How Can Remarketing Improve Your ROI and Build Brand Awareness?

Right now, shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores is on pause while people are confined to the comfort of their home. As a result, you’re likely to see your web traffic affected. Whether it’s up or down depends very much on what your business sells. The priorities of your audience have momentarily changed, but the majority of consumers will still be researching, digesting content and interacting with your website and social media channels. In this research stage, users arm themselves with knowledge, ready to make a purchase when they feel confident – both in your brand, the product and the timing.

In the pre-pandemic world, only 2 percent of web traffic converted on the first website visit. Driving traffic to your website is the hard part, even when consumers have no other option but to buy online. Remarketing gives you more opportunities to make an impression with the remaining 98 percent, creating a better chance of encouraging conversions at a lower cost and boosting your ROI.

Remarketing allows you to target high value prospects who have already shown an interest in your brand, a crucial tactic at a time when there may be a greater time lag between research and purchase.

What is remarketing?

Maybe you viewed a pair of shoes from a well-known fashion brand, only to open up Facebook and instantly see an ad for those shoes you were just thinking about? That’s the power of remarketing.

Remarketing is designed to help improve brand reach and recall – a solid strategy right now. Taking your brand out of the search engine, it extends reach, recaptures attention and helps build trust and loyalty. Through display ads, you can stay connected with those who have the highest customer potential, even after they’ve left your website. Messaging can be directly linked to a user’s recent interaction with your brand, whether it’s a landing page visit, an abandoned shopping cart or related to a previous purchase.

How does remarketing work?

When a user visits your website and completes an action, a cookie is set in their browser. This cookie allows you to retarget them with relevant ads based on their interactions. Examples of remarketing triggers include history of online searches, subscribers who have interacted with your emails, users who share the same interest with your audience or visitors of a page during a specific date period.

Recent research found more than half of millennials expect online experiences to reflect what they are interested in, with one-third saying they will move away from content that doesn’t align with their interests. This expectation can only be met by delivering data-driven marketing that meet consumers’ evolving needs. A remarketing campaign also allows you to track certain pages, identifying users who spent time there without converting so you can retarget with relevant and personalised ads. This presents a great opportunity for promoting sales to encourage conversions as well as cross-selling and up-selling tactics.

Further data sources such as data from Google Analytics can also be used to run remarketing ads. These ads are served by third parties such as the Google Display Network, displaying them on partner sites your user visits. The Google Display Network has a reach of over two million websites and apps – that’s more than 90 percent of internet users! This platform gives you significant opportunity to engage with the individuals most likely to convert with your brand.

The time lag report functionality in Google Analytics is another great source of information that can be used to inform and create effective remarketing campaigns. The report identifies patterns in the amount of time it takes for a user to convert. This data can then be used to help you determine:

• The duration for your remarketing campaign
• How much money to allocate during certain time periods of your campaign
• Specific audience lists to create based on where visitors are at in your conversion funnel

Time lag reporting can also help to identify average order value (AOV) trends based on a time-to-purchase. If you can see a clear trend in your AOV data, this presents an opportunity to test new remarketing audiences.

Businesses may want to consider extending the time lag period at the moment, for example, if they’re expecting an increase in the time to purchase. Alternatively, businesses who supply products currently in high demand may want to remarket sooner, choosing to reduce the time lag period based on stock availability of specific products.

How can it improve your ROI?

Research found that remarketing converts up to 50 percent of traffic, a considerable difference when compared to only 2 percent who, on average, convert through search campaigns alone. Remarketing campaigns have such a high success rate because the targeted user has already expressed an interest in your brand. Here are some of the benefits remarketing can provide:

• Reduce lost customers: The principle behind remarketing is for brands to re-engage with website visitors. Essentially, it gives you a chance to interact with an interested individual a second, third or fourth time, encouraging them to come back to your website and products.
• Increase the chance of conversion: By reducing lost consumers, you also reduce lost leads, increasing the chance of conversion with those individuals more likely to convert. Remarketing is effective for guiding users through the conversion funnel, not only reminding visitors about your brand, but also providing a logical step on the path to conversion.
• Create highly targeted ads: After a user has interacted with your brand online, you have more data on their behaviours and preferences. This information can be used to define segments and create tailored ads suited to their needs. Dynamic ads work well as they can be used to automatically adapt content for each user, ensuring they are always exposed to the most relevant ads.
• Reduce cost per acquisition: Remarketing not only helps you to increase conversions, it allows you to do this at a fraction of your basic cost-per-lead, lowering the cost per acquisition by almost 50 per cent.

What are the different types of remarketing?

• Standard remarketing: Serve display ads to past visitors while they visit other websites, social media channels and browse on search engines. Using this tactic, you can effectively target users searching for specific terms related to your brand while they have high search intent.
• Dynamic remarketing: Display ads customised for each impression, showing specific content to visitors depending on how they have previously browsed your website. By providing relevant and personalised ads, the chance of engagement is increased. Display ads can be served on both websites and search engines themselves.
• Remarketing lists: Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is a tool offered by Google Ads, allowing you to customise search ad campaigns for past visitors by tailoring bids and targeting specific ads. It’s most effectively used for visitors who leave your website and return to Google to find similar solutions. Using the information RLSA provides, you are well equipped to find these high value prospects. It also provides an effective method of reaching people who have already searched for your most important keywords.
• Video remarketing: The popularity of video began an upwards curve in 2019 and we’re likely to see it increase even faster while people are confined to their homes. Displaying video remarketing ads through Google or YouTube at the beginning or in between videos your audience is viewing can help increase your exposure. If you choose to advertise on YouTube, there is also the option to display remarketing ads on the right-hand margin where users are browsing for further video suggestions.
• Email remarketing: Using email alongside your remarketing campaigns allows you to reengage and target people on your email list. Since the people who have signed up to receive your emails have already shown interest in your brand, it makes them an ideal audience to target. With limited entertainment resources available, more people will likely be spending time on their phones. Now could be an effective opportunity to deliver engaging, relevant content straight to their inbox.

  Email workflows can be created for order follow ups, abandoned cart reminders, rewards and loyalty programmes or inactive customer accounts. Each can be personalised with specific products, recommendations and offers relevant to your audience which helps keep your brand in mind when they are further down the conversion funnel.

Remarketing can help you reach the large percentage of website visitors who leave without converting. Right now, your audience is still out there. Consumers will be browsing and interacting with websites but may not necessarily convert right away. This presents an opportunity to continue gaining valuable data to target them when the time is right. Brands may consider switching their conversion goals from hard to soft, using remarketing to increase newsletter sign-ups, promoting downloadable content and sharing brand communications to stay on your consumers radar and keep them informed.

If you are unsure how to adapt or create a remarketing campaign to improve ROI, conversions or build brand awareness, we are here to help. Contact our team of paid media experts to see how we can help support you in adapting your paid marketing strategies to make the most of your existing website content.