eCommerce Retargeting Strategies (E146)

Show Notes:

Places to retarget:

• Facebook/Instagram
• Google Display
• Google Search

Length to Retarget:

• 7 days to start

Visitors to Retarget:

• Visitors no add to cart (last 7 days)
• Add to cart with no purchase (last 7 days)
• Initiate checkout with no purchase (last 7 days)
• Purchase (last 7 days)

Content to retarget

• Visitors no add to cart – Product page or product video
• Add to cart with no purchase – Your purchase is waiting
• Initiate checkout with no purchase – Coupon with urgency
• Purchase – Upsells/cross-sells & support

Sponsors:

• Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!
• Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software

Transcript:

Charles (00:00):

In this episode of The Business of E-Commerce I talk about retargeting strategies for 2020. This is a business of e-commerce episode, 146. [inaudible] Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow the e-commerce business. I’m your host, Charles [inaudible] I’m here today to talk about retargeting strategies. This is a topic that I want you for a while and I’ve been building. So I wanted to dig into a four-part tale. I’ll kind of lay them out different places to retarget the length to retire guest type of visitors, to retarget, and also the content you should use in your retargeting strategy. Also, just note, if you’re watching the video currently moving the office right now. So excuse the background, it’s a little different today and hopefully I’ll be back and have a better set up pretty soon, but let’s get started. I want to kind of jump into the first point here, different places to retarget.

Charles (01:04):

So first this is 2020, and currently there’s several places where you want to run your retargeting ads and I’ll list them in order of where I would start if I was running a new retargeting campaign today. So number one, Facebook, Instagram, it’s kind of your social platform. It’s the first one. I’d probably choose to start a retargeting campaign. And depending on what creative you use, it’s very easy to post it also on Instagram. So that’s probably the first place I would just get started with retargeting. Next up the Google display network, Google display is banners. That sort of thing, everything that’s not searched, let’s call it. That’s the general other one. Normally I would not recommend the display network except for retargeting campaign. When you’re getting started. The great part is you can spend far less per impression, still get your name out there. You’ll still be in front of an audience, but you won’t have to spend the same, you know, search CP social CPC display really just gets you a lot of impressions and a lot of brand awareness that you can use to kind of expand your reach.

Charles (02:17):

So that’s always, probably the second place I would recommend to start. Third place is Google search, but search for retargeting, right? So you can, you can show search ads only to folks that have already been on your site. So that’s the third place. Each one’s a little more complicated, but what I do there is when you’re setting up Google retargeting search ads, you’ll add your audience. We’ll get into this in a bit, but once you have your audience, you can also add in search terms. So if you’re selling a particular product, you know, the audience has been to your site and you come up with some search terms that sound very familiar to, you know, that if someone is typing in these, they’re thinking of your industry. So if you’re selling life S you’re a life vest retailer, someone’s typing in terms about some nautical terms, terms of all boats in terms of the ocean, the tide fishing.

Charles (03:13):

That’s when you want to show your life S every targeting. So you can really get inside their head. And, you know, if there anything having to do with boats, Marine, anything like that, that’s when you want to fire those ads. So search is the other great option, and you can really be specific. And you’re not just showing it to all the searches, because if they’re looking for cooking recipes, you might not want to be jumping in there joining a life as out at that moment. But the great part is you can really drill it down to say, let’s get in their head. They’ve been on our site, they’re definitely into this plus. Now we know they’re again, searching for us. Let’s do this. So those are the three places I’d probably recommend to start with. And there’s lots of other ones, but right there, you’re going to have a large opportunity.

Charles (04:00):

You’re going to cover a lot of ground right there. And the neat part is the more of these that you’re on. It becomes this brand awareness where they hit your site. And now for days, they’re going to be seeing, Hey, here’s your ad. Oh, and you’re going to look a lot more like, like, you know, each other sort of thing. You’re going to look all of a sudden, like you have this relationship, even if the person person has just been on your site for a little while. So you’re able to stop building this familiarity with your brand, with your products that you don’t otherwise gash, that they might’ve just been searching one night. Now, all of a sudden you’re in their life every day, you’re coming back and you get a lot more brand awareness this way, especially being on both on social, both on display, both on search. So you’re going to cover if, if they’re online, most likely in most of the places, you’re all going to be covering them.

Speaker 2 (04:53):

Today’s episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It’s a world’s first e-commerce CRM. And the tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you are running an e-commerce store, you need to address and try. And here’s why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There’s robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation rules visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It’s powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe. That’s drip.com/b O E now. Okay,

Charles (05:44):

So now the link three target, you use the next from there. So we start talking about the length. It can really vary. I’d recommend starting at seven days, but it really depends on your product. You’re buying cycle. If it’s a larger purchase, if it’s you’re selling you the example I use hair all the time is mattresses beds. That sort of thing. This is a longer buying cycle, right? If you’re selling high-end bicycles, things that people are going to be researching and coming back time and time again, they’re not just going to, you know, if you’re selling a t-shirt, they might come our hat. They might come look at it. It’s great. Okay. 20, $30, check out what to do this. So you could probably bring that down a bit. Or if it’s a longer buying cycle, you’re going to have to link them. Cause they’re gonna be thinking about this purchase for a lot longer.

