Now you can follow your audience without feeling like a stalker
Remarketing, a type of behavior marketing, is one of the latest trends in online advertising.
I personally experienced remarketing very recently when I needed to replace a pair of old shoes.
I went shopping on Amazon, saved five pairs I really liked, and told myself I would come back later to pick one.
Well, these shoes started following me on almost every website I visited.
They were everywhere! Amazon kept showing these pairs of shoes over the course of a few days, and in that time frame I was able to determine which ones I liked more.
Less than a week after shopping for shoes, I went to Amazon and bought the pair I wanted. The thing is, it would have taken at least two weeks, if not more, for me to purchase my shoes if I’d been left to my own devices.
The fact that Amazon kept showing me all the pairs I liked accelerated my purchase.
If you’re a business person, you may find yourself asking these questions:
How do I attract new customers?
How do I get them to keep coming back?
These are valid questions, but not exclusively about walk-ins at your store or office. Getting people to return to your
website is just as important as face-to-face visits. When people visit your website, your goal should be to convert them into customers. But there can be a huge gap between a visitor and a customer.
According to Monetate, in their “Ecommerce Quarterly” for Q3 2015, an average of 3% of site visitors convert to customers on their first visit. So what can we do about the other 97%?
Follow them, and they will follow back
This is the basic principle of remarketing. You may have noticed it yourself. You visit a website, leave it, and then you see their ads nearly everywhere on the internet. That’s remarketing in action: a simple way to reach users based on their past interactions with your website.
It’s a powerful marketing and advertising strategy that allows you to increase brand awareness and visibility with those who have shown an initial interest in your product or service.
With remarketing, your ads will generate more opportunities for closing a sale by becoming a little reminder that your product is still available to your website visitor.
Remarketing consists of using a remarketing tag across your website and/or mobile app. The remarketing tag is a special tracking code that you get from Google AdWords.
After you have tagged your website, it’s very important that you define your target audience and then create a remarketing list that conforms to your goals and the people you want to reach.
Finally, you can build a campaign with a specific message to show people on your “list.” While they search on Google or browse through one of the millions of websites on the Display Network, your ad will show on their screen.
Take a look at this infographic by Google to see how remarketing works.
Now, the big question is: Why should you consider remarketing for your business?
Whether you’re looking for better conversion rates, an increase in sales activity, to raise registrations or just to promote awareness of your brand, remarketing could be a strategic element of your advertising campaign. It is an efficient investment for all types of advertisers. Remarketing allows you to:
Reach people when they’re most likely to buy
With remarketing, you’ll be able to stay connected with your target audience, even after they’ve left your site. This could be when they’re searching for your product, looking through other websites, and even while using other mobile apps.
Remarketing provides well-timed touchpoints to motivate your customers to visit your website at decision-making moments, when they’re most engaged.”
You can also set a delivery schedule for your ads, specifying certain days and hours when you want your ads to show, helping you reach your customers while they’re awake and online.
Customize your lists to your advertising objectives
Tailor your remarketing lists to reach your specific advertising goals. For example, you can create a list for people who added items to their shopping cart but didn’t complete the transaction. Being added to this list will show ads about the products they may have shown an initial interest in but later abandoned.
When visitors leave your website, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by displaying relevant ads. Your remarketing messages won’t be shown to people who aren’t on your lists.
Have a large-scale reach
Reach people on your remarketing lists as they use Google to search and browse over 2 million websites and mobile apps that are part of the Google Display Network.
Access efficient pricing tools
You can create high-performance remarketing campaigns with automatic bidding. This takes the heavy lifting and trial-and-error out of setting bids to meet your performance goals.
One word of caution: It’s important that you monitor campaigns with automatic bidding so that you don’t find yourself overpaying for underperforming ads.
Determine where your ads appear
You will be able to look into how your campaigns are performing, where your ads are showing, and what price you’re paying for them. Keeping an eye on where your best ads are displaying will help you utilize the spaces most successful for converting new customers to your business.
