PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM…

Use remarketing in your online advertising for a second chance of conversion

While ads can be ‘one-hit-wonders’ attaining instant results, it’s known that Ads are more effective when people are given multiple opportunities to view them. It’s a principle that applies to hard copy advertising and for the record, online ads too.

Remarketing is all about delivering relevant ads again, to people who have previously demonstrated an interest in your products or services. Make it part of your B2B online marketing strategy and you stand to deliver more relevant ads, achieve cheaper clicks and through repeat targeting, attain better clickthrough and a higher conversion rate.

Music to B2B marketers’ ears?

According to Google, remarketing is “a powerful way to stay engaged with your target audience. Presenting them with highly relevant ads and offers across the Web – and making sure your brand is top of mind when they’re ready to buy – can radically improve ROI.”

The technology’s there and in the right hands, remarketing isn’t difficult to implement. So come on Sam, why aren’t you including it in your online repertoire?

Hit me baby one more time…

You can use remarketing to target people who have stopped by your site – but not purchased from you, subscribed to your service, signed up to your newsletter (whatever your preferred visitor behaviour) – and expose them to a highly relevant, persuasive message or an exclusive offer that will encourage them to click back again.

Remarketing works by adding a piece of code to pages of your website that correspond to the products or services you wish to promote. Visitors to these pages of your site will receive a ‘cookie’ (a short line of text) in their browser, enabling you to follow them online and display relevant banner or text ads on participating sites they browse within the Google Display Network. This, according to Google is massive, reaching 80% of Internet users worldwide.

Higher conversion rates can be attained by combining remarketing with other methods of targeting, such as demographics or keyword campaigns. Use Google AdWords for instance, and you can hook up with potential customers a long time after they have left your site.

Google does this by allowing you to generate remarketing tags from within your AdWords account and putting them on pages with the highest traffic. AdWords then compiles lists of viewers who have visited your tagged pages, enabling you to show them specially tailored ads.

These lists can be customised, and with the option of both display and text-only ads, B2B marketers can reach defined audiences with a wide range of custom-tailored communications.

When speaking to Practical eCommerce about Google’s remarketing tools, Cynthia Benn of the Google Display Network said that remarketing allows you to “focus marketing efforts on the most qualified and relevant customers: those that have already visited your site.

“In addition, it works really well in conjunction with search campaigns. You can drive customers to your site through your search ads, and then if the customers don’t buy anything, you can reach those customers with a targeted message to encourage them.”

How effective can remarketing be?

Remarketing is all about re-directing traffic to your site, giving you another opportunity to ‘seal the deal’ and achieve the desired conversion – an opportunity that previously would have been lost. A study by Advertise.com revealed that remarketing increases ad responses by a staggering 400%.