How to Analyze Retargeting Results

Not all visitors who come to your website will make a purchase. In fact, most of them will leave your site without taking any action. Advancements in digital marketing have made it possible to follow prospective clients around the web through retargeting (or remarketing). When people come to your site, they leave a bit of code, or a “cookie,” which then enables you to serve up ads to them when they are browsing other sites. Retargeting is an especially effective way of increasing conversion because it targets people who have already shown interest in your business by visiting your website. But as with any other form of paid marketing, you have to figure out if you’re seeing ROI. So how do you analyze retargeting results?

1. Click-based conversions

The click-through rate (CTR) refers to the ratio of the number of times a display ad was clicked to the number of impressions or number of times the ad was shown. The higher the number of clicks, the higher the CTR is and hence, the more successful the ad.

In click-based conversion, someone visits your site but does not make a conversion. You implement ad retargeting, and he or she encounters your advertisement on another site. Since they already have an interest in your company, the ad may remind them of it, so they click the ad and convert on your site.

As insightful as they are, however, CTR and click-based conversions don’t represent the whole picture. Take for example a previous site visitor who is served with your ad. Though he may not click on it, his attention will be piqued and interest will build up. Later, the same person may visit your site (not through clicking on a retargeting ad) and make a conversion – either making a purchase or becoming a lead. Leaving out this segment of conversions in your analytics may not show you the scope of your retargeting efforts. But how do you account for such a conversion? This is where the view-through rate comes in.

2. View-based conversions

A view-through rate takes into account the number of people who saw your ad, did not click on it, but became interested and converted later. This is a view-based conversion and needs to be taken into account. In fact, the view-through rate is considered to be much better than the click-through rate because it represents high-value prospects – people who are still thinking of your brand enough to find it in other ways besides clicking on an ad.

3. Other metrics

Finally, to really measure the ROI of a retargeting campaign, it’s important to compare how much you spend on each conversion versus how much the conversion is worth. If you spend a lot of money in retargeting but aren’t seeing leads convert to customers or get customers who only make small purchases, you may need to rethink your approach.

One point to note, especially for small businesses, is that retargeting does not work very well for low traffic sites. If you are planning to make use of this tool to recapture bounced customers, it’s best to build your traffic to at least 5,000 unique visitors through an SEO and/or and SEM campaign, as well as social media.