What’s the bottom line?
Basically, remarketing is the process of tagging people who visit your site. This allows you to place ads in front of your targeted website audience — as they browse anywhere across the web.
If done correctly, it’s a very powerful tool to increase brand awareness. As your customers are minding their business on the web — checking email, reading the news, browsing their social media networks — there you are! Remarketing allows your business several chances at a first impression.
It is possible to remarket without being creepy!
Now that you know what remarketing is, let’s talk about how you can follow your audience without making them feel like they’re being stalked.
To be memorable, you need to get sticky (not stalk-y) with these tips:
1. Round ’em up
The simplest way to remarket is to reach all visitors to your website. Meaning anyone who visits your website can see your remarketing ads.
There are at least three general remarketing lists you should consider adding:
- List of visitors who searched your product/service but didn’t convert into customers
- List of users who have a higher number of pages browsed throughout your website
- List of users who stayed longer on your site
2. Keep testing and find what works for you
It is very important to keep monitoring the changes made to your remarketing strategy. Keeping an eye on them allows you to analyze the behavior of the campaign after a change has been implemented. Two questions you should ask yourself when analyzing your campaign are:
What results am I expecting to get?
Are these changes getting me closer to my goal?
Bid on the lists and locations where you have a larger and better response. You can further fine-tune your strategy by adding “rules” to the lists and reducing your segment to showcase different products and services based on demographics, interests and geographic info.
A perfect example is Jessica, a designer and clothing-store owner. She wanted to display different ads to customers shopping for women’s or men’s clothes. So we sat down with her and created one ad that shows up to visitors who browsed her women’s line on her website and a different ad for customers who browsed the men’s line.
3. Here. There. Everywhere.
Your creative game plan is just as important as your remarketing strategy. Since remarketing allows you to reach your ideal customers, you should be prepared to show them your ads no matter where they are on the internet. Think about targeting them through a variety of channels, including social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Here are some general recommendations for your remarketing ads:
- Broaden your location and language targeting
- Make sure the ads are relevant to the audience you would like to reach
- The ads should have the same look and feel as your site
- Use all ad formats and sizes to reach your audience
- Include a compelling call-to-action
4. The secret of the universe
Famous scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla once said:
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” You don’t want this the exact size and color of the headers
Tesla was talking about the rules of nature that keep order in the universe. But his words have more than just one application.
By constantly monitoring and analyzing your campaign, we’re able to gauge how your ads are resonating with consumers. We can then determine the frequency at which your ads are being remarketed and if it should be increased or decreased.
And speaking of secrets, here’s one of ours: 19 strategies for better remarketing. It’s a great article created by Google that we use as a resource for strategies to apply to our customers’ remarketing campaigns.
Think of remarketing as a double-edged sword
This helps you keep a balanced campaign. There is a fine line between a frequency high enough to boost your brand and sales, and one so high you annoy your potential customers. Overexposure can be a negative thing. It can lead to “banner blindness,” a phenomenon in which visitors to a website, either consciously or subconsciously, ignore banner-like ads completely. Instead, let’s send some good vibrations their way.
To prevent causing banner blindness to your visitors, you can cap the number of times they can see your ads. This limits the number of times a person is exposed to an ad per day and, thus, eliminates the chances of you coming off as a “stalker.”
You don’t have to do it on your own!
We understand that a great marketing campaign doesn’t just happen overnight. But we do believe you can outsmart the competition.
Remarketing isn’t right for every customer. If your site has very little traffic, it may be that you need to first employ organic search engine optimization (SEO) or a google Adwords PPC campaign to increase traffic to your site.
Either way, our marketing experts will help you strategize your digital marketing so that you will attract more customers, whether that means making remarketing a powerful tool for your business, or utilizing another one of our marketing strategies.
Turn one-time visitors into leads, engage potential customers who click your ads, increase returning customers and brand awareness, improve your SEO and raise your Return On Investment with 8 Signal. Give us a call at (915) 585-1919.
