Retargeting Campaigns: Best Practices for Leads in 2025

Introduction

If you are running B2B sales in 2025 and you are not taking retargeting seriously, you are leaving deals on the table.

Most visitors do not convert the first time they hit your site. In fact, recent analyses show that roughly 98% of visitors bounce without taking a conversion action, and retargeted visitors are around 70% more likely to eventually convert, driving 30-50% more total conversions on average. At the same time, B2B buying journeys now stretch to about 211 days and include 76 touches across an average of nearly seven stakeholders.

That is a long time to hope prospects remember you from a single cold email.

Retargeting campaigns are how you stay in the room between SDR calls, outbound emails, and demo invites. Done right, they keep your brand in front of the buying committee, educate them with the right content at the right time, and nudge them toward real conversations with sales.

In this guide we will break down:

• The state of B2B retargeting in 2025 and why it still works
• How to design retargeting around your actual sales funnel
• Channel and creative best practices (with real benchmarks)
• Advanced strategies like multi-channel and ABM retargeting
• How to tie retargeting directly into SDR workflows

Let us dig in.

The State of B2B Retargeting in 2025

Retargeting is mainstream, not a side project

Retargeting is not an experimental tactic anymore. Recent studies show:

• About 77% of marketers now include retargeting in their strategy.
• Around 70% of marketers set specific budget aside for retargeting.
• Roughly 48% plan to increase retargeting spend year over year.
• More than half of B2B marketers use retargeting as a core lead nurturing tool, with many reporting 3-7x ROAS from these campaigns.

On the performance side, retargeting continues to punch way above its weight:

• Retargeted display ads often see click-through rates around 0.7% compared with around 0.05-0.07% for standard display, roughly a 10x improvement.
• Website visitors who are retargeted are about 70% more likely to convert than those who are not.
• For B2B specifically, retargeting can shorten nurturing time by 15-30% and increase form submissions by 30% or more.

If you are in B2B demand gen, that is exactly the kind of leverage you want on already-expensive traffic from Google Ads, SEO, and outbound.

Why retargeting matters more with long B2B journeys

Dreamdata’s 2025 LinkedIn Benchmarks report that the average B2B buying cycle now takes roughly 211 days, involves 76 touches, and includes about 6.8 stakeholders. Buyers bounce between channels: search, social, email, events, and direct SDR conversations.

The job of retargeting in that environment is not just to drag people back to a landing page. It is to:

• Keep your brand and core narrative front and center over months
• Educate different stakeholders at different depths
• Reinforce what your SDRs and AEs are saying in calls and emails
• Turn passive anonymous interest into known leads and booked meetings

In other words, retargeting is part of the sales development motion, not just a marketing shiny object.

The channel mix in 2025

Across industries, social and display remain the dominant retargeting channels:

• Around 77% of companies use Facebook or Instagram as primary retargeting channels.
• About 69% use Google Ads for retargeting.
• Roughly 55% use email as a major retargeting channel.
• About 35% use LinkedIn Ads specifically for retargeting.

For B2B, LinkedIn is the heavyweight. Several studies show it now captures roughly 39% of B2B ad budgets and is the only major paid channel delivering consistently positive ROAS in many analyses. LinkedIn Ads also generate far higher conversion rates for B2B campaigns than other social platforms and are widely rated as the top social channel for B2B lead generation.

Meanwhile, cross-channel retargeting is proving its value:

• Multi-channel retargeting converts about 24% better than single-channel campaigns.
• Cross-platform retargeting can reduce cost per acquisition by roughly 21%.
• Pairing LinkedIn with display ads can increase clicks by around 50% and cut CPC by about a third in some B2B tests.

Bottom line: retargeting works best when you think of it as an orchestration layer riding on top of everything else you are doing.

Laying the Foundation: Data, Segmentation, and Tracking

Before you crank up budgets, you need solid data plumbing. Sloppy tracking is the fastest way to burn money on retargeting.

Step 1: Get your tracking house in order

At a minimum:

• Install platform tags everywhere: LinkedIn Insight Tag, Google Ads tag, Meta pixel, and any other networks you plan to use.
• Make sure form submissions, demo bookings, and key content downloads are firing as conversion events.
• Hook your marketing automation and CRM into those platforms so you can build list-based audiences, not just cookie-based website pools.

With privacy changes and third-party cookies on the way out, first-party events and CRM data will become your most reliable way to build and maintain retargeting audiences.

