The popularity of retargeting marketing has grown by leaps and bounds among B2B companies in the past few years.
However, like so many trends before it, many companies have tried to leverage this new tactic only to feel disappointed by lackluster results.
Sound familiar?
3 Retargeting Marketing Mistakes You Must Avoid at All Costs
There’s a reason why retargeting marketing has become the secret weapon for so many B2B companies, many of which may even be your competitors.
When done well, retargeting is one of the most reliable ways to cut down long buying cycles. As a result, they provide a much better ROI.
Still, you may have been using retargeting for awhile now without seeing these kinds of benefits. In that case, check to be sure it’s not because of these mistakes.
1. Failing to Apply Segmentation
Segmentation is vital to just about every form of digital marketing. Even in niche B2B industries, it’s very unlikely that you have any prospects that are so similar they’re actually identical from a marketing perspective.
This is why personalization has become so important.
It’s also why you absolutely must segment your retargeting marketing.
Far too many B2B marketers are so excited about the power of retargeting that they simply run one campaign to any visitor of their website. It doesn’t matter what they clicked on, how many pages they visited, etc. Everyone sees the exact same ad.
What might be even worse is that some marketers actually see results doing this. They’re not great, but they’re enough to convince the marketer that the retargeting is “working.” As such, they keep spending way too much, where, if they had applied segments to their efforts, they’d actually enjoy more conversions with fewer costs.
2. Mismatching Ads with Intent
Some marketers understand they need to segment their retargeting marketing list. The problem is that they put irrelevant ads in front of people who have come to their site.
For example, a company that sells accounting software may want to push their premium platform – the one that’s for Fortune 500 companies – because that one carries the best profit margins and return business.
However, if they put ads for that software in front of small-business owners who visited the site – even if they spent a lot of time there and clicked around – they’ll see zero ROI.
Again, this would be an even worse problem without segmentation because poor conversions may lead the marketer to think their ad isn’t working. Therefore, they go ahead and change it, even though the ad was actually fine. It’s the audience that was off.
Furthermore, you need to think about the visitor’s intent. They may work for a Fortune 500 company, but if they didn’t even look at your software page, they just read a number of your blogs, a better advertisement might be for a lead magnet that can continue working them through your funnel.
3. Taking a B2C Approach
We’ve talked a lot on this site about the differences between B2B and B2C marketing. That’s because many marketers in our world still borrow tactics from their B2C counterparts. Some have potential. Many do not.
This happens a lot in retargeting marketing, too. As is often the case, this method became extremelypopular long before most B2B marketers even knew it existed.
Therefore, when they took to retargeting, they also used many of the tactics that work really well for B2C e-commerce companies. A prime example is offering promotions or discounts. This often does wonders when someone has ditched a cart or spent a considerable amount of time on a product before leaving the page.
The same can’t be said for B2B. Most of you are selling high-ticket items. Discounting them may actually have the exact opposite effect you intend. It could make your product look less effective or like you’re worried about the competition.
B2B companies’ ads should focus on either the product/service itself or content that will keep nurturing them towards a conversion.
The Biggest Mistake When It Comes to Retargeting Marketing
Even if you avoid all of the mistakes above, your retargeting marketing campaigns could still produce a disappointing ROI – or even none at all – if you’re not able to convert the traffic you work so hard to bring back to your site.
That’s why more and more B2B companies are turning to Hushly. Our platform is easy to install, works with the content you already have, and will improve your conversions by 51%!
If you’d like to see proof, just contact us today.
