Despite the overwhelming influence and addictive pull of the Internet, most people know when to call it quits. Sometimes they have no choice. Eventually life beckons from beyond the computer screen, and purchases and online forms are consequently abandoned or mentally flagged to revisit at a later time.
Losing a visitor to your website is comparable to losing an earring on the beach. The chances of retrieval are slim to none. According to Netcraft, there are roughly 650 million active websites online.1 But the good news is that there’s an effective way to reach and recapture those who abandoned your site.
Retargeted banner ads serve to remind visitors to your website about the content they recently reviewed. When a potential customer leaves your site, a related ad appears on the next site the customer visits. Because the customer is already familiar with your brand or product offer, retargeted banner ads provide that extra nudge needed to redirect the customer back to your site. They’re also cost-efficient and allow marketers to echo and extend their message outside the brand’s official website.
Consider the challenge faced by Ford and our client Nokia. For every 10 visitors to the Ford map update landing page, three abandoned it without completing a purchase. Our task at Jacobs & Clevenger was to remind visitors of their intent to purchase a map update and bring them back to the campaign website. Now let’s see how we successfully re-engaged their audience with tailored retargeted banner ads.
Think big in a small space.
Developing a retargeted banner ad is an exercise in brevity. Retargeted banner ads require concise messaging because they work within a limited space. Depending on the banner size, this could mean 50 characters or less. But with the right amount of creativity and vision, you can entice visitors to click back to the main campaign website in just a few words.
I can attest to the potency of retargeted banner ads by pointing to a closet full of online purchases. Sometimes all it takes to pull me back is an ad with a photo of the longed-for product and the words “Forget something?”
For Nokia and Ford, we highlighted important offer details found on their map update landing page in a pared-down version of the banner ad. We included only relevant, action-prompting information for optimal influence and reach. See the example shown here. Messaging focuses on the offer’s perks: savings and a bonus gift card.
Make sure that messaging and art exist in harmony.
There’s a lot represented in the banner ad above, but none of the elements clash or crash. Embedding information in a text-friendly environment is key to a successful retargeted banner ad. Graphics, background embellishments and anything that resembles a flashing strobe light should be used sparingly. Messaging and brand- or product-related art should exist in harmony. One should not be battling for space or attention with the other. The goal is to deliver a tweet-sized message in an accommodating thumbnail-sized space.
Complement your campaign with relevant retargeted banner ads.
Every participating Ford brand website in the Nokia map update campaign has a complementary retargeted banner ad. Retargeted banners ads lead in online advertising performance because they persistently follow potential customers and remind them of their intent to purchase a specific product. The ads do more than promote the brand; they bring a product the customer was eyeing directly back to the customer, which eliminates the hassle of having to navigate an entire website to return to the desired product.
Results…
Persistence pays off. Nokia and Ford’s map update campaign achieved a 4:1 revenue-to-expense ratio or better. The retargeted banner ads we created appeared on more than 1,000 websites and re-engaged more than 22% of abandoners.
To learn more about recapturing lost leads and re-engaging your audience, check out our blog article, Behavioral marketing: Addressing customer abandonment.
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Topics: Digital Marketing