Step 2: Segment by intent and funnel stage

Most B2B retargeting fails because everyone is thrown into one big bucket of `site visitors`. That is lazy and expensive.

Instead, segment like a sales leader would. Some practical segments:

• Cold traffic but some engagement
• Example: visited 1-2 blog posts, bounced in under 30 seconds.
• Goal: educate and build problem awareness; do not push a hard demo yet.

• High-intent visitors
• Example: viewed pricing, features, or integration pages; or spent more than 3-4 minutes on site.
• Goal: present social proof, ROI narratives, and direct meeting CTAs.

• Content leads (MQLs)
• Example: downloaded an ebook, attended a webinar, or subscribed to a newsletter.
• Goal: move from education to evaluation; think product tours, comparison guides, and customer stories.

• Demo form starters who did not submit
• Example: hit the demo page and interacted with the form but did not complete it.
• Goal: address friction, offer lower-commitment options (15-minute discovery, recorded demo, or chat with SDR).

• Demo no-shows
• Example: registered or booked but did not attend.
• Goal: show them what they missed, plus an easy reschedule CTA.

• Open opportunities
• Example: deals in pipeline with no activity in 14-30 days.
• Goal: display testimonials, vertical-specific case studies, and proof that nudges them back into active conversation.

• Closed-lost but qualified
• Example: lost due to timing or budget, but ICP was a fit.
• Goal: stay top of mind with thought leadership and show new features, integrations, or pricing when the time is right.

The more your segments mirror how sales thinks about the funnel, the easier it is to design messaging that SDRs can reinforce and AEs can reference on calls.

Step 3: Define windows and frequency upfront

Retargeting works best when it is timely but not creepy. Data from aggregated studies suggests:

• Optimal retargeting windows are often in the 7-30 day range after the initial visit or interaction, depending on your sales cycle.
• Ideal frequency caps fall around 5-12 impressions per user per week.
• Overexposure above 15 impressions per week can increase ad fatigue by roughly 40% and harm performance.

Those are starting points, not commandments. But if you are running campaigns with no caps and 90‑day lookbacks, you are asking for complaints.

Designing High-Performing Retargeting Campaigns for Leads

Once the infrastructure is there, it is time to design campaigns that align with how B2B buyers actually move.

Start with objectives that match sales goals

For B2B sales development, retargeting objectives usually roll up into three buckets:

1. Engage and educate
• Objective: page views, video views, or engagement.
• Use cases: top-of-funnel visitors, content readers, cold outbound traffic that clicked but did not convert.

1. Convert to leads or meetings
• Objective: lead generation (native forms) or website conversions.
• Use cases: pricing-page visitors, repeat visitors, content leads who have shown buying intent.

1. Accelerate pipeline
• Objective: custom conversions like high-intent page visits or meeting booked, measured in your CRM as pipeline influenced.
• Use cases: open opps, late-stage deals, expansion opportunities.

Tie each retargeting ad group or campaign to one of these buckets so you can articulate where it sits in the sales funnel.

Build creative that behaves like a nurture sequence

Think about retargeting creative the way you think about a cold email sequence. You would not send the exact same email ten times; do not do that with ads either.

A simple three-step sequence per segment might look like this:

1. Ad 1: Problem and relevance
• Hook around the pain your ICP actually feels.
• Short copy that makes them think 'this is about us'.
• Use for new visitors or early-stage content leads.

1. Ad 2: Proof and outcomes
• Customer quote, case study, or quick metric (for example, '42% lower implementation time for mid-market finance teams').
• Strong visuals: product in action, dashboard, or customer photo.
• Ideal for mid-funnel leads and open opportunities.

1. Ad 3: Direct CTA
• Clear, low-friction ask: 'Book a 15-minute discovery call', 'See the 7-minute product tour', or 'Compare us to your current solution'.
• Best for high-intent visitors, demo no-shows, and accounts already talking to sales.

Research shows that dynamic creatives and personalization are worth the effort: using dynamic elements can increase CTR by around 27%, and personalizing messages has been associated with roughly 32% higher conversion rates.

Use the right offers for each stage

Here are practical offers that work well in B2B retargeting:

• For early-stage visitors and content leads
• Deep-dive blog posts or technical guides
• Industry benchmarks
• On-demand webinars
• Interactive calculators or assessments

• For mid-funnel evaluators
• Vertical-specific case studies
• Product tour or sandbox access
• Competitive comparison sheets
• ROI frameworks

• For late-stage and open opps
• Implementation plans
• Pricing scenario breakdowns
• Live workshops with your experts
• Free migration or pilot offers

Think of it from the SDR perspective: which asset would help them justify the next call or meeting when they follow up? That is likely a good retargeting asset too.

