Sell more online

Hey! Did you know your e-commerce website can track shopper behaviour, and respond with dynamic advertising? And that this can be used to bring visitors back to your shop, even after they’ve left to visit other sites?

This is called product retargeting. Now, let’s explore what it is, how it works, and tips for running your own successful retargeting campaigns. We’ve all browsed an online shop, put a product in our shopping cart and then, for whatever reason, decided not to buy it. Think of the last time you did this. Did you then suddenly start seeing ads for that product you didn’t buy on other sites around the web? Yeah, well that’s what we call retargeting. The way a shopper behaves on an e-commerce site can tell that shop owner a lot about which products they’re interested in, and even what they were on the verge of buying.

This is very useful information for your business. Because it allows you to create very specific advertisements aimed at people who have showed interest in certain products. That’s what product retargeting, or remarketing, is all about. Let’s say someone is shopping online for bespoke furniture. They visit your e-commerce site and fall in love a beautiful kitchen table you’re offering. But halfway through the checkout process, they decide to hold off and see if another shop had any specials first. Luckily while they were browsing your online furniture store, you were using a product retargeting solution. This is a small bit of code placed on the pages of your website. This code tracks which products on that page a shopper is interested in.

Of course, this tracking code uses anonymous methods. No personal information is exchanged. But what has happened is that your website tracked a behaviour. It now knows that the shopper wanted that kitchen table AND that they didn’t actually buy it.

That online shopping behaviour is great information for you as an advertiser. Now, you can use this information to take ACTION. This is where product retargeting solutions come into play.

There are a number of product retargeting options out there. All of them will allow you to collect information, and then target audiences with customised ads based on that information.

So let’s say the shopper leaves your furniture shop and clicks over to a news website. They’re reading an article and off to the right of the page what do they see? Yup, your digital ad with an image of the kitchen table they were just looking at! You may even include a 20 percent discount here too. That incentive just might be enough to persuade them to make the purchase after all. That’s basically product retargeting. There are many services available, like Google Ads and Criteo. The services share some basic functions, so let’s talk a bit more about that.

It starts with that bit of code we mentioned that tracks shoppers’ interactions. This information is then sent to your product retargeting service.

As an advertiser, you can go to your product retargeting service and set up rules and parameters. So when a person browsing your site meets those parameters, the service will then start targeting them with advertisements over one or more of the Internet advertising networks.

Since the service knows exactly which products your shopper was interested in, those advertisements can be very specific and dynamic.

Now let’s look at a few guidelines for running these kinds of campaigns. First, you don’t always have to offer a discount right away. While in the earlier example we considered price as a reason the shopper didn’t buy, in reality there are loads of reasons people leave websites without making a purchase. And if you always offer a discount, you could be selling yourself short.

Next, it’s good to know when to STOP showing these ads. It’s certainly possible that the visitor found the same product somewhere else and bought it, or simply changed their mind and isn’t going to buy it at any price. Most retargeting solutions allow you to set limits and experiment with just how many times you’ll show the same ad to the same person, and for how long.

As with any advertising campaign, it’s important to measure and optimise the performance of your product retargeting campaigns over time. This means tracking conversion rates, testing new types of ads, tweaking your parameters, and using analytics to manage these campaigns.

Product retargeting can be a great way to re-engage visitors that might have otherwise not returned. Knowing how it works, how to do it and how to optimise over time can make these campaigns a great addition to your digital marketing plan.