Charles (06:32):

So you really want to start getting in their head in this exercise and know here’s our usual buying cycle. Let’s start there. Seven days is usually a good place to start for most, but use your own kind of discretion here. And the reason you don’t want to go super long, right? Because on goal, you can make this a year. If you want it, you can make this months. The reason you don’t want to do that is now you’d be spreading your retarding dollars over much greater audience. So you might not get the same kind of return you would otherwise get. So if you can go for a shorter time, definitely stack there, whatever the shortest buying cycle as you feel comfortable with. And you can always retry this in the future, but at least start at something that you think is a reasonable buying cycle, but don’t go overboard because you’ll be wasting money on the other direction now.

Charles (07:20):

So then you suck it into kind of a fun stuff of setting up the campaigns. And this applies for all, for all three platforms, all three retargeting locations. I mentioned Facebook, Google display, Google search, but you want to set, setting up different audiences. What’s called them and everyone calls them slightly different, but just groups of either customers or visitors. So you want to set up these audiences on each platform. So Hara for that, I seen very successfully. It’s probably the four. I recommend everyone starting with so first visitors with no add to cars. So you can do this by if they’ve been on any page, but not the add to cart page. And it’s usually in some platforms, has it all kind of tied in to if you’re using a Shopify or a big commerce. Now, if not, you could still figure out the URLs.

Charles (08:16):

You kind of have to dig in on each platform, Google Facebook, they’re both a little different, but create these groups based on URLs. Usually. So first group visitors with no add to cash. So these are the people that have kind of just hit the site. They’re very loosely interested. So that’s one group to add to cart with no purchase. And depending on your shopping cart, you might have like a one page, but it might be a multiple page, right? Where you add to cart, you can see that usually, but no purchase. So they didn’t actually or no initiate checkout. So they didn’t get to your pre-checkout page. And you know, they didn’t get there yet next initiate checkout, but no purchase, right? So you’re always gonna have that purchase. Thank you page at the end. And you want to have this, they initiated the checkout.

Charles (09:03):

They got in there. Most likely they started looking at shipping. They started looking at pricing and they had some, they got some cold fees on us, right? Maybe the shipping rate, they were trying to ship to Alaska and you’re just way off base, whatever it was. They got cold fees. Most likely has something to do with the final price tax shipping, that sort of thing. So this is usually a group target cause you kind of, you know exactly why they bounced last but not least. Post-Purchase. So these are folks that actually have bought with you. And let’s say it’s a tight range in the past seven days. They’ve actually purchased with you depending on the size of your site as well. Just to note you can’t always target all of these groups, right? So if it’s Google search, I believe you need a ton of this recording, a thousand users in a certain audience rights.

Charles (09:57):

If you want to do search, maybe you don’t have a thousand purchases in the past seven days. So you might not be able to do that group for that type, but you could start with visitors, right? So hopefully you have a thousand visitors. If not, I believe Facebook, you can do some smaller targeting. So you can do things like that, but you might not be able to start with this right away, depending on your traffic. So just note that, but it’s always good to have the audience creative from day one. So that’s probably the first thing I would do is just create the audiences. Even if you’re not ready to stop running retargeting ads, there’ll be collecting data in the background and you can create some of these seven days 14. So you can expand a little bit if you don’t have that kind of volume, but at least have the audiences they’re collecting the data.

Charles (10:42):

You always want that. Do that day. One on both platforms, Facebook and Google, get these audience locked down. So now you have your four audiences last, but definitely not least is what do you actually want to retarget to them? What do you want to show them? Right? Each step. Think of it. As the buying funnel, you know, the customer’s journey and each one, they kind of know your product, a little different they’re in a different place, a different mindset, right? So visitors that just came to the site to add to cart, maybe this wasn’t the product we’re looking for, or maybe they just don’t know enough about your product. You might want to retarget them with pitches of the product, the product page. You might want to bring them directly to. If you have a video, anything like that, definitely you can use that in the creative.

Charles (11:28):

You basically want to show them more about the product, more about what they can do with this kind of educate them. So there is still at the education stage, add to cart with no purchase. This one’s a little, this is interesting because they didn’t even, they add to the cart. So they were interested, but they didn’t really look at the final price or no initiate checkout rabbi. So they add to cart with didn’t initiate checkout. So then if it got to that checkout page, so they might’ve just got distracted, really? So this is a really great one to retire there where they added this and they were on a mobile and something happened and now they just kind of wandered away. Right? So the goal here is just to kind of nudge them and remind them, Hey, there’s some products waiting for you in your cars.

