As the owner of a business within the very competitive industry of promotional and branded products, it can become all too easy to fall into the trap of succumbing to the daily demands of running a business. When you are involved at ground level, which often, owners of a small business are- it’s easy to become subjective rather than objective and lose sight of the bigger picture.
When it comes to marketing your business, you need to use strategies that are simple, yet effective, and of course provide a return. While content marketing is of course, a proven long-term strategy, and building up a social media is great for brand presence, it takes serious nurturing – I have discovered that for me, remarketing is one of THE most powerful and cost-effective tactics that increases conversion rates.
Despite being such a proven successful tactic, remarketing is incredibly underused and undervalued – or overlooked completely. Remarketing is a way to position targeted ads, in text or image display formats, in front of a defined audience that have previously visited your website, as they continue to browse online.
The ads are managed within the Google AdWords platform, and are displayed to the defined audience on web pages that they visit that accept Google ad placements (92% of sites on the web are in the Google Display Network).
Remarketing works by placing cookies on the machines of those that visit your website when they meet predetermined criteria; their cookie ID is then added to your remarketing list. You aren’t limited to one list either – you can have multiple lists with a range of criteria; for instance, you might want to target visitors that viewed a specific section or page on your website, but didn’t respond to a call to action such as complete an enquiry form, or make a purchase.
So that’s how remarketing works, but why should you use it?
It allows you to stay engaged
The buying process is not a quick one; almost 50% of visitors will browse a site between 2-4 times before making a purchase, and customers make a purchase once that they have had between 5-7 separate interactions with a brand.
Remarketing increases the number of ‘touches’ that the customer has with your brand without being intrusive. Remarketed ads match the look and feel of the site that they appear on, meaning that they don’t disrupt the browsing experience, and they are also highly targeted, the browser is seeing content that is relevant to them.
It increases brand awareness
More than 40% of companies use remarketing to build online brand recognition and awareness.
Remarketing enables you to create a strong brand presence in the early stage of the buying process and establish your authority. It’s this authoritative stance that will entice your prospects back to you once they are ready to buy.
It increases web conversions
It’s reported that 68% of online shopping carts are abandoned, and only 5% of visitors to your websites actually convert; If you want to check this statistic, run your conversions against your traffic.
Remarketing has been reported to boost ad response by 400%, and the ads are also 70% more likely to convert. The click-through rate of these ads is also far higher than display ads at .70% vs .07%.
The cost per click is also lower as you are marketing to people that are already more motivated to buy than the average buyer.
It gives you a competitive edge
A savvy 11% of businesses use remarketing to target their competitor’s audience. Remarketing ads appear on your customer’s browser once they have visited your website, or if they have searched for a specific keyword.
This means that you have the ability to target people who have visited sites that are highly related to your offering.
However, before determining whether remarketing is a strategy you should implement, you should understand your company’s buying cycle – if the cycle is already short, remarketing might not be needed, and you should invest ad resources elsewhere.
It’s also critical to understand how to target non-converting audience segments so that they don’t receive the same broad, messages for undefined user groups. Of course, with all marketing strategies, it will be important that the ROI is measured; it can be challenging to measure the true financial impact.
If you have experience of running PPC campaigns, this will help you to measure, or if you are completely new to the process, you may want to call in an agency to manage on your behalf.
However you choose to manage the campaign, I hope it brings you as much success as it brought USB Makers.