As an owner of an SME, you may think you’ve got your keyword research, PPC (pay-per-click) and digital marketing campaigns down pat. You’ve made it a point to optimise your site for SEO and made it responsive across all devices. You’re even consistently monitoring your efforts to check whether or not they’ve resulted in solid lead generations.
That’s all great, but here’s something you might not know. Out of all the people that visit your site today, 96% will leave before converting. How then, can you draw this valuable group of potential customers back to your site, and make the sale? The answer is—remarketing.
What exactly is remarketing?
Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is an extremely effective way to re-engage visitors of your site who have demonstrated interest in your products, and yet did not follow through with a purchase. By displaying targeted PPC ads to users who have previously interacted with your brand, it serves as a gentle and friendly reminder for them to revisit your site and complete the transaction.
Remarketing thus keeps your brand top-of-mind so that customers will turn to you the moment they are ready to purchase.
Since PPC ads don’t cost anything until someone clicks on them, this makes remarketing a relatively inexpensive yet powerful way to drive sales, reconnecting your brand with valuable customers.
How it works
You’re an online retailer, and a potential customer searches for a specific product on your website, going through several key customers touchpoints – only to end up abandoning the cart. With the help of a remarketing campaign and the use of cookies, you’ll be able to find out how much time the user has spent on the site.
From there, you can decide whether or not to continue reaching out to him or her. The next time these users go online to search for similar offerings, you’ll remarket the very same product they were looking to buy on your website — since they are already familiar with your brand, the chances of them converting into a buyer is much higher!
If you have no prior experience in remarketing, engaging an experienced PPC Agency may be a wise choice – they should have all the required skills needed in identifying the right group to remarket to, as well as the specific actions to take.
Platform options available
While Google currently offers the largest platform for PPC ads, that doesn’t mean that there are no other alternatives. Other platforms where you can set up your remarketing campaign include social media marketing apps like Twitter and Facebook. You can also consider using Bing, LinkedIn, Yahoo Gemini or third-party tools like AdRoll, ReTargeter and Perfect Audience.
Additional tips
- Decide on the pages to tag and how you want to segment your campaign.
Remarketing always begins with identifying the high-value landing pages that you want to tag and track for your campaign. These are usually pages where customers go through with the payment (shopping cart/checkout), or other conversion pages (subscribe to newsletter/email etc.).
Once someone visits the specific page you’ve tagged, a cookie is then dropped into their browser, which will then “follow” them and display your targeted ads whenever they visit other relevant sites. Keep in mind that the targeted ad should show the precise content or product that the user is interested in the first place, rather than generic brand information.
- Make your targeted ad more attractive with special discounts and deals.
There are multiple reasons why users abandon their shopping carts and leave before converting. Sure, they might be busy with something else, or maybe they couldn’t find what they were looking for. But more likely than not, it is because they are doing their research and comparing your prices to that of your competitors.
Limited-time special deals or discounts in your targeted ads can be a great way to entice people to go back to your site and check out the items in their shopping cart—thereby sealing the deal. Make sure you do not overuse this tactic though – it can easily backfire, leading customers to repeatedly wait it out for the next big discount.
Ultimately, monitor your campaigns regularly to gain a better understanding of what users respond well to, and use what you’ve learned to bid goodbye to cart abandonment forever.