Why Remarketing Is An Extremely Underrated Growth Marketing Channel
In crafting a strategy to help grow and scale a business, there are of course, immediately, a few growth marketing tactics that immediately come to mind. Search engine marketing, paid social media advertising (ex; Facebook Ads, Instagram, Linkedin), SEO, and email marketing are tactics that people immediately think of when trying to maximize the exposure of their growing business.
While it is understandable that some of the above mostly paid advertising options make sense in terms of scaling your business to customers who are looking for your products, remarketing remains one of the most powerful and underrated in most businesses’ growth marketing playbook.
Why Remarketing Needs to Be an Integral Part of the Growth Marketing Fundamentals for Businesses Looking to Scale
Every business has those “what could have been” moments when a potential customer visits the website but does not make a purchase. That’s where remarketing comes in, to attract window shoppers or those potentially interested in your products or services back to your site.
After all, it is important to always remember that a customer journey does not all end in one session. In line with this, there are numerous reasons why a visitor has not yet either become a customer or expressed concrete interest in your products or services:
They visited the site for the first time and after that visit, they still need to verify your brand’s credibility and efficacy vs. a competitor.
They got distracted in the process of making a purchase.
They are still unsure if they found the product or service they were looking for.
They prefer to purchase or examine the services your business offers at another time.
They need more time to do more research on what they are looking for, including comparing possible options and looking into what reviews say.
Regardless of which one of these above situations sounds relatable to you, remarketing can effectively influence potential customers to go back to your website. Furthermore, a remarketing ad can consist of static, animated images, video, and text elements, whatever it takes to effectively help remind the customers of your brand.
What Is Remarketing?
Put simply, remarketing (or retargeting) is the practice of serving ads across the internet to people who have already visited your website. It allows your company to seem like they’re “following” people around the internet by serving ads on the websites and platforms they use most.
What are the Benefits of Having Remarketing as An Underestimated Part of Your Growth Marketing Mix
Using remarketing to retarget ads to people who have visited your website benefits both the audience and the business in three major ways:
1) You can target almost every target audience at every stage in the modern sales funnel.
2) Relative to the previous point, the consumer sees more personalized ads that are more relevant and timely, improving their overall experience online.
3) Businesses see their revenues increase since prospects are brought back that had previously expressed interest in their products or services to give what you offer a second look—perhaps throwing in an incentive to entice customers to reconsider purchasing the products or services that your business offers can further improve or increase revenue-generating opportunities for your business.
Why Remarketing Should Not Be an Underestimated Part of a Growth Marketing Approach
Remarketing is a great way to advertise your products and services to people who are already familiar with your company. There are TONS of reasons people don’t convert on their first visit, as alluded to earlier:
They’re busy with something else
They want to do more research
They aren’t convinced they need your services
They didn’t see the solution they wanted
Serving remarketing ads to people who fit the above categories gives them a gentle nudge to remind them that you do have the solution they need.
On average, only 2% of your website visitors convert. Remarketing goes after that other 98%. In fact, customers who see retargeted ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.
Research from WordStream found that the more times a user sees an ad, the higher the conversion rate. Take a look at the graph below:
Here are some reasons why a business should never underestimate the power of remarketing:
Industry Statistics
According to a study by AdRoll, website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert than those who aren’t retargeted.
A report by eMarketer found that 56% of digital marketers consider retargeting to be the most effective way to drive return on investment (ROI).
A study by Criteo found that remarketing campaigns have a click-through rate (CTR) that is ten times higher than regular display ad campaigns.
To summarize, some of the key benefits include:
Increased Conversion Rates: Remarketing assists in increasing conversion rates by focusing on those who have already expressed interest in and interacted with your goods or services.
Cost-Effective: Remarketing typically costs 5 to 10 times less than finding new clients through other forms of paid advertising. This is expected given that you are focusing on those who are already familiar with your brand rather than attempting to draw in brand-new clients who may not be familiar with you.
Brand Awareness: By keeping your brand in front of potential buyers, remarketing can aid in raising brand awareness. Even if they don't buy right away, they'll keep seeing your brand and get accustomed to it over time.
Personalization: Based on a user's prior contact or interaction with your business, remarketing enables you to customize your marketing messages. This can improve the relevance of your adverting and increase the likelihood of a sale or a lead.
Retargeting Customers that Risk Slipping Through Your Fingers: Retargeting lost consumers who have abandoned their shopping carts or haven't been to your website in a while is another usage for remarketing. You can nudge them back to finish a transaction by reminding them of what they left behind.
What Are The Different Types of Remarketing Available to Growth Focused Businesses
Simply put, remarketing comes in a variety of different styles or types.
Video Remarketing (Google Ads): Your ads are shown as pre-roll video ads on YouTube and other Google display partners to people that have previously visited your site.
Search Remarketing (RLSA)): Your ads are shown at the top of the search engine results when someone who has already visited your site searches for specific terms or services.
In-Market or Affinity Audiences: Your ads are shown to those who are searching for specific terms that indicate that they are in the market for the products or services you offer, or which indicate they have interests that align with the products or services you sell.
