Despite some arguments out there that “retargeting is dead,” the digital marketing tactic is indeed alive and well—and still a significant part of many advertisers’ strategies. But even despite its long-standing use, some brands are still making the same mistakes they were years ago: Poor segmentation, repetitive tactics, and just generally creeping their audience out.
Bad eCommerce remarketing doesn’t just fail to generate additional conversions—it can actively push potential customers away from your brand. In this blog, we’ll take a look at all the ways that inadequate remarketing can cause negative outcomes while providing a few pointers to help you avoid them.
How to Tell If Your eCommerce Retargeting Isn’t Working As Intended
If your retargeting strategy is poorly-designed—or if something internally or externally has changed and hurt its effectiveness—you will find out eventually. The goal is to catch it early. It’s good to look for the following signs proactively. In subsequent sections, we’ll address the underlying causes of each.
Performance Drops
Drops in performance are the most obvious sign that your retargeting campaigns are broken. If once-stable engagement begins to trend downward, there’s a good chance that ad fatigue has set in. This includes both click-through rates as well as on-page metrics, like conversion rates, bounce rates, and pages per session. If you haven’t changed your audience (or how you’re building that audience), yet user behaviors are changing, there’s a breakdown somewhere. It could be a flaw in your prospecting efforts or you may be deploying another marketing tool that’s creating significant overlap.
Changes in Frequency
Many marketing platforms have Reach and Frequency reports that will tell you how often users in your retargeting audience are seeing your ads (on average). There’s no universal “magic number” for adequate frequency, but any time an advertiser starts to see a dip in engagement, they should also check their Ad Frequency to see if it’s been changing. Changes in performance often correlate to changes in frequency—either users not seeing enough ads or perhaps seeing way too many of them and tuning them out.
Direct Audience Feedback
When people see the same ad—or even the same advertiser—too many times, it leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Often, they’ll let you know. Direct audience feedback should never be overlooked. Users can, after all, leave comments on your ads on many social networks (like Instagram and TikTok). If you’re starting to hear that they’re annoyed, it’s already too late—a change is needed fast.
How poor audience segmentation leads to poor performance
If your remarketing list is too large, your campaigns are likely failing to deliver a specific-enough message. It isn’t easy to craft “one size fits all” messaging for users who may have ended up in your audience with vastly different interests or intent levels. Ads that aren’t tailored to those factors won’t get much engagement or response, because they’re likely not applicable or appealing to a wide enough range of users.
On the flip side, oversegmentation means that your audiences are becoming too narrow, and the messaging can become way too specific. This is where audiences tend to get “creeped out.” This can also make it difficult to create ads/campaigns at scale, especially if you’re trying to create hyper specific messaging for each group based on how they’ve engaged with you previously.
Messaging fatigue kills audience interest
In an ideal state, advertisers are able to cycle through different creative throughout different touchpoints. Some clients may not be able to provide this for all initiatives, but you really don’t want to show users the same ads (to which they haven’t responded) over and over again. Ad fatigue is a real problem, and it applies to both creative and messaging.
Imagine, for instance, seeing one of those “you forgot something” ad types that are often deployed to cart abandoner audiences. Then imagine seeing it 12 times in 3 days, because you’re part of a very small audience paired with an oversized budget and no frequency cap.
Poorly-tailored creative gets tuned out
You also want to tailor creative to your audience. For instance, you wouldn’t want to approach cart abandoners and YouTube video viewers with the exact same messaging. As prospective customers see the same ads and messaging over and over again, they don’t get irritated any longer. In today’s world, they learn to block out your brand completely, meaning that you’ll likely never be able to reach them even if you do come back with fresh creative and a stronger offer in the future.
The modern consumer has learned to block out noise. Don’t scare them off by being redundant.
Combined campaigns can cause cannibalization
Remarketing can also be a bit of a cannibal, especially in dynamic campaign types that combine audiences (such as Google’s Performance Max or Meta’s Advantage+). These campaigns are championed for their ability to target users at every stage of the sales funnel—but without proper constraints, one stage can dominate over others. Remarketing audiences can—and often do—receive a large share of the overall campaign budget, and within a few months (or maybe even weeks), advertisers find that their funnels aren’t being replenished and they aren’t getting new eyeballs on their brand, products, and/or services.
This can be especially true when remarketing to existing customers in an effort to re-engage them. Focusing too much of a budget on increasing some users’ lifetime value gets in the way of building brand awareness with net new prospects.
Other common retargeting issues
- Under- or over-investing in it. Effective marketing strategies rely on balance. If you under-invest on remarketing, you’re likely failing to capitalize on whatever initial interest your awareness campaigns have generated. Meanwhile, if you over-invest, you’re likely creeping out those existing audiences while not replenishing your pipeline enough.
- Failing to understand remarketing’s place in the funnel. Don’t just push products and prices to users who have only just been exposed to your brand. Remarketing also needs to be used to build some value so that they understand why your product or service is the best in its class.
- Making the wrong assumptions about performance. Remarketing isn’t a magic pill that guarantees conversions. If done effectively, remarketing can help drive incremental conversions in addition to prospecting efforts, but it isn’t likely to completely transform all business outcomes. It’s a supplemental source of revenue—not a miracle making strategy.
Tips for Keeping Your Remarketing Effective
- Don’t assume a user remembers your original ad. We all see a lot of ads online. If multiple brands are targeting the same sets of users, those ads may even begin to blur together. Each ad is a new opportunity to highlight your brand’s personality and offerings.
- Don’t assume a user is ready to convert just because they’ve seen a second ad. The sales funnel takes time. You shouldn’t just shift from “this is who we are” to “please buy” from first contact to next appearance. Continue building awareness and appeal prior to engagement.
- Don’t assume a user is actually interested just because they’ve engaged with your brand a before. They may have been comparing prices and have already purchased from a competitor. They may not be in a position to spend what you’re asking for your product or service, even if they are interested. They may just not pay attention to what they’re clicking.
- Don’t drop users into the same experience that didn’t convert the first time. They came to your site, clicked around—and didn’t buy anything. That isn’t your cue to see if they’ll start that journey all over again and complete it the next time. For targeting those audiences, you’ll want new landing pages or products to show off.
- Monitor the size of your list. In Google Ads and other platforms, you can always see an estimated number of eligible users who might be served ads within your given audience. If that number is declining over time, it’s time to investigate why. Did traffic drop? Did something change in the tracking? Was there a change made to the site that’s led to more users converting earlier (thereby eliminating the need for remarketing)?
Retargeting the Right Way
Retargeting isn’t going anywhere, but the way you approach it will determine whether it exists as a growth driver or a liability. When these campaigns are poorly structured, overexposed, or tone-deaf, they aren’t just a waste of budget—they can actively hurt your brand perception. The good news is that, when done correctly, retargeting can still be one of the most effective ways to move prospective customers closer to conversion.
If you’re concerned your retargeting might be leaving money on the table—or even creeping your audience out—it’s time to take a hard look at the underlying factors and strategy you’re engaging in. If you’re looking to get a second set of eyes on your retargeting campaigns, don’t hesitate to reach out to our eCommerce marketing agency below:
