Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a form of display advertising offered by Google Ads in which your ads only appear for users that have visited your site before. I wanted to comment on some of our most recent remarketing efforts for clients and the success we've been seeing. Several times I've heard that display and remarketing has limited value and should not be incorporated into your digital marketing mix. Here's why you should give it a second chance.
Know Its Role
Remarketing is an excellent brand awareness tactic, and we have been using it to focus on brand identity building and brand elevation. Depending on the client the goal has been:
- Increase the exposure of the client and remain top of mind with their customers
- Showcase the client as relevant, active and trendy
- Promote a new offer, a conference or product and incentivize the customer to click
In addition to these overall goals, we set very specific KPIs and metrics for the remarketing portion of any campaign. Too often marketers and sales put a lot of pressure of remarketing and display to achieve unrealistic results. If you aren't seeing success, perhaps you're asking too much of your campaign. Remarketing typically has a low conversion rate so set your expectations accordingly. Consider focusing on clicks from specific sites, time on site or the number of repeat clicks on site.
Be Very Specific
Do not underestimate the importance of ad design, ad placement and the resulting landing page from an ad click - keep them all very specific and targeted. Our most successful remarketing campaigns spoke to a specific audience, with a corresponding targeted landing page, so as not to get incorrect clicks. The ad copy had a strong message tailored directly to that audience so that even if they did not click, customers became familiar with the brand and knew our client provided a specific service.
We reviewed a list of suggested sites we wanted the ads to show up on and used demographic data to establish that the right people would see the ads. For example, for one of the campaigns choice of site was key so that customers could see the ad on well established financial website and associate the company with those sites to elevate the brand. Customers were directed to targeted pages that clearly supported the offering described in the ad to ensure a successful customer journey and decrease additional clicks. We received feedback from the client praising our efforts when their customers were impressed with their ads on those sites.
Evaluate
We had varying results related to goals, but cost per click was consistently reasonable between $1 and $2.05. On a $1000 spend we obtained 400+ clicks, ~250k impressions and met all our conversion goals. The total clicks for one client surpassed their direct and organic traffic. Another client obtained five new six-figure customers directly from the ads, increasing brand awareness and service offering.
If you want to hear more about remarketing, fire me an email or call me. We offer a free 1-hour consultation; I'll bring the coffee.