What is Remarketing?
Remarketing (also known as Retargeting) is an awesome form of online advertising that allows you to create targeted ads aimed at visitors who have viewed your site or online app. These visitors might’ve left your page without making a purchase or a request for service, this works as an additional opportunity to engage them.
Types of Remarketing
The main two platforms that initially offered Remarketing were Google and Facebook. It’s great for a boost in brand exposure, not to mention potential revenue. As of October 2015 Bing joined the rodeo. I’ve seen great results when combining Google and Facebook into a marketing plan. I could venture a guess that adding Bing would be promising as well.
Google Remarketing
Remarketing allows you to connect with people who have visited a website you own or control. They are then able to view your ads as they browse websites that are part of the Google Display Network. In addition to this they’ll view your ads as they search for terms related to your products or services on Google. Google first rolled out this new addition to their original Google Adwords service in 2010.
The steps are pretty straight forward when you get started. Google makes this VERY easy. Google has you install the Remarketing Tag (a small piece of code) onto your website. You build your lists to group your audience. Now here’s the fun part, you get to create ads for each of audience-based lists and then you’re off to the races.
Here is a great infographic that explains how Google Remarketing works.
Although it’s a simple task, there is a bit of an art to crafting the overall marketing effort, so it’s important you’re thinking with the bigger picture.
FB Remarketing
Facebooks approach to remarketing is slightly different than Google’s. Facebook doesn’t have a network of websites. However it does hasve access to their very own social media platform.
Did you know that there were over one billion daily active users on average for the month of December in 2015? Odds are your website visitors were also spending time on Facebook. So why not reach them there?
Bing Remarketing
As mentioned earlier in the blog, Bing has started offering Remarketing in the same way that Google did some years ago. Now you may feel that Bing gets the “Jon Snow” treatment à la Game of Thrones. Honestly, it kinda does. It comes late to the party, a bit slower in the release of functionality and things of that nature. But there are numerous advantages to using it. Less competition Bing than on Google. You can target another group of users etc.
Should You Implement Remarketing?
The cost of remarketing is fractions on the dollar when compared to paying for other types of paid advertising. One of the things to think with is that the people you are remarketing to have seen your brand already. This means there could be some brand familiarity.
Here are some statistics about Remarketing and its use from CMO by Adobe:
1. In a study that evaluated various strategies in terms of the average lift in search activity generated for an advertised brand, retargeting represented the highest lift in trademark search behavior at 1,046 percent.
2. Nearly three out of five U.S. online buyers said they notice ads for products they looked up on other sites.
3. Thirty percent of consumers have a positive or very positive reaction to retargeted ads, vs. 11 percent who feel negatively about them. The greatest percentage, though—59 percent—had a neutral reaction.
4. One in five marketers now has a dedicated budget for retargeting.
5. Among primary site retargeting goals are increasing brand revenue and acquiring new customers (at 33 percent each), with additional focus on increasing both site engagement (16 percent) and increasing brand awareness (12 percent). Significantly, marketers are more likely (+15 percentage points) to use site retargeting to acquire customers.
So should you do it? I only recommend adding this if it’s part of a comprehensive growth-based strategy. It’s all too easy to throw money at an idea, but it must be factored into the bigger picture. If your website isn’t up to par you could be throwing money away because you lack credibility in your visitors eye, no matter how often you show your ads.