If you have ever visited a website but did not take any action, you might encounter the company’s advertisements on another website later. This technique is known as remarketing and is used to target potential customers who may be interested in the brand, with the goal of keeping them aware of it. By implementing such a campaign, an organization can enhance conversions and make better use of its advertising budget.
This article will discuss the concept of remarketing, its advantages, various types, and provide a step-by-step guide on how to create a campaign.
What is remarketing
Remarketing involves directing your marketing endeavors towards reconnecting with prospective customers who have either visited your website previously or displayed an inclination towards your offerings. Upon a visitor’s consent, your website utilizes browser cookies to track their online activities.
Once users are on your website, the remarketing process is initiated, with the assistance of cookies. These cookies enable you to trace the consumer’s path on your site and serve marketing messages to encourage them to return and make a purchase, in case they navigate away without completing the transaction.
The goal of remarketing is to encourage the consumer to revisit your website and fulfill your specific call to action.
A conversion in a remarketing campaign can either refer to a consumer becoming a paying customer or completing a different call to action, such as subscribing with their email or following the company’s social media page.
Remarketing vs Retargeting
Although ‘retargeting’ and ‘remarketing’ are often used interchangeably, there are significant differences between the two terms.
The main difference between retargeting and remarketing lies in their strategies. Retargeting primarily involves displaying ads to potential customers using cookies, whereas remarketing typically relies on email communication. Remarketing involves gathering user information and creating lists, which are subsequently utilized for sending sales emails.
Using a combination of retargeting and remarketing can be the most effective strategy to enhance digital marketing activity and increase your bottom line, even though each method is effective on its own.
How remarketing works
Setting up a remarketing campaign for your website is not a complicated task. All you need to do is install a pixel.
Whenever you establish a campaign with a specific ad network, they will supply you with a small code (known as a pixel tag) to incorporate into your website. As each new visitor arrives at your site, this code will deploy an unidentified browser cookie, thus enabling the user’s inclusion in your retargeting list.
As long as you have an active campaign running, whenever the same user visits another site hosting display or native ads from your ad network provider, your ad will be served to them.
The shutting down of third-party cookies by Google will have an effect on marketers’ ability to engage in remarketing. This is why it is crucial to advertise on platforms that rely on first-party data for tracking purposes. As the cookieless era is already underway, it is advisable to begin preparing for methods and strategies that will enable future remarketing.
Benefits of remarketing
- Capitalize on lost website traffic.
- Target people who have already visited your site and shown interest in your offering.
- Target audiences who are more likely to convert.
- Keep your brand at top of mind by strategically showing ads to interested audiences.
- Affordable marketing tactic available on a range of platforms and channels.
- Suitable for every industry and vertical.
- Comes in many ad formats, including display ad, search RLSA, dynamic carousel and more.
- For e-commerce – dynamic retargeting enables marketers to serve personalized ads for different users based on products or services they viewed on your website.
Although your website might be receiving a significant amount of traffic, it is important to note that the conversion rate for first-time visitors tends to be quite low. In the case of e-commerce sites, a conversion rate of approximately 2.5% to 3% is considered good. This implies that the majority of the traffic does not result in actual sales. To make the most of this untapped potential in your traffic, remarketing is the recommended strategy.
Retargeting is a highly effective method to remind individuals who have previously expressed interest in your business to visit your site. It is applicable in all sectors and industries, but particularly crucial in the realm of e-commerce.
One strategy is to utilize remarketing ads, which can be used to present customers with exclusive deals that were not initially accessible when they first visited your website. These deals may include discount coupons, “buy one, get one free” promotions, or other enticing offers aimed at attracting the customer.
How to use remarketing
To incorporate a remarketing campaign into your marketing efforts, follow these steps:
1. Create a plan
To start, establish a plan by identifying the specific website pages you wish to focus on for monitoring your site visitors’ journey. Once you have determined the specific area of the visitor journey to target, you can proceed with devising the suitable campaigns for implementation.
If you are focusing on your product description pages and shopping cart page, you can utilize the data collected from these pages to develop ads that specifically target the products that the consumer, whom you are remarketing to, had initially shown interest in.
2. Offer special deals
Additionally, it is advisable to contemplate extending a distinctive offer to the specific audience of your remarketing campaign so as to allure them back to your website and ensure they finalize their transition into a conversion.
One way to encourage customers to complete their purchase on your website is by offering them a coupon or free shipping. Another approach is to establish a loyalty program that motivates customers to become repeat buyers.
3. Set a timeline
After selecting the type of campaign, the next step involves deciding the frequency and duration of displaying your ads to the target audience.
It is crucial to follow this process during campaign creation because excessive exposure or duration of your ads to your intended audience may lead to ad fatigue, resulting in the opposite effect of your desired outcome. This technique also enables you to experiment with new strategies and enhance your outcomes.
4. Target post-conversion customers
In addition to focusing solely on visitors who did not convert, it is possible to direct your campaigns towards visitors who converted during their initial visit to your website.
Post-conversion remarketing is the term used to describe the practice of enticing visitors who have already completed an action or made a purchase on your website to return and become repeat customers through post-conversion campaigns.
5. Review and analyze results
After implementing your campaigns, it is important to track and assess their effectiveness. This can be done by monitoring the click-through rate of returning visitors to your website, as well as tracking the conversion rate of these returning visitors. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes to your campaigns.
Where can you retarget your customers
There are several platforms and channels available for remarketing purposes. Here is a list of them:
- Simple display remarketing: The most simple and popular type of remarketing. Just display an ad to people on other sites after they have visited yours, on display ad networks like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
- Native advertising: Marketers can re-engage their website visitors with valuable content, recommended across premium publishers in native ad placements.
- Search remarketing: Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a feature that lets you customize your search ads campaign for people who have previously visited your site.
- Social media remarketing: Show your retargeting ads to people on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok after they’ve already engaged with your brand or business.
If your ad spend is limited or you believe you’ve already paid enough for the initial click, remarketing is a beneficial method to boost your ROI. You can refine and experiment with your approach to cater specifically to remarketing goals.
By carefully analyzing your data, determine which devices, operating systems, and geographical locations yield the highest conversion rates. Use this information to create remarketing campaigns tailored to these specific segments, and assess their performance. This approach may potentially allow you to decrease expenses and enhance your conversion rate simultaneously.
You can never be certain why visitors to your website didn’t convert. It is possible that they became distracted and left, or maybe they didn’t find the offer appealing. It could also be that the offer was beyond their budget or they are currently browsing but intend to make a purchase in a few months.
Retargeting/remarketing is an effective approach to ensuring that your business or brand remains prominent in their thoughts, regardless of the rationale. By continuously providing them with reminders and incentives to return, you increase the likelihood of generating more leads, conversions, and sales for your business in the long run.
