Remarketing

Have you noticed after visiting a website that you see adverts for that business for the next few days when you browse the internet? 

Well, that’s a form of digital advertising called remarketing. Done well, it can be an effective way of promoting your business.

When people research online, they often use keywords to search for the information they want. Search results will bring up many options for people to choose from. 

How do you ensure that after visiting your website and potentially those of your competitors, your business remains front of mind when web visitors start their customer journey?

Remarketing can help you maintain a connection with potential customers who have visited your website but haven’t made contact. Incorporating remarketing in your promotion plan means you can position adverts in front of website visitors who have previously visited your website. 

These ads can be either text, images or video and will appear across devices when they use Google or other websites in their network. The advert could also pop-up if someone is searching for your company but can’t remember the full business name, for example.

Remarketing is a great tool for building your brand awareness by reinforcing your key messages and reminding people of your product or service to help drive enquiries. 

As with all marketing initiatives, for remarketing to be effective it needs to be well planned to help your business stand out from an already crowded marketplace, and give you the opportunity to show your strengths and the benefits of you offer your customers.

Here are some pointers to consider when using remarketing as part of your marketing strategy.

Plan

Try not to look at remarketing as an afterthought to a marketing campaign that needs a boost. Instead, incorporate it from the outset as part of your campaign plan. This will ensure the flow and user experience are considered in the right context from the outset.

Keywords and SEO

Brainstorm keywords to strengthen your SEO and build that list before setting up your remarketing campaign. Understand what search terms and keywords are used by your audience, to make sure that the keywords are on point for your organisation. Focus not only on the positive, but on the possible negative scenarios too. 

Website users

What do you know about your web users’ behaviour? From this information, try to determine what can be applied to help you create the remarketing messages that resonant with your audience?

Creative treatment

The social care sector is a sensitive industry, so whilst remarketing may help to increase enquiries, it is good practice to think about the style of the creative ad you use. Something bold may turn potential customers off, whilst a gentle message that serves as a subtle reminder may be more suitable. This also applies to the frequency of the advert over the campaign period. 

Do you have an incentive?

Incentives can work well for remarketing campaigns. Are there any incentives you could offer to encourage your audience to make contact? For example, an invitation to an event, price promotions, or early bird bookings. 

Call to action

Always think about your end goal. It may not be to increase enquiries; a request for additional information – a brochure, survey data or feedback could also be useful. Try to understand why the user didn’t make an immediate enquiry on your own company website to help you refine your messaging. 

If brand building is your goal then the messaging needs to be consistent with your core values and key messages. 

Review and assess

Pause ads that aren’t working. Ads can be tested very quickly, but don’t leave an advert running if it isn’t getting the results you want. Such ads will not only have a cost implication, but could also create a negative customer experience.

Digital marketing is not an exact science and making it work well for your organisation requires on-going evaluation and refinement. Use the tools available to review and evaluate your campaigns to understand what makes a campaign successful and also what doesn’t work to ensure continual improvement of your marketing.