Set Your Campaign Goals in Advance

Schneider recommends kicking your campaigns off with targeted goals and parameters, so your budget is spent wisely on the most qualified customers. “The auction is automated and occurring in real time. You can bid extremely high to win all the possible impressions, but that’s not necessarily a good strategy. The best strategy is to set targeted parameters, and this requires a combination of great vendors using the best technology.”

Another important factor to consider is the length of your retargeting campaign. “The length of your retargeting campaign completely depends on your business. Most advertisers should use retargeting as an on-going part of their marketing strategy. In-market times are business-specific, so making sure your campaigns are setup to align with your business, and testing different levers over time, is important.

Tracking Campaign Performance is Essential

Tracking must be set up before you launch so you can show the ROI of your retargeting efforts. “The most important metrics to track your retargeting’s effectiveness is cost-per-acquisition. Make sure that when you’re setting up your campaigns, you have conversion pixels placed on all of the relevant success events that you want to track,” Walsh says.

Retargeting is Effective At All Points in the Customer Lifecycle

Many experts believe retargeting is most impactful at the bottom of the funnel, once a customer has already visited your webpage. Walsh, however, disagrees. “Retargeting can also be used as a channel to reach your existing audiences with new offers [or] products or announcements in the same way that more traditional channels do. Nontraditional approaches to creative messaging and audience identification are increasingly prevalent.”

Find a Transparent Partner

Partnering with a third-party who gives you detailed insights is essential, not only so you can see the true return on your retargeting, but also so you can properly segment and advertise to your audience. “…Transparent technology partners are important. We’ve dedicated resources to improve and expand our audience modeling capabilities and our optimization objectives. Both of these strategies allow us to weed out the ‘annoyed’ consumers by controlling their exposure over time based on their behaviors. Programmatic display retargeting platforms are extremely complex, and it’s valuable to have someone who can help you navigate,” Walsh says.