Presentation from INBOUND 2015: What is paid retargeting? How is it different from PPC, and how can you use it at multiple stages of your marketing funnel? This presentation will show you how to turn unknown visitors into known leads, leads into marketing qualified leads, and marketing qualified leads into customers using paid retargeting.

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How to Use Paid Retargeting
to Nurture Leads
Niti Shah
Inbound Marketer, HubSpot

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About Me
• Former email, conversions, and lead
nurturing marketer at HubSpot
• Now based in HubSpot Sydney
working on Asia Pacific Marketing
• Trying to become a semi-pro surfer!
• Follow me at @nitifromboston

3. 1. Paid Retargeting: the Basics
2. Retargeting the Funnel Start to Finish
3. Tips & Tricks to Optimize Your Campaigns
4. Hacks to Take Your Retargeting to the Next Level
AGENDA

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PAID RETARGETING: THE
BASICS

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Why are we talking
about paid at an
inbound marketing
event?
Wait a minute…

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What People Think of Paid Advertising…

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What Paid Retargeting Actually is…

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Paid Retargeting:
Serving relevant ads on
external channels to people
who are already engaging
with your brand.

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1. Social media platforms
2. Display banner ads on third party sites
Where to Retarget an Audience

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Facebook
• Desktop newsfeed: best
CPC metrics
• Mobile newsfeed:
doesn’t work well for form
conversions
• Desktop right column:
high impressions, low
clicks and conversions

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Twitter
• Choose devices to show
ad
• Website clicks or
conversions: best CPC
metrics
• Tweet engagements:
better for impressions
• Lead gen cards: great for
blog subscribe CTA

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Display
• All about the visuals
• Different ad networks
support different ad
sizes
• Greatest reach
• Lower ROI by far than
social media retargeting

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1. Create segmented lists of contacts from your database
2. Use tracking pixels to find visitors to your website
3. Create “lookalike” audiences based on your existing
audience
How to Retarget an Audience

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List-based
• Create in your list tool
• Segment for best
results
• 10-30% match rate
• Only works with email,
can’t retarget visitors
• Best CPC economics
Facebook, Twitter

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Pixel-based
• Tracking pixel in header
• Broad or targeted
• Can segment by
webpage content
• Larger audience size
• Lower ROI than lists
Facebook, Twitter, Display

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Lookalike
• Increase reach (small
lists, low web traffic)
• Based on similarity
between your audience
and platform audience
• CPC depends on
targeting
Facebook, Twitter, Google Remarketing

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Retargeting is not for everyone. You’ll need a
large enough list and/or enough web traffic to
reach the minimum audience volume.

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1. Retargeting reaches people already engaged with your
brand
2. Retargeting supplements your inbound strategy
3. You can reach audiences on social media or 3rd party sites
4. You can retarget contact lists or website visitors
5. Retargeting is not for everyone – you need to build an
audience first
The Basics: Key Takeaways

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2 USING RETARGETING AT
EACH STAGE IN THE
FUNNEL

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Lead Nurturing:
A series of marketing activities
tailored to leads that familiarizes
them with your brand, builds trust,
and opens the door for
conversations with sales.

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Retargeting is
lead nurturing on
non-branded channels.

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Engage Visitors and Beyond
✓ ✓ ✓

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How: Use pixels to convert unknown
visitors into known subscribers and leads.
What: Light, introductory (top of the
funnel) offers and blog subscribe CTAs
Where: Facebook newsfeed, Twitter
stream
Convert Visitors into Leads

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How: Use lists and pixels to target leads.
You can determine who a lead is by who’s
viewed a Thank You Page, for example.
What: Meatier ebooks and webinars, case
studies, “MQL” offers such as demo or trial
Where: Facebook newsfeed, Display
Close Leads into Customers

