How can you effectively use retargeting in your event marketing campaign?

1 Define your retargeting goals

Before you start retargeting, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to increase awareness, generate leads, boost conversions, or encourage referrals? Depending on your goals, you will need to choose different retargeting platforms, audiences, creatives, and metrics. For example, if your goal is to generate leads, you might want to use Facebook Lead Ads to capture contact information from interested prospects. If your goal is to boost conversions, you might want to use Google Display Network to show dynamic ads with ticket prices and discounts.

2 Segment your retargeting audience

Not all prospects are at the same stage of the event buying journey. Some might have only visited your website once, while others might have added a ticket to their cart but abandoned it. Therefore, you need to segment your retargeting audience based on their level of interest, engagement, and intent. This way, you can tailor your ads to match their needs and preferences, and avoid wasting your budget on irrelevant or repetitive messages. For example, you can segment your audience by website behavior, email activity, social media interaction, or ticket type.

3 Craft your retargeting message

Once you have defined your goals and segmented your audience, you need to craft your retargeting message. Your message should be relevant, compelling, and consistent across different platforms. You want to highlight the value proposition of your event, address the pain points and objections of your prospects, and create a sense of urgency and scarcity. You also want to include a clear and strong call to action that tells your prospects what to do next. For example, you can use phrases like "Register now and save 20%", "Don't miss this opportunity", or "Only 10 tickets left".

4 Test and optimize your retargeting campaign

Retargeting is not a set-and-forget strategy. You need to monitor and measure the performance of your campaign, and make adjustments as needed. You want to track metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per action, and return on ad spend. You also want to test different variables such as ad copy, design, placement, frequency, and duration. By testing and optimizing your campaign, you can improve your results, reduce your costs, and increase your return on investment.

5 Follow the best practices of retargeting

To make the most of your retargeting campaign, you should follow some best practices to ensure success and avoid common pitfalls. For example, use a pixel or a tag to track website visitors and their actions, and exclude converted customers from your retargeting audience. Additionally, you can use remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) to bid higher on keywords related to your event, as well as cross-device retargeting to reach prospects on multiple devices. Moreover, it's important to apply frequency capping to limit the number of times your ads are shown to the same prospect, and use burn pixels to stop showing ads to prospects who have completed a desired action. Ultimately, align your retargeting campaign with your overall event marketing strategy and objectives.