Retargeting banner ads for site visitors: +278% demo request rate
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsPostano started retargeting its website visitors with Google Display Network banners, and its demo request conversion rate rose 278% in the first 60 days.
Clickthrough conversions rose 364%. Postano ran the campaign with its vendor Anvil Media and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study; this is a before-and-after comparison, not a split test.
- +278% conversion rate, measured by demo requests, in the first 60 days.
- +364% clickthrough conversions.
- Before/after only: there was no holdout group, so other changes in the period may have contributed.
- Postano could not track these visitors well before the campaign, which makes the baseline less reliable.
Control
No retargeting: visitors who left Postano's site were not shown follow-up ads.
Variant
Every site visitor was cookied and shown Postano banner ads on Google Display Network sites for 30 days, later extended to 60. The ads were aimed at marketing leaders in verticals such as sports, fashion, events and ad agencies.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Postano has a long sales process, and buyers compare many competitors. Ads keep the brand in view while they shop around.
- People who already visited the site have shown interest, so a second touch is cheaper than finding new prospects.
- The team dropped display sites that didn't drive return visits and capped how often people saw the ads, which kept spend focused.
Caveats: This is a before/after comparison over the first 60 days with no control group, and the baseline tracking was weak. The campaign ran with a vendor and dates from 2014.
Who ran it
Postano ran this test and published the results (MarketingSherpa case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Postano →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we retarget recent site visitors with banners tailored to their industry, then more will come back and request a demo because we stay in view during a long evaluation.
- Primary metric
- Demo requests from retargeted visitors (measured against a holdout group)
- Guardrails
- Cost per demo request
- Ad frequency per user
- Demo-to-opportunity rate
- Who should test it
- B2B SaaS companies with long sales cycles, steady site traffic and many competitors. It is weaker for low-traffic sites, where audiences are too small to serve.
Questions
Does retargeting work for B2B SaaS?
It often helps when sales cycles are long and buyers compare vendors.
Postano saw demo requests rise sharply in its first 60 days, though without a control group.
How long should a retargeting window be?
Match it to your sales cycle. Postano started with 30 days and extended to 60 as the program matured.
How do you measure retargeting lift properly?
Hold back a random share of visitors who never see the ads.
Comparing them with the exposed group shows the true lift.