Get better results from your remarketing, give people a reason to return

Getting new visitors to your website is only the first step in the journey. It is rare that I come across businesses that measure the visitors returning to their website. However when I mention that "people typically choose to buy from the businesses that they know, like and trust", heads nod at this well used phrase (even Donald and Hilary approve!). 

Now’s the time to make a change. Stop wasting your website visitors and encourage them to return.

Fortunately when it comes to the digital space we have a powerful tool at our disposal - remarketing. 

Remarketing is available on many of the popular digital advertising channels. The most popular of which are Google and Facebook. 

And the most successful strategy to get great results from remarketing is to provide your website visitors with a valuable reason to return.

If this is all new to you don’t worry we’re going to work through everything step by step. And if you just want to get the answers quickly here’s the lowdown on how to get more from your remarketing. 

Now it’s time to go deeper into remarketing. In this article I’m going to use the example of a fictional holiday company specialising in holidays to Dubai.

Just before we go deeper, I would like to offer you the opportunity to access to our Customer Obsessed Growth System (COGS). Click here to read more about how you can 3X your business in 3 years by making marginal 1% improvements on a weekly basis.

Now, back to business...

Why remarketing should be part of your digital strategy

Research from Ad Roll (a remarketing platform) shows that on average only 2% of shoppers convert on their first visit to an online store. This statistic often drops even lower for B2B websites that are not optimised for conversions. 

This means that the majority of businesses are losing 98% or more of their website visitors.

That’s a lot of waste.

Fortunately you can do something about it and start using remarketing to attract those lost visitors back.

Here’s a quick overview of how remarketing works.

Does that sound good? Then read on.

Get a better understanding of your website visitors 

You can get a lot of statistics on your website visitors when you use Google Analytics, however, it’s difficult to really understand those visitors as people.  

Data is the new currency of the internet giants, they are sitting on vast pools of data on our website visitors. The good news is that as businesses we can access this data via their advertising channels. 

If you aren’t making the most of the advertising opportunities available to you through channels like Facebook and Google you’re missing an important opportunity.

The opportunity to dig into and understand the data they have on your website visitors. By doing this you will gain insights that it will be very difficult to obtain via other channels. 

When you have built an audience you can understand that audience by creating targeted lists. Filter your list by:

• Geographic location
• Demographics
• Interests; and 
• Behaviours

To get a deeper understanding. You can go further by filtering your list by pages visited, time on site and recency of visit.

The insights will also help you understand what you can do to encourage return visitors to your site. 

An example of understanding website visitors

The Dubai Holiday Experience (a fictional example) research their Facebook audience stats and identify the age groups of their audiences. They know that the 25 to 35 age group have a high spend with them and love the adrenaline packages that they offer. They have some great blog posts on their site, that are attracting visitors in, but they aren’t getting very high rates of return visitors after the initial visit.

In addition they also identify that some countries perform better than others and they have insights from their own customer database as to which nationalities prefer which activities as well as the times of year that are popular with different nationalities. 

Off the back of this, they create a plan to target audiences from different countries at different times of the year with slightly different messages based on their understanding of their customers. 

They target the 25 - 35 age group UK market with winter sun packages, that include adrenaline adventures and after parties. The remarketing uses inspirational videos, showing exciting elements of the packages. These videos are shown to people who have visited one of their adrenaline blog posts, are aged 25 to 35 and based in the UK. The advert takes the user back to a page with longer videos and more information on the different packages available, so that the visitor can explore the package in more detail, with plenty of information to inspire them.

The videos feature Brits talking about the amazing time that they’ve had. 

They run a second campaign that targets the Australian audience with mixed packages including adrenaline and cultural adventures. These are mainly run in the Australian winter time, which is the Dubai summertime and low season, meaning great deals are on offer. The videos feature Australian customers and more of the cultural aspects of the adventures. 

As a result of running these highly targeted adverts that are tailored to the company’s knowledge of the difference in their audiences by identifiable attributes, they successfully increase the return visitors to their website by over 50%. 

This increases uptake of their packages by the nationalities that they target by 100%. A great result from this relatively low cost advertising channel.  

What will attract them back

When you understand your website visitors, the pages they are visiting, their associated interests and other insights you can gain from the advertising platforms, you’ll identify opportunities to attract these visitors back to your website. 

In the example above it is relevant inspiration content in video format that attracts visitors back to the holiday site. 

For your business it could be something very different. Perhaps a detailed guide, a researched report or a simple to use tool. The key is to understand your audience and what they are looking for. 

In certain cases it can be putting different spin on an existing article or content to match the specific attributes of the audience.

The most important thing to remember when attracting an audience back to your site is to provide as much value as possible in as simple to consume format as possible. 

Videos and easy to use tools are both great examples of this. The higher attention and concentration that a resource will take, the lower uptake you are likely to receive. 

However if the offer looks like it will be easy to consume and it provides high value for the audience, it will attract relevant visitors back to your site. 

Building brand awareness

Research shows that we need to see and hear things between 7 and 21 times to have good recall. 

Displaying adverts to people who have visited your website once, encouraging them to return and experience your website and brand again, is an effective way of achieving these required reinforcing touch points.

I’ve mentioned that people choose to buy from the businesses and brands that they know, like and trust. Remarketing is a very effective way to take you website visitors on this journey.

Returning to the Dubai holiday company example - I run a search on best restaurants in Dubai and visit a blog post they have written on the subject. I read the post and move onto the next post in the search results. I didn’t really take much note of the website that I was on. 

As I did this I dropped into an audience group of parents interested in family holidays. Next time I’m on Facebook I see a promoted post for must do family experiences in Dubai. As I’m considering visiting Dubai, I click on this advert and recognise the website from the post I read the day before. 

I like the look of the family experiences, but I’m actually having a long weekend escape with my wife. At the bottom of the family experiences is a post - Top 10 romantic experiences in Dubai. This post has 10 amazing romantic experiences and associated packages that this travel company offers. 

I make a note of the company and the packages that take my fancy. I watch a few videos of the experiences that whet my appetite for more. 

A few days later, I see a special offer advertised on Facebook on these packages for bookings made in the next 10 days.  

I know the company and I really liked the look of the packages that they offered. I want to surprise my wife, so I go for it and book the package that took my fancy, knowing that I received a good deal on it too. 

Make the most of the power of remarketing

Whatever industry you work in, you'll see the power of using remarketing to take your customers along their know, like and trust journey with you.

Remarketing is one of the huge marketing opportunities of this decade. Used well - it is a very powerful channel. By gaining insights from it and using those insights to identify how you can provide value to your audiences to attract them back, you’ll gain a competitive advantage over the majority of your competitors. 

Install the remarketing tracking on your website and start building your audiences today. As soon as these audiences have built research them and identify insights. Then use these insights to provide value to them and get them returning to your website.