What happens when someone leaves your website?
They may have loved the content and decided to come back, but equally, they may never return. When you’ve worked extremely hard to bring people to your site, this is a difficult fact to face.
All is not lost though, and through retargeting, you can continue to reach people who have visited your website.
What Is Retargeting for B2B?
Remember how you clicked on that ad for a Halloween costume for your dog a few months ago? Of course you do because now you’re constantly followed around the internet with ads for novelty dog toys.
This is retargeting at work.
You’ve clicked on a website, and through tracking, that business is able to retarget you with strategically placed ads on third-party websites and your social media feeds.
So, it’s clear how this works on a B2C level, but how does it work with the complexities of B2B sales? In many ways, it’s exactly the same, but the nature of the B2B customer journey can make retargeting an even more important part of your SEO.
Retargeting for B2B
One of the challenging aspects of B2B marketing is the complexity of the customer journey.
When you’re marketing to an end customer, there’s only likely to be one person making the decision, therefore one person you need to convince. With B2B marketing though, there are a lot of stakeholders in the decision-making process.
This means the customer journey can be a lot more drawn out with B2B than B2C and there are lots of points where leads can go cold. When promising leads do go cold, you want to find a way to bring them back to you, and retargeting gives you this opportunity.
If you’re going to invest in retargeting though, you’ve got to appreciate the complexity of the B2B customer journey. You need to be targeted, focusing on those customers that are likely to come back to you, not the ones that came to your site with no intent to buy.
So, how do you do this?
Segmentation
Personalization is one of the most important aspects of marketing.
If you follow people around the internet with irrelevant ads, then it might get you noticed, but not for the right reasons. As the name suggests, retargeting should be targeted, and to do this, you’ve got to be able to segment people.
Understand where they fit into your customer journey, and what information they want to see next.
For example, someone who has spent a lot of time on your checkout page is a very different lead to someone who has just read an informational blog. Your marketing needs to reflect this and whichever retargeting method you choose, you should be using the available tools to segment your audience.
Specific Landing Pages
You’re targeting specific segments of your audience so make sure the landing pages you send them to reflect this. Ensure the information people see when they click your ad reflects the position they are at in the customer journey.
This might mean you have to create lots of different landing pages, but it’s worth it.
You’ve spent money to retarget these people, so make sure they’ve got everything they need to get them to fill out the contact form. Once you’ve got their email, then you’ve got another way to retarget them by unleashing the power of email marketing.
Supporting Sales Content
Why have people visited your website and not returned?
One reason could be because they couldn’t find the information they were looking for. The more high-quality content you create, the more opportunities you have to answer people’s questions, and this is a great tool for your retargeting (not to mention your SEO).
Creating supporting sales content is an excellent strategy when you’re retargeting people through email. Instead of just checking in with people through your inbox, you can guide them to valuable content and get them engaging with your business again.
Different Retargeting Options
There are a number of different ways to retarget people, and each business will find a different combination of platforms that work best for them.
Some retargeting options include:
- Site Retargeting - placing your display ads on third-party websites
- Social Media Retargeting - reach people who have visited your website through platforms such as Facebook and Instagram
- Video Retargeting - create video ads to retarget people on YouTube
- Search Ad Retargeting - target people who have visited your website with ads in the SERPs.
- Push Notifications - Send a message to people through their web browser
- Email Marketing - Reach people through their inbox
How Does Retargeting Fit with SEO?
SEO is an amazing marketing channel for B2B businesses, but it’s just one part of digital marketing. When you’re getting full bang from your buck with your marketing, then all the different aspects of digital marketing should be working in unison.
75% of B2B buyers report their purchase began with an informal search for information (for many people this is a search engine query). If you want to be reaching these people, then you’ve got to be sitting near the top of the rankings for your top keywords.
However, as you might expect at this early stage in the customer journey, only 4% of organic traffic converts on the first visit to your website. This leaves you with two options - either you hope people come back to your site (valuable content and good SEO will help with this), or you find ways of retargeting people.
You’ve done the hard work with your SEO to get people to your site, your retargeting is then there to make sure this is turned into revenue.
Takeaways
The benefits of SEO are numerous, but they can be enhanced when combined with other marketing strategies. One strategy that dovetails particularly well with SEO is retargeting because it builds on the hard work you put into getting traffic to your website.
It takes multiple touchpoints to create a sale, particularly in B2B and one of the ways you can ensure you’re reaching people on a consistent basis is through retargeting.
With the right retargeting, you can maintain brand awareness, nurture leads, and recapture existing leads, and this can have huge benefits. Getting people to your website is one thing, but you’ve got to capitalize on this, and retargeting is one way to do so.
