Remarketing is a lot like making up for a bad first impression. While at first two people may not hit it off, as time goes on and they learn more about one another, they will start gaining each other’s trust. Remarketing is similar but instead focuses on reintroducing a business and potential customer in the digital space. It begins by placing a cookie (small text file) to track the user’s digital journey. Once that activity is tracked through a third-party platform, you can then use it to your advantage to deliver a personalized advertisement and reel them back in. If you’re looking to target users who have shown previous interest in your products or services, remarketing is the perfect match.
How to Create a Successful Remarketing Campaign
Not all remarketing campaigns are successful. It’s important you understand the proper steps to plan a remarketing campaign ahead of time to ensure that when you begin activating remarketing messaging, it’s done correctly. See below for a rundown of best practices when remarketing:
1. Decide on a target audience
Who do you want to aim these remarketing advertisements towards? You can focus on website visitors, mobile app users, customer emails, or even YouTube users. Perhaps you feel you’ll have the best luck with those who started to fill out an application but stopped mid-way through, or maybe you want to remarket to people who visited your site but did not take any conversion-related action whatsoever. Whatever your decision is, it’s important to set this end-user audience as a base so that your campaigns remain personalized to their needs.
2. Learn the different types of remarketing
Many factors (industry, budget, etc.) influence your decision on choosing the best remarketing campaign for your company. However, in order to get anywhere with remarketing, you must first learn the different kinds of remarketing available to you. Below is a list of each type, and how they differ from one another:
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Email: If you’re already pursuing email marketing, this form of remarketing may be familiar to you. For email remarketing, you’ll need a list of customers’ email addresses along with individual email templates customized based on the consumer. These emails consist of personalized messages based off their relationship to your website. For past customers, send them a quick note thanking them for being loyal along with a set of recommended products or services you feel they may also enjoy. For potential customers that left your website before they took key actions (e.g. completing a form, checking out), remind them politely about their previous interest and if you can, provide them with an incentive to make your products or services even more appealing.
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List search ads: These types of ads are displayed on search engines, like Google, rather than websites. This allows you to track those who have visited your website in the past and retarget your advertisements to them as they search specific terms online. You can even personalize ads based on whether the user is a first-time visitor or a loyal customer. For example, if this user subscribed to your newsletter, you can personalize the search ad to say under your website “thanks for subscribing to our newsletter”. Remarketing through search engines enables you to have better tailored campaigns towards users who are already aware of your company.
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Social media: For those who already use social media marketing as part of your overall marketing mix, it may make sense to remarket through these platforms. Social media remarketing can be done through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest or YouTube. Once a user is recognized as a past-visitor to your website, they will get remarketed with relevant ads the next time they use that specific platform. In order to choose the best social media platform for your business, it’s important to remember they are not all the same. For instance, Facebook remarketing segments based on Facebook contact lists, website visitors, and app users. Whereas LinkedIn segments based on visitors who accessed certain pages on your website. Before jumping into social media remarketing, make sure to do your research on which one makes the most sense for your business.
3. Utilize SEO in retargeted ads
Don’t lose sight of the importance of a solid SEO strategy, otherwise all of your hard work can go unnoticed. Research keywords that you want to target in your remarketed ads so that when customers read their headlines or descriptions, they are more drawn to click them. These keywords should be broad as the users seeing the ad already have familiarity with your website.
Always make sure to monitor your remarketing campaign to ensure everything you are doing for SEO is working and providing your ads with success. To do this, you are going to want to investigate a couple of different metrics. One of these being response rates, which indicates the number of people who have clicked on the remarketed ad. Another essential metric to track and reflect on is conversion completion rate, or the number of users who clicked on the ad that acted in some sort of way to indicate a conversion.
Remarketing Ads to Past Visitors
Remarketing keeps customers considering your products or services, even as they search for competitive options. The most common use of remarketing is in the ecommerce space. When someone visits your website, adds items to their cart, but exits without checking out, most likely they will start comparing your products to similar ones from other companies or aren’t entirely ready to complete the process. Remarketing tracks this path and reminds the user of their previous interest while they might have moved on to other things. During this time, your ad will display, disrupting their buying process and encouraging them to reconsider your products. It also can serve as a reminder if they accidentally clicked off the page before purchasing.
To begin remarketing, you will need to add a specific JavaScript code to your website. This is invisible to viewers and shouldn’t affect the performance or speed of your site at all. The code enables an anonymous browser cookie to drop on the device of each user that visits your website. This cookie then tracks the customer’s activity so that you can send a timely retargeted ad to them.
Consider remarketing for your next digital campaign
Digital remarketing is a great way to encourage that second date with a customer and reel them in one last time. It’s such a successful marketing tactic because it reminds users of the business’s products while including personalized messages. Not to mention users who are remarketed to are 70% more likely to convert. (Source: Blue Corona). For help beginning your remarketing journey, contact us to get started on the right track.