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How: Use lists and pixels to target. You
can determine who a lead is by who’s
viewed customer-specific pages.
What: Customer education, upcoming
promotions, referral programs
Where: Facebook newsfeed, Twitter
**if your business has many customers and depends on
repeat customer purchases or upgrades this is a good
option
Delight Customers into Evangelists**

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1. Pixel targeting can turn visitors into leads
2. List and pixel targeting can turn leads into customers
3. Content is key – match content to the right segment and
lifecycle stage just as you would with any inbound
campaign
4. Different channels work best for different stages
Retargeting the Funnel: Key Takeaways

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3 TIPS & TRICKS TO
OPTIMIZE YOUR
RETARGETING

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Size Matters
Because of low match
rates, you’ll need at
least 10k visitors to your
website and/or 70k
active contacts in your
database.

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It’s Like Organic
Research SEO and
content performance.
Treat retargeting the
same way as email,
blogging, etc. when
choosing what to
promote and who to
promote it to.

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Optimize Landing
Pages for Ads
• Keep messaging
clear throughout
journey
• Clone existing ones
• OR use dynamic
content

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Use Suppressions
Use pixel and contact-
based lists to suppress
people who aren’t your
target audience to better
target new audiences
and not waste campaign
budget.

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Display
Be careful where you
use display – create a
“blacklist” of site types
you do not want your
ads appearing on.

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Display
Test creative, and take
into account how
images have performed
on other organic and
paid channels.

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Twitter
Use the right type of ad
for your goal…

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Twitter
Lead gen cards can
help you turn an
unknown visitor into a
blog subscriber so you
can engage them with
content via email.

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Twitter
Website clicks or
conversions are good
for conversions (but
remember, Twitter is a
“fast” medium so test
how this works for you.

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Twitter
Tweet engagements
and videos will help
increase brand
awareness and also
move the bottom of the
funnel.

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Twitter
Don’t use hashtags.
Each link you add
reduces the click-
through rate on the
website URL you are
trying to drive traffic
towards.

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Facebook
Take advantage of all
the creative options
such CTA button and
News Feed Link
Description.

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Facebook
If conversions is your
goal, consider limiting
ads to just the
newsfeed.

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Facebook
Make sure the title
explains the content.
Saying what you’re
offering outright
increases clicks.

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1. Treat retargeting just like organic content strategy
2. Make sure every touch point tells the same story: the
ad’s positioning should be reflected on the page you
are sending them to, and should fit into the piece of
content you are promoting
3. Take the time to learn the nuances of using each paid
platform and third-party service
Tips & Tricks: Takeaways

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4 Hacks to Get More Out of
Your Campaign

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1.
Promote 3rd party content
with CTAs to your site

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So Much 3rd Party Content, So Little CTA

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But Wait… We Can Place CTAs… Create snip.ly
via Chrome
extension
directly from
webpage you
want to link to.
Customize
copy, tracking
URL, colors
Create unique
snip.ly URL

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Now We Can Share 3rd Party Articles…

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And Slideshares…

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And link back to our own landing pages!

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• Cost Per Click (CPC) was 16% above benchmark
• Average CTA click rate was 302% higher than blog
• Total form conversions were negligible
• Takeaway: Use 3rd party content promotion to target
audience in the consideration and evaluation stage,
do not use conversions as primary goal
The Results.

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2.
Already a lead?
Skip the landing page.

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You can only ask for so much.
When moving people down the
funnel with retargeting, we
often send existing leads to
gated landing pages where
they have to fill out another
form (UGH).

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But compelling offers are not helping goals of
turning known leads into MQLs…

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We took out the middle step and took them
right to the thank you page:

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Take out unnecessary middle step – you
already have their info.

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• Cost Per Click (CPC) stayed on par with regular
retargeting campaigns for demos or trials
• Cost per conversion for MQLs decreased by 20-60%
• Submission rate of middle-of-the-funnel follow-up
offers increased on Thank You Pages
• Broadened range of content we could promote which
increased overall engagement of leads
The Results.

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Thanks 
Inbound.org/niti