B2B Retargeting: Complete Guide for Marketers

by Isabel Greenfield

7 Min Read

Ready, set, buy! Most likely, that’s not how a customer is making purchase decisions, especially when buying products or services for their business. B2B customers may need more time to make a purchase. Retargeting for B2B businesses allows advertisers to keep their product or service top of mind and encourage viewers to purchase.

What Is B2B Retargeting?

B2B retargeting is the tactic of targeting those who have already been exposed to a business, either by seeing a previous ad or visiting the brand’s website, to guide them down the sales funnel.

It generally takes multiple exposures before a viewer chooses to purchase. Plus, B2B purchases are often even more involved as purchasing can require company sign-off or budget approvals. Retargeting ensures that the advertiser’s product or service isn’t forgotten about during the decision-making process and can provide valuable information to prospects to help them convert.

Learn more about B2B Programmatic Advertising

Retargeting vs. Remarketing

What is the difference between remarketing and retargeting? Remarketing and retargeting are often used interchangeably in digital marketing, but there’s a subtle difference.

Remarketing primarily involves re-engaging past customers through email campaigns to encourage repeat purchases or remind them of abandoned carts. Retargeting, on the other hand, focuses on serving ads to users who have visited a website or interacted with digital content but did not make a purchase, aiming to bring them back to the site.

How Does B2B Retargeting Work?

B2B retargeting, also known as retargeting, works by tracking website visitors through cookies and then serving them ads on other platforms or websites they visit after leaving the initial site. Here’s a streamlined overview of the steps involved:

Track and Segment Visitors: Use tracking tools to identify website visitors and segment them based on behavior, such as page visits or cart abandonment.
Create Retargeting Lists: Develop lists for different user segments to target with specific ad campaigns.
Launch Targeted Ads: Design and deploy ads tailored to each segment’s interests, using platforms where the audience is active, like social media, search engines, and OTT platforms.
Monitor and Optimize: Continuously track campaign performance to optimize ads for better engagement and conversion rates.
Personalize and Test: Use personalized content based on user interaction for ads and perform A/B testing to find the most effective strategies.

This approach keeps your brand in front of potential B2B clients, nurturing leads and encouraging conversions through targeted and personalized reminders.

Benefits of B2B Retargeting

Business decision-makers are busy and business purchases can often need a host of approvals. For B2B companies, there are many retargeting benefits, including:

Increased Brand Awareness: Keeps your brand visible to potential clients after their initial visit, reinforcing brand recognition and recall.
Higher Conversion Rates: By targeting users who have already shown interest, retargeting campaigns often see higher conversion rates compared to other advertising methods.
Improved ROI: Focused targeting and personalized ads result in more efficient use of the advertising budget, leading to a better return on investment.
Lead Nurturing: Supports the lead nurturing process by engaging potential customers at different stages of the sales funnel with relevant content.
Customer Retention: Helps in re-engaging past customers, encouraging repeat purchases and loyalty through timely and relevant offers.
Precise Targeting: Allows for detailed segmentation based on user behavior, ensuring ads are only shown to the most relevant audiences.
Data Insights: Provides valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping to refine marketing strategies and product offerings.

Types of B2B Retargeting Ads

There are two main types of retargeting in B2B performance marketing: list-based retargeting and pixel-based retargeting.

Pixel-Based Retargeting

To run pixel-based retargeting, a business must first place a pixel on its website. This pixel begins to create a targeting pool by tracking who visits the brand’s website and often additional marketing metrics, such as how long they were on the website and how many pages the user visited.

From there, the brand can use this list of potential customers to retarget. They can reach those same prospects at another time to remind them of their products or services and hopefully encourage them to purchase.

A sophisticated platform can get even more granular, allowing businesses to target based on how long a viewer was on the site or how many pages they visited.

A B2B brand may decide they only want to spend their limited budget retargeting those who spent more than a certain amount of time on their site, serving impressions to those who are highly engaged and more likely to purchase.

List-Based Retargeting

List-based retargeting is retargeting done from a specific list of users, typically based on email. This list is collected over time by the business and then uploaded to their advertising platform of choice. An example of this list may be users who attended the business’s most recent webinar or those who abandoned their cart without finishing a purchase. This tactic is much less common than pixel-based targeting.

And while there are many benefits of retargeting on Connected TV platforms, it is not just limited to the TV screen. Retargeting can run across screens and is available on many platforms including:

Email
Facebook
Search Ads

B2B Retargeting Best Practices

There are multiple strategies and retargeting best practices to make sure a business gets the best results possible.

Target Based on Actions

For pixel-based retargeting, advertisers can get strategic and specific. They can create target audiences based on those who spent a certain amount of time on-site or who viewed multiple web pages. This ensures the retargeting campaign is reaching people who are truly interested rather than those who visited the website and determined the service is not for them or maybe even clicked on accident.

Don’t Just Retarget New Customers

The benefits of retargeting can extend to previous customers as well. Advertisers can retarget past purchasers to remind them of their product or service, encourage repeat purchases and ultimately create loyal customers.

Personalize the Message

When retargeting, advertisers can speak more specifically to an audience they already know is interested. This can help focus ad messaging and creative to address a prospective client’s needs and makes it easier for them to decide to purchase.

Optimize Landing Pages for Conversion

Ensure that the landing pages linked from your retargeting ads are optimized for conversion, with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) and relevant content. This alignment between ad content and landing page experience is crucial for converting revisits into actionable outcomes.

Test and Refresh

Many studies have shown that people can tire of ads and stop paying attention when they have seen the same creative multiple times. Advertisers should look to refresh their creative to ensure this key audience pays attention. This is also a great time to test messaging strategies and audiences to see what drives the biggest ROAS.

B2B Retargeting With Performance TV

While there are many channels to run retargeting campaigns on, MNTN Performance TV should be part of the ad mix for multiple reasons:

Connected TV Retargeting Works Better Than Depending on Display: In a study of Performance TV advertisers, advertiser campaigns that included Connected TV ads performed better than those who only used display:
- 35% more conversions
- 54% lower cost per acquisition
- 123% more Verified Visits

Not only that, thanks to Performance TV advertisers were able to convert faster with 30% fewer impressions needed to drive a viewer to purchase.

Get specific: Performance TV allows advertisers to drill down into pixel data and target users based on time spent on site, page visits, and more. While this feature is not available on all retargeting channels, it is included for Performance TV users with no extra fees.
Living Room Quality: Retargeting ads will be shown on the same high-quality inventory that other Performance TV campaigns run on. Ads are shown on non-skippable CTV inventory within premium networks and only on the TV screen, not mobile or tablets.

Learn more about B2B Demand Generation

B2B Retargeting: Final Thoughts

The benefits of retargeting for B2B businesses make it an essential part of advertisers’ campaigns. The repeat messaging reminds decision-makers of the product or service and drives additional purchases that might not occur without the nudge. B2B businesses should look to optimize their retargeting strategies and include the next generation in TV advertising for more efficient conversions.