Remarketing to an audience that has previously visited your site can be an effective means of bringing back high-quality traffic. And since those visitors have previously visited your site, they tend be lower in the funnel and have greater brand awareness – two factors that typically lead to higher levels of conversion. As such, remarketing is a highly recommended promotional tactic.
However, despite remarketing’s typically strong performance, doing a spray and pray approach by including all your remarketing visitors in one audience list is really a rookie mistake that will result in missed opportunities. One of the primary factors that determine your success with remarketing is your ability to segment your audience based on their characteristics or visit behavior. Tailoring your promotion based on specific pages visited, demographics and recency of visit can supercharge your remarketing results.
To examine an example, let’s assume you’re a provider of cloud-based software solutions offering several different and autonomous applications. Here are 6 remarketing advertising segments that you should test, as these will likely significantly outperform a singular remarketing audience approach:
- Visitor type: Lower-engaged previous visitors
Visitor segment: Previous visitors who did not view a detailed solution page, did not download a resource, or complete a contact us form fill
Messaging objective: Earlier to mid stage – Increased brand awareness and overview of products/services with the solutions provided
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Low to moderate – “Learn about …” “See how …”, “Download …”
Landing page: Homepage
- Visitor type: Moderately engaged previous visitors
Visitor segment: Previous visitors who did view a detailed solution page or downloaded a resource
Messaging objective: Mid to latter stage – Reinforce the pain point that the solution remedies or the benefits of the solution
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Moderate to high – “Schedule a demo”, “Contact Us Now”
Landing page: Solutions page
- Visitor type: Potential prospects that share common characteristics with your web visitors
Visitor segment: Create a lookalike audience (“similar audiences” in Google) from your remarketing list
Message objective: Early stage – Brand awareness, trust, high level solutions
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Low – “Learn about”
Landing page: Homepage
- Visitor type: Very recent visitors
Visitor segment: Previous visitors who have visited the site within the prior 7 days (this period should be adjusted based on your visitor’s typical research cycle)
Message objective: Mid to latter stage – Reinforce the pain point that the solution remedies or the benefits of the solution
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Moderate to high – “Schedule a demo”, “Contact Us Now”
Landing page: Homepage or solution page if previously visited
If this audience is large enough, you can further refine this list by segmenting those visitors that did and did not visit a solutions page or download a resource.
- Visitor type: Less recent visitors
Visitor segment: Previous visitors who have not visited site within the prior 7 days (this period should be adjusted based on your visitor’s typical research cycle)
Messaging objective: Earlier to mid stage – Increased brand awareness and overview of products/services with the solutions provided. Look to “remind” the visitors who you are.
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Low – “Learn about”
Landing page: Homepage or solution page if previously visited
If this audience is large enough, you can further refine this list by segmenting those visitors that did and did not visit a solution page or download a resource.
- Visitor type: Visitors who abandoned a form
Visitor segment: Previous visitors who visited a form fill page (or resource download page if it has a form on the page) who did not complete the form.
Messaging objective: Mid to latter stage – Reinforce the pain point that the solution remedies or the benefits of the solution
Call to action level of aggressiveness: Moderate to high – “Download …”, “Schedule a demo”, “Contact Us Now” (the action associated with the form)
Landing page: Solution page (or resource page)
These are just a sampling of segmented remarketing audiences and tactics that you should test. Based on your remarketing list size, business type, and visitor characteristics, you may have additional ways to test remarketing list segmentation and targeting.
Bonus Tips:
- If your visitor’s research cycle is typically long, be sure to extend the duration of your list so previous visitors who may still have interest in your solution will continue to see your ads despite a lengthy time period since their last visit.
- If you’re operating with a tight budget and frequently hit your remarketing campaign daily budgets, be sure to cap the number of times your visitors will be exposed to your ads.
- Schedule your remarketing ads during the most productive days and times to ensure you’re only showing your ads (and spending your budget) when the ads are likely to be most effective.
- Be sure you’re monitoring the performance of your ads on the placements where they’re shown for any underperforming URL’s.
- Always aim for at least 3 image ad sizes, as each image ad size fits a different ad placement location and certain sizes may perform better than others.
Remarketing can be an immensely powerful tool if used correctly with the proper targeting & segmentation. At Wolfhound Interactive we’ve helped many clients boost their online results through advanced Remarketing and can help you make sure your Remarketing tactics are optimized for top notch results. And if you’re not Remarketing yet, let’s get you set up. Contact us today to learn more.