Charles (12:10):

Hey, like, you’re you wanted this and you didn’t, you didn’t finalize it. So just jump in here, come right back your items, still waiting for you. You can even add some sense of urgency. We hold the cart the two days, seven days, whatever you want to add in. Now maybe put some, you know, some time on now. So people know, Hey, my cock stole around. Oh, I want it. That let’s kind of jump in and get that again. I always say that’s a great group to target because they might not even have an objection. It might’ve just been, they got distracted. So definitely run those sort of ads to folks that add to cart. But didn’t initiate checkout.

Charles (12:48):

Third type is people that initiated checkout, but they didn’t actually purchase. So this is the one you can get pretty creative here. You can run coupons out a sense of urgency. Hey, this is a 24 hour coupon to get 10% off. This is a $40 coupon to get free shipping, anything like that. Most of them, they got here and they were interested, but they got turned off the last moment. And very often this is just some sort of cost in their cart. They weren’t aware of. So they saw the product, they liked it 29, 95, but they got down taxes, maybe some these maybe shipping and they just, they said, okay, this 20, 95 purchase just turned into a, you know, $50 purchase. No thank you. So if you can, this is one time where discounting does work very well. So you might want to run some sort of coupon there, called the link, add a sense of urgency.

Charles (13:47):

And again, these are people let’s say in the next, in the past seven days. So you can really be hyper targeted and say, you’ve been here. You want this, but before they go and buy it from someone else, you want to go ask them very quick. So this is something you definitely want to keep your timeframe very short on this audience last but not least is folks that have actually purchased. And this, you can go a little longer of a timeframe they’ve already checked out with you. They’ve the interested, you know, they bought, but you still have an opportunity here. So one is cross sell upsell, very classic opportunity to show them, Hey, you bought this camping product. You can also see, you know, maybe you need some camping socks or camping mug, anything like that. So, you know, they’re in that mindset, they’re doing some sort of camping, whatever that activity is that your products we use for here’s some other products to go great with that activity.

Charles (14:44):

Maybe you already have that card on file. And even add that, just so people know that, Hey, if you’re doing this, we have other products. So come back, check us out, easy opportunity. And you can even extend that a little bit. So let’s say the other ones were seven days. This might go to 14. You probably don’t have as much traffic here at assume, right? The funnel’s going to be lower at the bottom. So you might want to extend it a bit, but it’s a perfect opportunity. You know, these people are buyers at this point. So just kind of get them coming back and you might be able to re-engage them. And just that era, that value for that customer is just going to increase right there. So this is a super high ROI when you start retiring these groups. Well, the other thing that can be used there is just things.

Charles (15:27):

If you have a more complicated product, any sort of support, anything, here’s how to reach us. If you have any questions. I bought some studio lights before where I had some issue with a USB cable and just retargeting saying, Hey, any questions? Here’s the support docs. You’re not going to get the sort of obvious ROI on this one, but you do get this Goodwill. You do get less support tickets. It just it’s good for your user. And in the longterm, this is always a nice thing to run. And you can even run both ads in this campaign, upsells and support. Maybe they go off to one, maybe they’ll have to ELA, but at least you kind of know, you know, you’re talking, these are, these are your users. Now these are your customers. You’re talking to them. You’re creating kind of a, a a conversation with them, right?

Charles (16:14):

So to run through real quick, please, to retarget Facebook, Instagram first out with the social goal display network is number two. After that, you want to go with Google search. I would go to, in that order, after that, we start talking about the length of retargeting. I would say start at seven days, but use your own discretion on this one. After that to have to visit us to retarget visitors with no add to cart, add to cart with no initiate checkout, initiate checkout, with no purchase and then finally purchase. And then the different types of content. So same Dale, different types of content for each one of those audiences. Final things I would say about this is if you’re not running retargeting, now start adding your visitors right now. You’ll never regret that you can add those visitors. The audiences start generating these audiences in the background.

Charles (17:05):

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to spend anything yet. I would just have the audiences there. And even at least out with adding the pixels, some folks don’t even have that always start there, have that. You’ll never regret that. And then next, a lot of people have tried paid before and they kind of get turned away. Right? I can’t get the ROI. I can not, I can’t get search to work. The ROI just isn’t there retagging is its own thing. It is almost always profitable. I found just from talking to folks, I’ve never, I’ve not talked to anyone that said retargeting was a waste. Maybe it’s not, you can’t get tons of new users office, but the, the visitors you already have, you can basically just capitalize on that a little better. So it’s almost always a positive ROI. So once you can run these ads, do it, I would always recommend it. Just at least try it because there’s great ROI ROI on these ads. So those are my final tips. Hopefully this was helpful. If it was please comment, please raise. I always appreciate that. And hopefully in the near future and beyond with a better background, new set here, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks. Have a good one. [inaudible].

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