What is remarketing?
Remarketing is a popular and very effective method of digital marketing, that allows marketers to target people who have already shown some interest in their product or service. Also known as retargeting, this tactic allows businesses to send ads directly to people who have visited their webpage, clicked on another of their ads or made a purchase in the past.
This advertising approach is effective because it allows companies to specifically gear their ads towards the needs of a target group who are more likely to be receptive to whatever it is that their business provides. It is a second chance for businesses to convert or upsell customers across a wide range of advertising platforms, including social media, Google ads and so on.
Why is remarketing so popular?
Remarketing offers businesses a much bigger reach on the Google Display Network – more than 92% of all websites – meaning that a wider range of customers can be targeted. But, better than this, it also allows businesses to get more direct and target specific people, thanks to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Visitors to your business page or website are digitally tagged, so that you can reach them wherever they go on the web, and you are able to get to around 84% of the people that you tag.
How much does it cost?
Another thing that makes remarketing so popular is its cost-effectiveness. Because you are only tagging people that have already shown an interest in your company, you are able to see a much higher conversion rate than you would with cold advertising techniques.
Usually remarketing is charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, as well as cost-per-impression (CPI) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Businesses are able to control their spending thanks to these models, so that you can decide how much you want to outlay for each specific campaign.
How does remarketing work?
To set up a retargeting campaign on your website, you just need to set up your campaign with a particular ad network (such as Google AdSense). The ad network will give you a piece of code called a pixel tag which you can then add to your website and will monitor the users that visit your site and drop an anonymous browser cookie that adds them to your retargeting list.
This means that whenever the user visits a site that hosts display ads from your ad network provider, your ad will be served to this specific user for as long as you have the active campaign running.
Benefits of remarketing for conversions
It is obvious how targeting people that are already interested in your business will help you to get more sales and conversions, in that you have already managed to weed out any users that don’t have an interest, saving you from spending money on those who are already lost causes. Here are some of the major benefits of remarketing campaigns:
- Increased brand exposure. Once a user has been made aware of your company, retargeting campaigns ensure that you stay at the front of their mind, making it more likely that they will return to your site and make a purchase.
- Although marketers want to avoid people getting irritated with their brand (‘ad fatigue’) it is still statistically more likely that a user will engage with your ad after they have seen it six times, than they will with a brand new ad from another business.
- Better return on investment thanks to being able to use targeted copy to appeal to those who have already shown interest in some area of your business or service.
- Better engagement. You can aim for smaller conversion steps which keep the user engaged with your business, rather than going straight for the sale.
Where to use remarketing?
There are lots of different options for those who want to use remarketing, and your business can experiment with these until you find something that suits you and your customers best. Examples include:
- Simple display marketing. This is the most basic form of remarketing and displays ads to users on other sites that they visit after yours, using display networks such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
- Search remarketing. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) allows you to customise your search ads campaign to target people that have previously visited your site specifically.
- Native remarketing. This allows you to re-engage people who have previously visited your website with valuable content which is recommended in native ad placements.
- Social media remarketing. Becoming more popular by the day, social media remarketing targets users on social media platforms after they have visited your website. This is becoming more popular as platforms such as Facebook and Twitter receive multiple views from the same users every day.
How does remarketing help conversion?
Retargeting is basically conversion rate optimisation. Targeting existing website visitors helps you to capitalise on the intent that these people have already shown and helps you to avoid pointless targeting of audiences that have no interest in, or need for, your service.
For the most part, a first visit to any website displaying your products or services is going to be out of curiosity, and there is unlikely to be a sale that first visit. Instead of giving up on users because they didn’t make the conversion you hoped for, remarketing helps you to stay present in their minds, hopefully in an unobtrusive way that simply reminds them of your business and the action that you want of them.
You can do this consistently whilst they go about their regular internet business, whether they are searching online, looking at their social networks, checking their emails or anything else.
You have the ability to really precisely home in on specific types of user and interests, to make it much more likely that your ads will offer any individual user the thing that they are looking for. This drives conversions impressively, meaning that you don’t have to spend lots of money on an advertising tactic that you aren’t certain will see some return.
Conclusion
Most people go through a “journey” when they purchase a product or service. The journey begins with a curiosity stage, followed by one or more familiarity and need confirmation stages, finally ending at the purchase stage. Guiding people through these stages is what remarketing is all about, targeting potential purchasers with the right message at the right time.
At MaxWeb we can help you with this and other online advertising strategies. Helping businesses with their online presence is what we are all about so why not give us a call on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk to find out more.
Posted on Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 in Digital Marketing.