Channel-by-channel tips for B2B

LinkedIn

• Use tight audience definitions by job title, function, seniority, company size, and industry.
• For retargeting, experiment with native Lead Gen Forms and website conversions; Lead Gen Forms often see 10-15% completion rates when well aligned with the offer.
• LinkedIn retargeting campaigns have been shown to improve conversion rates by roughly 30-40% compared with cold LinkedIn traffic; lean into that by focusing them on higher-intent segments.

Google Display and YouTube

• Display retargeting is cost-effective for awareness and soft education, especially in mid-market where decision makers spend time on industry sites.
• YouTube remarketing lets you reach people who have watched a percentage of your videos; video-retargeted users are significantly more likely to convert than those who only see static images.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram)

• Often cheaper CPMs than LinkedIn, useful for influencing technical users or mid-level champions who might not live on LinkedIn.
• Use it primarily for education, proof, and staying top of mind, while letting LinkedIn own the harder conversion goals.

Email and SDR touches

• Do not forget that retargeting also includes triggered outreach from SDRs.
• For example, when someone clicks a retargeting ad for a case study, trigger a task for an SDR to send a short, value-first email referencing that topic and suggesting a quick call.

Advanced B2B Retargeting: AI, Omnichannel, and ABM

Lean into AI for segmentation and creative without losing the human angle

AI is getting better at clustering behavior and generating creative variations. Many teams now feed web, email, and CRM data into AI-driven platforms that:

• Automatically create micro-segments based on engagement patterns
• Rotate creative variations to prevent fatigue
• Predict which accounts are most likely to respond to a meeting offer

That said, the best-performing campaigns still combine AI with human insight. Use AI to generate drafts of ad copy, headlines, and image options, then have marketers and SDRs refine them based on real objections they hear every day.

Make multi-channel your default

Given how scattered buyer attention is, betting on a single retargeting channel is risky.

We have already seen that multi-channel retargeting campaigns typically convert about 24% better than single-channel and lower CPAs by over 20%. In practice, that might look like:

• LinkedIn: persona- and account-specific messaging that lines up with SDR outreach.
• Google Display: broad coverage for people who researched competitors or category terms.
• YouTube: quick explainer snippets that reinforce your core narrative.
• Email: triggered sequences for people who download assets or click certain ads.

Your goal is not to bombard prospects everywhere, but to create the sense that wherever they go, the same clear story about their problem and your solution is waiting for them.

Layer retargeting into your ABM program

If you are running account-based marketing, retargeting is non-negotiable.

A simple ABM retargeting play might look like this:

1. Build a target account list (TAL) of 200-1,000 ideal accounts.
2. Run cold outbound through SDRs plus targeted awareness ads on LinkedIn.
3. Retarget everyone from those accounts who visits your site, interacts with content, or fills out forms with more specific, role-based messaging.
4. Create account-level dashboards so AEs can see which contacts have been engaging with which retargeting assets.
5. Time personalized outbound (calls, emails, LinkedIn InMail) around spikes in retargeting engagement.

This is where having an outsourced SDR partner like SalesHive can be powerful: their team can handle the outbound and follow-up while your internal team runs the paid media, all pointed at the same account list.

Measurement, Benchmarks, and Optimization

Know your core metrics

For B2B retargeting, you should at least track:

• Impressions and reach, how many of your known and target contacts are actually seeing your message.
• Click-through rate (CTR), how compelling your creative is; retargeting often averages around 0.7-1.2% CTR across many verticals.
• Cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM), platform efficiency.
• Conversion rate (CVR), leads, demo requests, or other hard actions.
• Cost per lead (CPL) or cost per meeting (CPMtg), what you pay to get something sales can work.
• Pipeline and revenue influenced, the real scoreboard.

Remember that retargeting often shines in ROAS and CPA rather than sheer volume. Some analyses show retargeting campaigns delivering 6-15x ROAS, with CPAs 20-40% lower than non-retargeting campaigns.

Use realistic benchmarks (then build your own)

Because every category and offer is different, treat public benchmarks as guardrails:

• Retargeting CTR: ~0.7% on average; higher in strongly targeted B2B plays.
• LinkedIn Ads overall:
• Sponsored content CTR often in the 0.45-0.65% range.
• Average conversion rate across formats around 6.1%; Lead Gen Forms 10-15% completion.
• Google Ads for B2B: typical conversion rates around 3% across industries.

