Using Re-Marketing in Your Marketing Mix

When it comes to sales and marketing, it’s often said that you need to give a prospective customer three positive experiences with your brand in order for them to build a relationship with your brand and for them to think about you when a need comes up for your product or service.

The challenge for marketers and brand managers is to keep communications with potential customers frequent and engaging. Much of this challenge also involves finding where these potential customers are and which marketing channels to use to get in front of them. While generating sales is obviously a key objective, another huge goal is to simply gain their details; to add viewers to your database so you can more easily continue to communicate and build relationships with them.

Unlike face-to-face interactions where you might be able to get your customer service or sales team to get their details so you can continue communications, online can be a little harder to really capture their attention and get that next step of either a sale or their details. Sure, you might have some type of mailing list subscription, the ability to join an online club, or a webinar, eBook, White Paper or another carrot to get your prospective customers to provide their details, but the reality is that not every visitor is going to opt into these things on their first visit.

And this leads to the question: how can marketers and brand managers continually get in front of their online prospectives especially those who have already shown some interest by previously visiting the website?

What is Re-Marketing?

Re-Marketing basically allows you to re-market or get your brand back in front of prospective customers who have previously visited your website or App. Remarketing facilitators basically track prospective customers once they have visited your website or App and follow them as they move around the internet.

Utilising search result pages and websites which are part of Google’s Display Network, these facilitators then put display ads created by you in front of your prospective customers as they continue to browse the web. Some providers also use Facebook to display ads as well which can be useful if your target market is heavy Facebook users.

Which businesses suit remarketing?

I’m not sure there is a hard and fast rule around which businesses should or shouldn’t use remarketing. However, here are a few good examples of where remarketing could be helpful:

• FMCG products: Anything that moves quickly and is subject to changing consumer preferences is probably a good candidate for remarketing, with the objective to leverage off changing preferences and remain the brand of choice.
• E-commerce: Especially handy for those products where consumers are likely to shop around online before making a decision. Remarketing allows you to keep appearing in front while they shop around a nice subliminal reminder that you’re the best choice.
• Target Market is high internet users: Really any brand or business who are targeting users who they know spend above average time searching and using the internet could find remarketing helpful. Once the prospective customer visits your site once, they’re likely to see your display ads again and again due to their high internet usage.

How to start remarketing?

We use two main platforms when creating remarketing campaigns. The first is Google AdWords and the other is AdRoll. While they both use the same principles (to remarket based on visitors to your website or App), there are some key differences.

Google AdWords charges by click, similar to regular Google AdWords campaigns. Remarketing on AdWords only targets websites and search pages that are part of the Google Network. You basically allocate a daily budget for clicks and the campaign will display ads until you reach your daily budget. You will need an AdWords account set up to create your remarketing campaign. Login or create your account here.

AdRoll works on impressions rather than clicks and has a high minimum spend of $25 per week. The great thing about AdRoll is that the ads can be set to target Facebook as well as regular websites. This can be pretty helpful if you’re targeting customers who you know use Facebook regularly. You can check our AdRoll in more detail here.

Finally, while I don’t think remarketing is the best fit for every business or brand, it’s definitely something to consider. If you’re unsure about the results, how about simply try it? For a small cost to setup and create a campaign, you’ll be able to see pretty quickly whether it works to drive traffic (and conversions) to your website. It’s one easy way to keep getting in front of customers who have already engaged with you previously and can be a very powerful tool for some businesses!