B2B Retargeting: How to Use Retargeting for Lead Generation

If you are running any kind of digital campaigns but are not retargeting, you probably should. What is retargeting and why is it important, you might ask?

Retargeting or remarketing is a tactic of reaching out to the prospects and accounts that are already familiar with your brand.

Need I explain why it’s successful?

The trick is simple — studies show that in sales, especially in the B2B space, the buying decision is already 80% made before the actual sale.

But in order to reach that certainty, the buyer needs nurturing — basically multiple points of contact, gradually warming them up to a decision.

Retargeting fulfills that function and allows you to return your prospect to the sales funnel at any stage.

The perks of remarketing include:

  • Sustaining brand awareness and generating demand
  • Nurturing leads
  • Recapturing lost leads

There are many creative ways you can use retargeting — let’s take a look at some of them!

How to retarget leads

Your retargeting efforts should always come at the right stage of the sales funnel. Otherwise you are risking wasting resources and losing leads.

So what you should do is create retargeting lists for every step of your sales funnel:

  • Lead generation
  • Lead nurturing
  • Proposal

That way, you can understand the particular pain points and awareness levels of your potential leads which in turn will serve them hyper-relevant and engaging messaging.

Lead generation retargeting

Create remarketing lists for prospects at the very beginning of your sales funnel. If you are reaching out to them via LinkedIn or any PPC ads, it’s very easy to run the same ads across multiple platforms.

For example, LinkedIn has a Matched Audience feature that matches your existing list with individuals on the platform.

The UMG team uses retargeting in combination with direct email and LinkedIn message marketing. Simply said, the same people who are receiving cold emails, will be seeing the ads on LinkedIn.

This means that you are only targeting those who might be interested in your offer, and also hitting them up 3 different times (out of the 6 average needed).

Speak to our Account Manager to find out more.

Lead nurturing retargeting

So you’ve got these prospects interested — they clicked on your ad, scrolled on your website, downloaded a case study.

Retargeting is a perfect way to recapture the warm leads who:

  • Prospects that visited a landing page (e.g., webinar, content download, or newsletter-focused) but exited.
  • Webinar signups that didn’t attend.
  • Webinar attendees that didn’t convert.
  • Prospects that downloaded content but didn’t convert.
  • Newsletter subscribers that aren’t yet customers.

Each of these touchpoints leaves you with a considerable amount of info, which you can use for retargeting.

For example, you can feed this data to LinkedIn Matched Audiences to get them back into the funnel with personalised ads.

Another great way is to send them personalised emails, promoting another webinar, showcasing another piece of content or inviting them for a chat.

A tip from the UMG: when retargeting with email, address the specific previous touchpoint. For example: “We noticed you downloaded the ABM Checklist — hope you found it valuable! Here’s some related info…” This will not only increase personalisation, but help establish a rapport with a potential prospect.

Proposal retargeting

At the final stage of the sales funnel, the prospect is usually ready to make the decision. They just need a little budging in the right direction.

Best way to do that is to hit them up with a personalised emails from the sales rep outlining the benefits, pricing and free perks that come with your offer.

The main point of this kind of retargeting is to obviously drive a lead to make a proposal inquiry or purchase.

Ads here in general would be a waste of resources — after a well-designed nurturing campaign the prospect will better respond to a custom direct proposal than an ad call-to-action.

Hit them with case studies, testimonials, and reports or white papers with original research. It may also be useful to complement this content with discounts and demos.

It’s still a good idea, even in this top-funnel stage, to avoid overly sales-y calls-to-action. Instead, opt for CTAs like, “Request a Demo” or “Contact Us” to ease them into motion.

Final thoughts

In a digital world driven by personalization, we can’t stress enough the benefits to be found in retargeting B2B audiences with useful, relevant messaging.

And despite the many moving parts, it’s not as complicated as it’s made out to be. All it needs is a bit of creativity and a tiny speckle of tech-savviness. If you are looking to take your remarketing to new heights, contact our team to find out how you can bring back those lost leads or execute a multiple touch-point campaign.