In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, AGI Marketing is featured as one of the Top PPC Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile here.
We all want as many customers as possible to pull the trigger and purchase or subscribe, but it doesn’t always happen on the first shot. How can you reel those almost customers? Well, remarketing is a tool that has proven to get you back some of that missed potential.
Also referred to as “retargeting,” remarketing is an efficient tool to reel in customers who seemed interested in your business but never converted. You can use this tool in various ways, from social media to ads on Google’s Display Network, which work through cookies. Find out some of our best tips and practices to start up your remarketing game!
What Is Remarketing?
About a week ago, I started looking online for a new mattress. I did maybe five to ten minutes of web browsing and compared a few prices. Within the next hour or so, I scrolled through my social media and started to notice advertisements for mattresses. Many of which were from the couple of websites I had visited, but with better bargains than what I originally came across. Even as I continued on with my day and read some news on my browser, some of the same ads popped up on the side of my feed.
This is remarketing.
These companies used cookies on their websites, which are then saved to your computer or phone as tiny pieces of information about the site you just visited. This is used to tailor ads to you, and hopefully recapture you as a visitor. Google has made it simple to create these lists for you. So, for example, say you sell mattresses, and a customer visits your site, but they don’t buy anything. A cookie stores information about visitors interests, that will place ads with a call to action to help reel in that customer to return and buy.
Facebook has a similar way to create lists that you can check out here.
How Does Remarketing Help You?
It might seem a little strange to digitally follow your customers around all day, but it’s actually very beneficial. With the flood of information and visuals that we consume every hour and every day, you want to keep reminding them of what you offer.
On average, it takes customers about seven times to hear your message before they make up their mind about purchasing something. So, this just makes sense in the age of instant updates and the high volume of competition you have as a business owner.
Putting a focus on remarketing ad impressions has proven to link towards increased conversion rates. Customers are 70% more likely to go back and convert to your website with these ads. It sounds like you’ll be making a lot more money by investing in these ads.
Suppose you’re worried about having to create a new budget for these ads; well there’s nothing to worry about. Remarketing ads are actually way more budget-friendly than other types of advertising. Marketing and social media gurus like Neil Patel use 40% of their advertising budget on retargeting ads because of the pull-in they get back from it all.
Where To Start with Remarketing
You want to first look at where to begin retargeting ad channels. The first two you want to start with are Facebook retargeting ads and Google display retargeting. They’re the most popular sites to generate leads from, and you can expand once you got these two under control.
In Your Face with Facebook
Creating Your Audience
There are a few ways you can set this up on popular social media platforms. You can set up your “Custom Audience,” which gives you options on where to start. It displays:
- Website Traffic
- App Activity
- Customer File
- Offline Activity
When creating running remarketing ads (or retargeting as Facebook phrases it) you MUST have your Facebook pixel set up on your website. This tool will help track website visitors who’ve visited the website or a particular page on the website. It can backdate all up to 180 days and begin the day they visit the site. Pixels can trace the audience from both Facebook and Instagram, and all it takes is the customer to like, follow, or interact with your page in some way. This process can be used to also follow potential customers who interacted with a previous campaign as well. Your “Custom Audiences” can do wonders for your retargeting needs.
Making Impressions
Once you define your audience, you’ll be able to create a campaign and set how frequently you want these ads to pop up. It’s best not to overload, so make sure you set a Frequency Cap. Look at the results and alter things from there. You’re watching your audience at this point, so you’re now learning their habits; measure accordingly.
Keeping Ads Fresh
After that, create your ad! Make sure to have a variety of ad designs, so it’s not the same one over and over. Show your audience different ads so that they become more convinced and not more annoyed by seeing something they’ve already passed over more than once.
You can find a crash course on all of this through Facebook Blueprint.
Google Display Retargeting
You can start up retargeting ads on the Google Display Network (GDN). It’s a group of over 2 million sites, apps, and videos that can reach out to over 90% of internet users.
Step 1: Head to Google Ads and open up the Shared Library in the tool menu.
Step 2: Click on the Audience Manager and create a new list under the reamarketing tab. Your list can be based on your website visitors, your app, YouTube or any other list you have.
Step 3: Choose your conditions. Maybe you want all website visitors, maybe you want someone who viewed only one specific page. Or maybe you want someone who went to your cart to purchase, but they did not land on the purchase confirmation page.
Step 4: Create your audience and wait for your list to grow. You need at least 100 visitors on your list before your ads begin to show.
How Frequently Ads Pop-Up
We cannot express this enough: plan out how often your ads appear. This can help your customers with burnout and brand blindness. Too many ads at once or sending a follow-up email too soon can feel spammy. Think about making the frequency cap range from 10-20 times within a 20-30 day period. Measure how many people actually go back and visit your website and start cutting the ones that just won’t come back.
This goes the same for what you’re showing in your ads. Rotate them, so they feel fresh to the potential customers who see them. If the first time they visit didn’t win them over, then showing them the same thing three more times definitely won’t. Give these new ads a fresh face to reignite interests. Another great plan is to do some A/B testing on customers. Show different ads and see which one does better and actually brings in some conversions.
This is a great way to test out your marketing team’s creativity to see what new and fresh ways they come up to display an item. Creating a sense of urgency with promotions can also bring people back. Maybe they saw the item on your site for $100, but the new ad might have a promo code for 10% off.
When To Stop
Simply put, don’t waste efforts by focusing on your wins. If a customer converted already, then don’t try remarketing techniques on them. If you won them once, then give them new ads, new promotions, and a fresh look to get them to come back. Retargeting is all about getting people you missed out on. You can use a burn pixel to untag someone who’s either already converted or didn’t react to the frequent ads that they were shown.
Retargeting Your Approach
If you have an online presence, then retargeting is essential to maximizing your potential. Our world is now an instant update flood of information, and you want your message to stick before someone else snags that customer. Observing your audience and building from there can make you more money and get you more attention. It does take some effort, but no one said that running a business would be easy. These tips can get you started on the right path to success.