How many times have you added a consumer product to your virtual cart only to get distracted, hesitate, or simply exit out of the window? And how many times have you seen an ad for the very same product on your Instagram or Facebook feed less than three hours later?

That is social retargeting, and it is one of the most powerful tools in marketers' arsenals today— and, no, not only for e-commerce marketers.

One challenge facing businesses comes from consumers who quit the race 10 feet from the finish line: They click on an engaging post on social media or a call to action in your email newsletter, add items to their cart, and fill out some of the shipping and billing information, but they do not make the purchase. The same thing can happen with potential clients about to fill out your contact form.

Distraction, indecision, or a change of heart are all reasons someone might abandon a considered purchase or not send a contact form, and it's a marketer's job to use incentives to create a paying customer.

Social Media Retargeting for Selling Services

Retargeting is especially efficient at improving brand awareness and recognition during the buying process—and not just for buying products.

If a CMO at a company wants a new website, plans to hire an agency to do an SEO audit, or needs to outsource content for the company site, the CMO is going to do a lot of research to make sure the selected vendor will return the most impact on the company's investment. And 99% of that research will be conducted online.

If CMOs come across your services and begin to weigh you against your competitors, you can use social retargeting to remind those potential clients about your brand as they go about their daily lives. You might have had an introductory call during the workday, but retargeting will nudge them in your direction when they're on their off time, at home, scrolling social media.

Retargeting and the Mere-Exposure Effect

Retargeting ads will improve conversions, no doubt about it. But, why do retargeting ads work?

The mere-exposure effect is one of the more persuasive psychological phenomena used in marketing. The mere-exposure effect states that the more you see something, the more likely you are to trust or prefer it.

It even works with interpersonal relationships. Imagine walking to work every day and seeing the same person cross your path for months. One day you're running late and decide to take a different route. You will subconsciously assign more trust to the person you're familiar with than the people you meet on the new route.

Retargeting ads work on this premise: The more you see a brand or business, the more likely you are to trust it, especially if its message is positive.

Embracing the Mere-Exposure Effect for Agencies

When you continue to show potential clients case study ads on various social platforms, the case study success story will appear as an image or video on the page as they browse their social media feed. They will begin to associate your brand with impressive results. Less-savvy users might even confuse it for endorsement.

One last, unobvious benefit of using social retargeting to generate leads for your agency is that it builds thought leadership with future customers. As buyers do research on "content marketing," for example, retargeting them with your expertly written guides and industry research will build trust in a new way. They will come to associate your brand not only with your service offerings but also with your industry leadership.

The Monetary Benefits of Retargeting for Agencies

Retargeting provides monetary benefits that will reduce the costs of digital ads while raising their effectiveness.

Improve clickthrough rates

Using retargeting, you can target a user who has already shown interest in your product or service instead of targeting a mass audience. Those interested users will reduce your ad costs, improve clickthrough rates (CTR), and raise your overall conversion rates.

Reclaim leads

Retargeting also gives you the ability to reclaim users who may have abandoned their purchase or left during the conversion process. You can target that user with the specific items they are interested in, instead of random products.

How to Optimize Landing Pages for Social Media Retargeting

Collect contact information

If you're an agency, you're likely offering services rather than products. Landing pages for you might be client case studies, exclusive research related to your industry, or expert thought leadership blog posts.

The main thing you need to track for initial visits are pixels or email addresses. Both are valuable, although pixels are automatic. Make sure you drop a retargeting pixel, and that it's segmented.

For example, at Fractl we have a case study specific to a financial services client. From that, we could assume traffic to that page includes people interested in content marketing success for finance-related topics. We could track their pixels and then segment them into finance-based campaigns that showcase our experience in the financial vertical, whether that's through blog posts, research we've done, or further case studies.

Optimize the post-click landing page

You can have massive contact lists, fine-tuned segmentation, and creative content, but if you don't have a landing page that's optimized to drive leads through the sales funnel... then all of that is for naught.

Such pages shouldn't just be other blog post pages on your site; they should each be optimized for the intent of your audience. They should be as sticky as possible and they should include a compelling call to action (CTA) that aligns with your agency's goals.