This post first appeared on The Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.
Forgive the dramatic headline. But I wanted to capture your attention for just a few minutes to explain what ‘remarketing’ is as well as some of the opportunities it presents. If you’ve never heard of this term please keep reading, as for a lot of businesses it can so often be an under-utilised but amazingly low-hanging opportunity to reach old and new customers.
So, What is Remarketing?
Been to a website, or browsed a product, after searching on Google only to see an ad for it on another site you visit later, or perhaps on your Facebook or Instagram feed? That’s remarketing. It is a form of online advertising that enables sites to show targeted ads to people who have already visited a website. These previous visitors will see ads as they browse elsewhere on the internet, YouTube, news sites, social media, which means you keep your company in their minds and entice them back later.
How & Why is it so Good?
Remarketing is great because generally the vast majority of people will not convert or do anything meaningful the first time they reach your website. People tend to browse the internet very quickly in short bursts, so by nature they’re in a hurry and looking around. Most people in a given period are also in the ‘awareness’ stage. In other words, they are just looking and will come back to make that final purchase later once they have considered several options. With remarketing, you can stay engaged with them when they are in that purchase mindset.
Additionally, at a top-level, remarketing can:
Increase conversions
This is a good and relatively reliable way to reach people when they are ready to make a purchase and become a customer. You can create tailored messages to attract them back to the site to complete a purchase, or enquire, or whatever your main goal is. If they come back, they are far more likely to act, because they are familiar with your website, services and products.
Avoid loss
Similarly, remarketing is powerful because you can negate loss of customers to your competition. As mentioned, people rarely convert on the first visit, and think about it; advertising is everywhere online and offline, which means there are so many opportunities for you to be forgotten, and for your competitor to take your spot in the potential customers’ mind. Remarketing allows you to stay at the forefront.
Help you reach brand new customers
Get this, with enough data you can even use remarketing on Google Ads and Facebook to target similar audiences who have never been to the website but closely match the profile of those that have visited, and also those that have purchased. How powerful is that?!
Now You Know a Bit
So now you’re a little familiar with remarketing and might be thinking about ways to make it work for your business. Thankfully, there’s an absolute plethora of remarketing resources online if you’re in-house and want to try it yourself. It might be a little daunting at first but it will be time well invested I can assure you.