According to a study by American Business Media, B2B advertisers plan to increase their spending on digital advertising in the coming year, particularly on search engine optimization and display advertising.
As these digital channels continue to shape marketing initiatives, B2B marketers need to evaluate how they allocate their budgets and focus on the strategies that deliver the best results, including search advertising and display campaigns.
However, there are situations where initial marketing efforts alone are not enough. Maintaining brand awareness, re-engaging potential customers, and recovering lost leads can require additional strategies. In these cases, implementing a retargeting strategy for your B2B business can be highly effective.
Remarketing and retargeting allow businesses to reconnect with users who have already shown interest in their products or services through website visits or mobile app interactions. Taking advantage of these strategies helps maximize the value of those initial interactions and improve conversion rates.
Below, we explore the benefits and best practices for implementing remarketing and retargeting in B2B marketing.
Why retargeting and remarketing are valuable for B2B businesses
Many different types of websites can benefit from remarketing and retargeting. For both B2B and B2C companies, these strategies often play a key role in digital marketing efforts. However, here we focus specifically on B2B retargeting.
If you are still considering whether B2B retargeting is worth the investment, consider the following insights:
Retargeting businesses instead of consumers can lead to a 147% increase in ROI.
The click-through rate (CTR) for retargeted ads can be up to ten times higher than standard display ads.
Retargeting campaigns can increase conversion rates by as much as 278%.
In today’s competitive digital marketing environment, both quality and frequency of engagement are important. Customers often need several interactions with your brand before they are ready to convert.
Remarketing and retargeting help reinforce brand awareness by repeatedly exposing potential customers to your products and services. This repeated exposure can significantly increase conversion rates among users who have already interacted with your brand.
B2B remarketing best practices
Once you determine that B2B remarketing fits your strategy, the next step is identifying how to integrate it effectively into your existing marketing activities.
Consider the following best practices:
- Remarket to customers at every stage of the B2B sales cycle. In addition, do not forget about customers who have already converted. If you offer complementary or upgraded products, remarketing campaigns can keep your brand top of mind.
- Track which customers have already converted. This helps prevent showing ads to users who have already completed a purchase or taken the desired action.
- Use email lists for remarketing campaigns. Not everyone who downloads content or registers for a webinar will automatically become a customer. It is important to segment your email lists carefully, as each contact may be at a different stage of the buying journey.
- Create dedicated landing pages for remarketing campaigns. Understanding where your audience is in the sales funnel will help you tailor messaging and encourage a specific action. A strong landing page should focus on guiding visitors toward one clear goal.
- Develop content that supports B2B sales processes. Content may include blog posts, infographics, videos, whitepapers, flowcharts, or email sequences. Each format can help communicate value and reinforce your message.
B2B retargeting best practices
Retargeting works by tracking user behavior across websites and displaying relevant ads at strategic moments. This approach uses cookie-based technology to identify users who visited your website but left without converting.
Segmentation
Effective segmentation is essential for successful B2B retargeting campaigns. Retargeting works best when audiences are large enough to meet platform requirements.
Understanding your target audience and their buying process helps identify the most relevant retargeting opportunities. It is also important to consider both positive and negative audience segments when building your campaigns.
Adjust ad messaging and run A/B tests
Successful retargeting campaigns rely on delivering the right message to the right audience. Testing different ad variations helps identify which messages and creatives generate the best performance.
It is also important to consider recent user interactions. Retargeting users who visited your website several months ago may not always be the most efficient use of your advertising budget.
Use cross-channel retargeting
Retargeting strategies should extend across multiple channels. If your target audience is active on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, expanding your campaigns across these networks can increase your reach.
For example, Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature allows you to target users based on email addresses collected through your website. While not every user logs into Facebook with the same email address used elsewhere, having a well-developed email list can still make this strategy highly effective.
When should you use remarketing and retargeting?
Remarketing and retargeting serve different but complementary purposes.
Remarketing typically refers to email-based communication, where personalized messages are sent based on previous interactions.
Retargeting usually refers to display advertising, where ads are shown to users who previously visited your website or interacted with related content.
Platforms such as Google Ads or AdRoll allow businesses to create and manage retargeting campaigns. These campaigns can reach users who have already interacted with your brand, as well as users who have engaged with similar companies or searched for related topics.
Email remarketing campaigns can also be triggered by specific user actions. Examples include follow-up emails after content downloads, reminders after abandoned shopping carts, or recommendations for related products.
What are your thoughts on retargeting and remarketing in B2B marketing?
Implementing effective retargeting and remarketing strategies requires careful planning, ongoing analysis, and continuous experimentation. This is particularly important in B2B marketing, where the target audience consists of other businesses with complex buying processes.
Have you implemented these strategies in your organization, or are there other best practices that have worked well for your B2B business?
Contact our team to determine which remarketing and retargeting strategies best fit your B2B marketing goals.
