeting has also evolved over the years, and it continues to change. Three important future trends in behavioral marketing are:
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence in advertising is critical to staying in the competition and surpassing competitors. Today, everyone is taking help from AI to obtain and analyze data and create the best ads that encourage users to click. Using AI for behavioral retargeting will allow you to analyze user behaviors better.
Programmatic Retargeting
Programmatic retargeting uses data-driven insights to convert warm leads into customers. Data-driven decisions can help ensure you utilize your money and resources correctly. It will also save you from spending money on dead leads.
Video Targeting
Marketers are using video ads to reach potential customers, and the trend will continue to grow. Video retargeting allows marketers to target leads with personalized video ad campaigns. Users relate to video ads better showing details of the product, increasing chances of conversion.
Final Words
If you wonder, “Is retargeting behavioral targeting?” it’s not! Behavioral retargeting helps you convert potential customers who you already targeted. These ads also reach people who have interacted with your brand previously organically. This article covered the best behavioral retargeting techniques, platforms, and advantages. Furthermore, it explains the future trends in behavioral retargeting.
If you want to know more about behavioral retargeting, our advertising experts are just a click away!
Written by Sabrina Sajid
Dated: 20.10.23