– and how to do it well

Remarketing is a great way to reach out to warm leads. Users interact with your website or other digital platforms, then remarketing ads ‘follow’ them around the internet, appearing on sites and social platforms they visit. To a user it may feel like a magical coincidence, but it’s actually a carefully constructed remarketing campaign.

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Remarketing gives you a second chance

There are many reasons why people don’t convert the first time they go to your site. They might want to do further research, were distracted by one of any number of notifications or aren’t quite ready to buy. They also might not have fully understood what you offer. Either way, remarketing gives you another chance at talking to someone who has already expressed interest in what you do. For some businesses, just keeping your brand top of mind is enough to make users come to you first when they’re getting out their wallets. For other brands, generally ones with more complex offerings, it’s a case of using those additional touchpoints to explain, reassure or upsell to convince the user.

Make remarketing remarkable

Like any marketing effort, the devil is in the detail. Here’s what to consider when putting together your remarketing campaign.

Set a realistic timeframe

• When planning your remarketing campaign, you’ll need to set a timeframe – that is, how long your ads should continue to be displayed to a single user. To decide this, start by analysing the normal purchase of your product or service. How long does it take a customer to decide to buy from you? If your product is inexpensive and low-risk, users might make impulse-buying decisions. If it’s higher value and more complicated you’ll need longer, and more touchpoints to get them to the point of purchase. Understanding this pattern will help you more accurately and effectively plan your remarketing. Remarket to someone for too long and you’ve wasted ad spend on a dead lead. Turn off targeting too soon and you give up before you reached the final hurdle.

Consider where you remarket

• Most commonly, remarketing campaigns use display marketing – those banner ads you see on sites – and ads on social media. Adding the Facebook pixel to your website connects your account to your site – so you can see how users react on your site and target them on both Instagram and Facebook. A display marketing campaign on the Google network can be equally as effective, depending on your goals and targeting. Implementing a broader range of remarketing options is a good way to test the effectiveness of each approach for your brief, and then narrow down on the ads that are working best.

Tailor your ads

• It’s generally far more effective to get specific about your remarketing – instead of reminding users of your website, remind them of the specific product or service they were interested in. Then you can lure them back with suggestions of possible alternatives or one-time-only deals.

Get your segmentation right

• To get those tailored, effective ads you need to segment your audience. Most businesses sell more than one product or service. This means that you’ll need to segment your visitors, so you can target them correctly. For example, if you sell pet food and a user has been looking at cat food, you need to know that. Otherwise, you might end up targeting them with ads about birdseed.

Upsell other products or services

• If you have your segmentation right, upselling is easy and can be pretty useful to your target. If a user is looking at cat food, you can assume that they also might be interested in cat toys, beds, and brushes.

Get the timing right

• When you run your remarketing ads will depend on who you’re targeting. You want your ads to be running when your target market is online. For example, targeting 50-year-olds after work on weekdays is ideal, but you can advertise to an 18-year-old pretty much any time of day.

Test and measure

• Like everything in marketing, you need to test and monitor what you’re doing. This will let you tweak as you go and move budgets around to get the best ROI possible.

Cost-effective

Remarketing can be surprisingly affordable, and for many companies generates great ROI. It’s all a matter of getting your targeting, timing, segmentation and messaging right. It can take a lot of thought and effort during set-up, but once you have your remarketing system humming, it doesn’t take much to keep those sales and leads coming in.

If you’d like some expert support to set up your remarketing, get in touch with the team.