Remarketing

If you don’t already know, Google provides businesses of all sizes the ability to remarket to potential customers. It is an extremely powerful way to stay engaged with your customers and increase conversions. I have seen some brilliant examples of companies remarketing to me; and others just plain annoying. So what is remarketing, and how do you avoid falling into the annoying category?

First of all - What is remarketing?

Remarketing is a feature that allows you to reach out to customers who have recently visited your website. It allows you to reconnect and reintroduce your products to these potential customers, reminding them of their interest and encouraging them to buy.

For maximum benefit, it is best to remarket your product with an offer attached whether that be a discount or value add, something that reignites the interest and improves the chances of conversion. Of course this depends on who you are remarketing to.

This is all about reaching out to the right people at the right time (with the right message) you can do this in one of three ways:

1. Remarketing for display network
   This allows your ads to be seen by potential customer’s whenever they browse the internet.
2. Remarketing lists for search
   This shows your ads to visitors’ searching for something on Google. It allows you to expand your reach to potential customers by adding additional keywords. To access this you need to set bid adjustments in Adwords for the people who have visited your site and tailor your ads to them.
3. Dynamic remarketing
   This is more sophisticated and is only open to google Adwords customer’s with access to the Google Merchant Centre, if you are using an agency they can access this for you. These dynamic ads feature products a customer has previously seen on your website, allowing you to remind them about those specific products.

Who should use remarketing?

Remarketing is available to everyone and is particularly effective in the travel industry. Whether you are looking to increase registration, improve brand awareness, increase sales for your product or any other marketing objective, you need remarketing. Remarketing has become an important strategic component to every marketing campaign.

What are the benefits?

1. Targeted messaging. By using remarketing lists, you are able to categorise your customers according to their preference and the products they desire. It allows you to send targeted messaging tailored to potential customers.
2. Greater Control. It allows you to control the number of times the ads appear per day, week or per month. You can connect of a large number of people in a short time as there in a tremendous increase in the number of sites created on Google display network each day. Control on visibility on where the ads appear. You can raise and lower the bids on each site depending on the site’s performance.
3. Increase Sales. We all know how expensive it can be to obtain new customers. Remarketing is extremely effective in minimising your cost per acquisition by retargeting customers who have already shown an interest in your products or services.

Effective Remarketing Strategies

The way in which you set up your remarketing campaign will depend on the goals of your business and your customers. Here are some strategies you can use:

1. Everyone
   This is the most basic way to remarket your product or service and ensures every single visitor to your website will see your remarketing ads. Everyone has their own opinion of this, my issue is that even if the visitors have purchased from you they will still see these ads. If you choose this method it is important to make the ads generic and to update them frequently so your visitors are not seeing the same message over and over again.
2. Product Viewers
   Tailor your ads by creating a remarketing list for every product category. The best way to do this is to create each list using the URL from your website which contains the category name. For example, if you run multiple tours to various destinations such as the Hunter Valley, Blue Mountains and Wollongong create a list per destination.
3. Abandoned cart
   Customers who abandoned their cart are the most valuable opportunity for you to reach out and encourage them to complete the conversion. In this case you need to create a list specifically for visitors who went to the cart but didn’t convert.
4. Crosssell and Upsell
   Customers who have purchased with you in the past may also be interested in complementary products you offer. To reach these customers create a list of visitors who have converted. Please make sure you customise your ads for this list and lead the customers directly to the relevant products.

Remarketing tools

Like Adwords you can use various tools to target potential customers more effectively.

1. Contextual targeting, matches ads to relevant web pages
2. Audience targeting, matches ads to people who are most likely to be interested in your products.
3. Exclusions – you can exclude below the fold categories in your Adwords account to ensure your ads appear above your fold
4. Ad Scheduling, pick the hours and days that you will want your ads to appear.
5. Frequency capping, limits the number of times the visitor will see your ads for a day, week or month.
6. Content, you can prevent your ads from appearing next to various types of content.

I have specifically focused on Google in this blog as it is readily available and in a lot of cases you will already have an Adwords account set up with them. There are however, other remarketing tools available and experts in this area that you can.