If your retargeting CTR is lower than your cold campaigns, or your retargeted leads are not converting to opportunities at materially higher rates, something is off in your segmentation, messaging, or offer.

A simple optimization loop

Run this rhythm monthly or quarterly:

1. Review performance by segment, not just channel
• Compare metrics for pricing-page visitors vs blog readers vs demo no-shows.
• Double down on segments and messages that influence pipeline most.

1. Refresh creative before fatigue sets in
• Data suggests CTR on retargeting can drop by about 50% after five months if you run the same ads.
• In practice, rotating every 4-8 weeks is safer for B2B.

1. Test one variable at a time
• Offers: ebook vs on-demand demo vs live workshop.
• Formats: static image vs carousel vs video.
• Audiences: broader vs narrow titles; different funnel stages.

1. Feed learnings back into SDR scripts and email
• If a particular headline or pain point drives higher CTR, give it to your SDRs to test in calls and prospecting emails.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

If branding and demand gen own retargeting and sales only sees leads appear in Salesforce, you are missing half the value.

Here is how to wire retargeting directly into sales development.

Use retargeting signals for prioritization

Not all MQLs are created equal. Leads who:

• Visited the pricing page twice in a week
• Watched 50% of your explainer video
• Clicked a case study retargeting ad and then checked your integrations page

should be higher on an SDR’s call list than someone who grabbed a top-of-funnel ebook eight months ago.

Push key retargeting signals to the CRM and scoring models so SDRs can see:

• Which campaigns the contact is in
• Last retargeting engagement date
• Last asset viewed or offer clicked

Then have clear rules like: if a lead from a target account clicks any retargeting ad with a meeting CTA, an SDR reaches out within one business day.

Give SDRs visibility into the creative

Sales cannot reinforce what they have never seen.

Share your retargeting creatives in internal enablement docs or Slack channels so SDRs and AEs know:

• What promises the ads are making
• What pain points and outcomes are being highlighted
• Which logos and case studies are being showcased

That way, when a prospect says 'I saw your ad about reducing onboarding time by 40%', your rep is not blindsided.

Build joint plays instead of isolated campaigns

Instead of marketing running retargeting and sales running outbound separately, design integrated plays like:

• Cold outbound + awareness retargeting
• SDRs hit a list of target accounts with cold calls and emails.
• Anyone who clicks through on outbound or visits the site from those accounts enters a tailored retargeting sequence.
• SDRs reference specific ads or content pieces when they follow up.

• Event or webinar follow-up
• After a live event or webinar, all attendees go into a retargeting journey with a recording, related assets, and next-step offers.
• SDRs get prioritized call lists for attendees who watch a high percentage of the recording or engage with follow-up ads.

• Stalled opportunity revival
• Deals with no movement for 30+ days go into a retargeting pocket that highlights new features, customer results, or limited-time incentives.
• SDRs and AEs get nudges to re-open the conversation when those contacts re-engage with ads.

This is where agencies like SalesHive excel: their SDRs, cold callers, and outbound strategists already run coordinated multi-touch plays, and retargeting just becomes another channel woven into that cadence.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Retargeting in 2025 is not about chasing people around the internet with the same banner for months. It is about:

• Using first-party data and CRM records to build precise, stage-aware audiences
• Delivering creative that behaves like a nurture sequence, not a one-note jingle
• Orchestrating LinkedIn, display, YouTube, email, and SDR touches so they tell one coherent story
• Measuring success by pipeline and meetings, not just clicks and cheap leads

If you want to tighten up your retargeting motion, here is a straightforward next-step checklist:

1. Audit your current retargeting audiences and split them into at least three real funnel stages.
2. Implement basic frequency caps and 7-30 day lookback windows on every campaign.
3. Build at least one three-step creative sequence for a high-value segment like pricing-page visitors or demo no-shows.
4. Connect retargeting engagement data into your CRM so SDRs can prioritize and personalize follow-up.
5. Run a 90-day experiment where you judge retargeting success primarily on opportunities created and meetings booked, not just CPL.

If you do not have the in-house bandwidth to manage all of that while still making enough dials and sending enough quality emails, consider pairing with an SDR partner like SalesHive. Their outbound engine, combined with disciplined retargeting, gives your prospects the consistent, multi-touch journey they actually need to feel comfortable booking a meeting.

Retargeting is no longer optional in B2B. The only real question is whether you use it as a noisy afterthought, or as a disciplined, revenue-driving extension of your sales team.