Did you know that nearly 98% of B2B website visitors don't convert on their first visit?
The truth is, as much as we would all want every single person that lands on our site to convert, it's just not possible.
During their purchase journey, B2B buyers typically visit multiple websites to compare solutions and pricing across different vendors.
And they are in different stages of the buying process:
Awareness
Interest
Decision
Action
Just imagine this scenario. A prospect is aware that they have a problem, and decide to search for a solution online. They come across your website on Google, click through, visit the product page, then go to your pricing page, and then drop off, without requesting a quote or filling out an inquiry form. Why?
There could be several reasons for this.
Maybe they were not ready to buy just yet and were just exploring what's out there.
Maybe they are looking to buy soon, but yours was the first website they came across in their hunt, and also wanted to look at other vendors to see what they have to offer and at what price before making a decision.
Or maybe they just had to go into a meeting...you never know.
So what should you do? You have two options: You can either hope and pray for them to come back.
Or, you can win them back with a B2B retargeting strategy.
What's Retargeting?
Retargeting is about engaging people that visited your site but didn't convert - in order to get them back and take the desired action - which can be anything from submitting an inquiry to requesting a quote/demo to signing up for a free trial to making a purchase.
Just because a visitor didn't convert on their first visit, doesn't mean they will never convert.
A large majority of first time visitors on your site (particularly those that come from inbound channels like search engines and social media) are in the Awareness stage, where they know they have a problem, and are exploring possible solutions to solve that problem.
So they come across your website in their journey of solving the problem, but they need more information, possibly multiple interactions with your brand before they can make a decision.
By retargeting, what you're doing is putting your brand in front of people who have already come across it once, providing them more information that would help them in their decision-making and position your solution as the ideal solution to their problem.
The ultimate goal? To get them to choose you over your competitors!
Retargeting is a great way to maximize your marketing ROI, because let's face it, if you're spending a lot of money driving traffic to your website, you want to make sure it converts.
How does Retargeting work?
There are 2 main ways you can retarget visitors:
Pixel-based retargeting
Account-based retargeting
But before we get into these, here's the most important thing you need to remember about retargeting:
Not all website visitors are created equal.
Somebody who lands on your home page or a blog post and exits from there is very different from somebody who exits from your pricing page.
To get the best results, your retargeting campaigns need to be aligned with the buyer's journey.
Don't retarget every single visitor. Target users that drop off from specific pages that signal some degree of buying intent, such as your product/service pages and pricing pages.
Then segment users based on the pages they visit on your site, to make sure you're retargeting them with the right message.
Now that you understand that, let's explore two retargeting techniques we think are very effective in re-engaging and converting visitors:
Pixel-based Retargeting
This method entails using advertising platforms like Facebook or Google to automatically show relevant paid ads on social media, search engines and other third-party websites to a segment of your website visitors.
You install a pixel, or a code snippet on your website, provided by the ad network.
This pixel stores anonymous data about the pages a user visits on your website.
You can use this data to serve relevant ads to those visitors based on predefined criteria.
A common example of this is when you browse an item on Amazon without checking out and start seeing ads related to that item when you visit some of your favourite websites. Remember that?
Though this is a B2C example, the concept remains the same for B2B.
How to effectively use this method:
A mistake businesses often make with such retargeting campaigns is that they direct people to sales pages in all their campaigns.
This is not a good idea, because not every visitor is ready to buy straightaway.
Sending them back to the same page where they dropped off from isn't the best strategy either. They have already seen that page and what it contains, so by doing this you will likely be wasting your marketing dollars.
What you should be looking to do is getting them into your sales funnel and keep them engaged so that when they are ready to buy, they come to you.
The best way to do this is to offer a piece of premium content related to the page(s) they visited.
For example:
If they exit your site from a certain blog post, say about the top challenges businesses in a particular niche face, offer them a high-quality piece of content that explains how you can solve those challenges & positions you as an expert in your niche
If they exit from a product/features page, send them a detailed product guide
If they exit from the pricing page, offer them a case study that provides social proof
Once they download the content, add them to a nurturing email sequence with more targeted content.
This does 3 things:
Builds trust and positions you as expert
Keeps them engaged with your brand
Builds mental availability - when they are ready to buy they will think of your solution first
According to research, the average B2B buyer consumes 13 pieces of content before converting.
By retargeting users who have already visited your website with relevant content, you significantly increase the likelihood of them buying from you.
This is a tactic very few companies use, so if you do this, you'll have a strong competitive advantage.
To implement this successfully, you need a strong content marketing strategy in place.
Bonus tip: Always add a CTA, such as a book a demo or consultation link in your nurturing emails as well as in every piece of in content that you share, in case they feel like reaching out to you to know more.
Th technique we just described is best suited if you are targeting small or mid-sized clients.
However, if you want to acquire large accounts, it may not be as effective.
For that, you need a different approach:
Account-based Retargeting (ABR)
With ABR, you retarget the whole company and the key decision-makers in them, not just 1 person who visits your website.
This is a much more effective technique for engaging and converting larger companies than showing retargeting ads to individual website visitors.
Why? Because when it comes to enterprise purchases, the buying process typically involves multiple people at different stages.
The person visiting your website for the first time may not be the decision-maker.
Maybe they are simply tasked with collecting vendor data and pass it onto the management for evaluation.
So for the best chance of success, you need to identify all the key people in the organization that are likely to be involved in the purchase decision.
How to effectively use this method:
To remarket to an organization that has visited your website, the first step is to know which companies are visiting your site.
How do you accomplish that?
By using a visitor tracking tool like Leadfeeder, or Albacross.
These tools tell you:
Which companies are visiting your website
What pages are they visiting
How much time are they spending on each page
Which sources they are coming from (search, social, direct etc)
In short, they turn anonymous traffic into identifiable businesses that you can follow up with.
The best part? These tools also tell you key decision-makers in the company, their contact info and social profiles.
So how do you use this data for your business?
Just follow these steps:
Filter companies that fit your target audience
Export the data into a Google sheet (you can automate this step using Zapier)
Identify key decision-makers in those companies and their email addresses and Linkedin profiles
Have your SDRs reach out to them via Linkedin and/or email with personalised content (Don't sell in the first communication)
By doing this, you're running a warm outreach campaign equipped with actual behavior-based data that shows buying intent, as opposed to sending completely cold DMs or emails to prospects who in all likelihood have no need/interest in your products/services.
Trust us, you'll get much better response rates and engagement with this method, rather than going in cold.
Just think about it.
The companies you are retargeting already have a need for a solution like yours (since they have visited your website). Their purchase journey is underway.
You just need to help them along on their journey with the right content that answers their questions and positions you as an expert that has the ideal solution for their needs.
Final Thoughts
The B2B marketplace is extremely competitive, and doing the same thing everybody else is doing isn't going to work.
You need to be proactive and try new things to stand out from the competition.
By following the techniques we have explained in this post, you can keep your brand top of the mind so that yours is the first name they think of when they are ready to purchase.