Display Remarketing (Google Ads): Your ads are shown as display ads on other websites within the Google display ad network.
Dynamic Remarketing (Google Ads): This takes remarketing to the next level with ads that include products or services that people viewed on your website or app.
Social Media Remarketing: You can use LinkedIn remarketing, Facebook remarketing and Pinterest remarketing to serve ads to people who have visited your website while they browse those social media channels and partner websites.
Customer List Remarketing: With both social media marketing and Google Adwords remarketing, you can upload lists of contact information that your customers have given you. When those people are signed into Google or that specific social media site, you can show them ads across different websites or on that social platform.
Tips to Leveraging Remarketing to Boost Your Bottom Line Efficiently
In order for remarketing to work, there are a few key tips you should follow:
Segment your remarketing lists: when you’re setting up your remarketing tag, make sure you differentiate between different pages. For example, separate people who have visited “air conditioning repair” and “furnace repair” pages for a more personalized experience.
Tailor your ads to your remarketing lists: Your creative approach is just as important as your remarketing list strategy. Make sure your ads are relevant to the audience you’d like to reach, have the same look and feel as your site, and have a compelling call-to-action that makes sense for the audience that you are targeting as well as the action you are trying to get them to complete.
When creating a remarketing campaign, it’s important to segment your audience based on their behavior on your website or social media pages. This will allow you to create targeted ads that are more likely to resonate with each group of users. For example, you could create different ads for users who have abandoned their shopping cart versus users who have only visited your website once.
Test different ad platforms, sizes, and formats: To reach as many customers as possible create and test different types of ads for your remarketing campaign in multiple sizes and placements. Then optimize your campaigns for which formats, platforms, and sizes work best for your campaign.
Upsell to current customers: Your existing customers are your most loyal customers, and are the ones most likely to purchase other products and services from you. Similarly, create a list of current customers and use it to sell products they had purchased previously, upsell new products, or promote deals and discounts, whether through email or social media.
Schedule your ads for when your target audience is most likely to see them: Not all hours of the day are created equal. Business customers typically are better served with ads focused on working hours, whereas those looking for lifestyle products and services might be better served with ads outside of work hours (though not necessarily so).
How Remarketing Enhances the Growth Marketing Mix
Remarketing to existing site visitors obviously taps into the greater intent these people have already displayed. Beyond that though, remarketing is a form of CRO. The fact is that the vast majority of your site visitors aren't going to convert. Why give up on them the first time they hit your landing page and leave?
Your goal with remarketing is to remind people to complete the action you want them to complete, by getting in front of them with relevant messaging and offers while they're doing things like watching YouTube videos, checking their email, searching online, checking their Facebook, and so on. If you can do that, there is logically an excellent opportunity, to increase sales or leads.
Depending on how targeted you get with your audience lists and campaign types, remarketing can make a huge difference in your conversion rates. Custom printer company Storkie Express’s found that dynamic remarketing campaigns yielded conversion rates 203% higher than regular display ads and 119% higher than regular remarketing campaigns.
Here are a few of the other benefits of adding remarketing to your CRO arsenal:
Increased brand exposure, keeping you top of mind among those already engaged in some way with your business.
Precise targeting, with the ability to exclude audience segments that you may have identified as less likely to convert or more likely to waste a click.
"Stickier" ads, as the CTR of remarketing ads stays high even as you might expect ad fatigue to set in. As it turns out, the user is still far more likely to engage with a remarketing ad even after having seen it six times before than they are with a brand-new generic display ad.
Greater engagement, giving you the opportunity to have leads complete a series of increasingly lucrative small conversions (sign up for email, download an ebook, etc.) on their path-to-purchase, or to convert to a sale.
Better ROI, thanks to your ability to know your audience and speak more directly to each segment through targeted copy.
You can also count on lower costs-per-click, thanks to the higher CTR inherent to marketing to people already more motivated than the average ad viewer. Higher CTRs positively impact your Quality Score in AdWords, tell ad response networks more generally that your ads are highly relevant, and reward your business with reduced costs per click in ad auctions.
In addition, returning visitors are more likely to be engaged with your site than new visitors, especially if you refine your audience to people who visited a certain product page, put an item in their cart, and so on.
Remarketing best practices to enhance your growth marketing funnel
Target the right users
It may sound obvious and a bit repetitive, but you must focus your remarketing efforts on the right users, including:
Those who have previously searched your website
High-value and frequent users of Google
Those who have converted previously on other campaigns
Some 97% of website visitors leave without making a purchase, never to return to a website, according to Meazy, which is why remarketing is an essential tool to your digital marketing strategy.
Generate a personalized audience on social media
Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram allow you to create different audiences for your ads.
On Twitter, custom audiences target your existing followers and customers to create remarketing campaigns to reach highly specific groups of people.
The three types of custom audiences include:
Lists: Allows you to upload lists of existing customers using email addresses or social media handles.
Website activity: Target those who have recently visited your website.
App activity: If you have an app, reach those who have taken a particular action your app.
