“Remarketing- Is It a Good Thing For Your Business?”
Remarketing or retargeting is a technique that has been around for a few years now and is used by businesses to reach prospects who have shown an interest in their products or services. By installing a pixel in their webpage or email, this sets a cookie in the user’s browser that allows the business to show display ads to that user on other sites on the internet.
Remarketing is, in essence, a way to reach consumers who have shown interest by getting their ads in front of them in a variety of ways when the consumer is online. It used to be conventional wisdom that the sale is made on anywhere from the 8th to the 11th “touch”. Remarketing allows businesses to do this in an automated way.
Benefits
There are a number of benefits to businesses in using this marketing technique. These include:
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Targeting the people who are potential customers based on certain actions they’ve taken. These actions include visits to your website, took a certain action on your website or did something on the web that meets your criteria for targeting them.
2. Improve brand awareness. With the online world being so cluttered today, remarketing allows you to keep your brand in front of prospects who are likely to buy from you. With businesses continually fighting for attention online today, this is a great way to stand out with the prospects who matter to you.
3. Conversions. There have been some estimates in the past where remarketing can increase conversions by up to 400%. With consumers getting more savvy about seeing a business’ ads everywhere they go on the web, it’s probably safe to say that it’s not quite as effective as when it first started.
4. Specific targeting. Remarketing allows brands to target specific demographics with ads that are relevant to them. This personalization of ad content is very powerful.
Concerns
When this technique first came out, my first thought was “Big Brother is watching.” It was almost a bit eerie that companies could know what I was looking for. I remember vividly looking at a specific brand and size of a TV on one of the big box websites. When I went back to my Facebook page, on the right-hand side in the corner was the very same TV I had been looking for. I have to admit it threw me a bit.
Although here in the US there haven’t been many laws legislated around this particular marketing technique, there have been some privacy concerns raised. Responsible businesses, however, don’t collect personal information such as age, sex or other personal information. Remarketing is based more on a user’s behavior on the web and the website they visit and take actions on.
I recently implemented a marketing campaign for a client that involved a postcard mailing that sent the reader to a landing page. Once the reader hit the landing page, they were retargeted. I also put a lead magnet on the landing page in the form of a special report. If a user input their email in return for the report, it would also set off an email sequence where the marketing was even more personalized. The remarketing effort was very effective in reaching our audience. Combining the other two methods of postcards and email marketing allowed us to be even more effective.
Some people get a bit annoyed with remarketing but overall it’s still a viable and successful way to reach prospects regarding the above benefits. Even small businesses would do well to at least check into it and combine it with other techniques as in my illustration above.