Similarly, you can set up a custom audience from lists, website visitors or from people who use your app on Facebook. Doing so can help you create ads that are more relevant to where your potential customers are in their customer journey.
Once you’ve created your custom audiences on Facebook, if your Instagram Business profile is connected to your Facebook, you can then repeat this process for Instagram.
Install a Google Ads remarketing tag
Google Ads has a feature, remarketing lists, which allows marketers to create search ads specifically for users who have already visited their website or a particular landing page.
You’ll need to install the Google remarketing tag on the target page and wait to collect data. As soon as you have the list, you can incorporate it into your search campaigns.
Segment your remarketing lists
Your remarketing lists should be segmented based on the user’s onsite activities. Google Ads recommends six remarketing lists, which start with your broad user base and narrow down to the most precise list to target:
Homepage viewers
Category page viewers
Product or offer page viewers
Those who have visited a contact or demo request page ( for those looking at B2B or SaaS solutions)
Cart abandonment
People who have bought from you or contacted you in the past
Be sure to differentiate between different pages as you’re setting up your remarketing tag. For example, if you’re running an e-commerce shoe store, separate users who have visited “running shoes” and “casual sneakers” to provide a more personalized experience.
Scheduling your ads at an appropriate time
Your remarketing efforts will only be effective if you’re targeting the right people on the right platform at the right time. Make sure you understand where your target demographics are geographically so your ads are shown when they are online.
In addition to location, you ought to take psychographic factors into consideration. For example, millennials are online almost constantly, typically on a mobile device, whereas 40% of baby boomers consume most of their online content in the morning between 5 a.m. and 12 p.m.
Tackling cart abandonment
If you’re new to the online retail game, you’ll soon realize that cart abandonment is a major problem. In fact, you’d be amazed just how many people abandon their virtual shopping carts before completing any transaction. According to one survey, the average cart abandonment rate is just below 70%.
You can, however, use remarketing to significantly reduce cart abandonment rates. Use Google Analytics to track page visits. This will give you a better idea of how many users get as far as the checkout without then reaching the purchase completion page. In addition, you can use it to monitor which products shoppers put in their carts, allowing you to then devise remarketing campaigns promoting these products to these particular shoppers.
For example, you could offer them a little discount to encourage them to go back and complete the purchase, or simply a gentle reminder that their product is still there and waiting for them.
Target existing customers
As we’ve already alluded to, if your business is going to prosper over the long term, it needs to get consumers coming back repeatedly. You need to think, then, about how you’re going to turn your first-time customers into repeat customers. Acquiring new customers is obviously important, but it’s expensive – it costs more to win new ones than to keep existing ones returning.
There are a number of ways in which you might bring existing customers back again in the future. These might include:
Repeat Customers – encouraging customers to buy products they’ve bought in the past,
Cross-selling – inviting customers to buy products related to other purchases,
Loyalty campaigns offering unique discounts and special product or service offers can also be very effective.
Use remarketing traffic to drive email signups
We’ve already pointed out the importance of post-purchase emails in engaging with customers.
Email marketing is proven to deliver results. Of course, you don’t want to hammer consumers with emails, but provided there are good incentives to sign up (offers you won’t get anywhere else, information on new product launches, or insightful content), people will usually feel that it’s worth their time.
You can use your remarketing traffic to encourage more people to join your email list. If you use the right keywords, you can use Google Ads to promote your email content and incentivize people to sign up. You can then create more granular lists promoting content that’s tailored to their specific needs, thus generating more conversions and value.
Target visitors to your shipping and returns policy page
People will visit your site’s shipping and returns page looking for different kinds of information. But the bottom line is if someone goes into the trouble of reading your shipping and returns policies, chances are they’re pretty serious about making a purchase, whatever that purchase might be.
This is why it makes sense to target these people in particular. They might be looking for reassurance about the reliability of your shipping when they can expect their items to arrive, or wondering whether free shipping is available. Try targeting them with an ad emphasizing your commitment to shipping reliability (perhaps you offer a guarantee in this area) or free shipping, where applicable.
Offer generous incentives
We’ve already touched on this, but it’s worth elaborating on. Given the importance of turning first-time customers into regular customers, what incentives are you going to offer them? Consumers love discounts and little bonuses. If you can offer them this kind of incentive, you’ll find that many of them leap at the chance to take advantage.
You could offer savings on products they’ve bought before or which they’ve added to their wish list (an obvious expression of future intent). Alternatively, you could plug your loyalty program to them or send reminders about products they regularly purchase. If consumers have been confronted with out of stock product pages in the recent past, you could also use remarketing to target them with ads letting them know the item is back available.
Why Remarketing Should Not Be Ignored When Constructing a Growth Marketing Framework
Remarketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy that can help businesses improve their ROI, boost brand awareness, and increase conversions. By targeting users who have already engaged with your brand, you can create targeted ads that are more likely to resonate with each group of users.
If you’re interested in incorporating remarketing into your growth marketing strategy, get in touch with us directly for a free, no-obligation growth marketing consultation. Our expert growth marketing consultants look forward to meeting with you to learn more about your business and find out if our experienced outside perspective can help you get on track toward driving growth in your business.