Is Search Remarketing/Retargeting Right for You? – Day 2: SES London 2011

Have you ever looked over your shoulder because you have that unnerving feeling that you are being watched or possibly, *god-forbid*, stalked by a particular website or ad when surfing around cyber space? You have! Well carry on reading…

Remarketing or retargeting as it is sometimes known is the maligned and much misunderstood child of the digital marketing family. It often gets a bad rep right across the media spectrum because of overzealous use by inexperienced marketers. When used correctly remarketing/retargeting can be a very effective and high-yielding addition to an all-encompassing digital strategy.

A panel made up of industry experts, Guy Levine (Return on Digital), James Yancey (Search Ignite) and Magnus Nilsson (Banner Corporation); help dispel some common remarketing/retargeting myths and share their tips on how it can be used responsibly to improve users online experiences and drive repeat custom, rather than being seen as a sinister internet stalking tool used to bully customers into a purchase.

So what is Remarketing/Retargeting?

Fact: 90% of people who visit a website leave without completing any action that online marketers intend them to take, such as making a purchase. (Source: Advertsie.com and SEMPO Dec.2009)

Remarketing/retargeting uses cookies to target consumers based on their previous exposure to a campaign be it an online advert or website. As such, Remarketing/retargeting can extend reach to consumers not yet exposed to a particular campaign or drive conversions amongst those who have already interacted with it. Popular industry networks include Microsoft Media Network and Google AdSense. Awesome remarketing campaigns are built on a firm foundation of trust with customers (Amazon Recommendations for example), and should be treated on an equal footing with social media.

Retargeting Panel Top Tips 

1. Cookie everyone and build up your insights repository: knowledge of your customers and their behaviours will better help you understand the buying cycle of your products and also define intent for when they are most likely to make a purchase. Think also about how you can leverage online data and insights to influence offline sales.  

2. Respect and protect your cookie data: don’t lose your cookie pool, make sure retargeting is not lost in site restructures or re-builds. Loss of cookie data can be catastrophic to remarketing campaigns as some programs such as Google AdSense insist on 500+ unique cookie profiles before embarking on such activity.   

3. When is enough REALLY enough? The key challenge is to decide on how many times an advert should be remarketed to a customer. The secret is to realise your optimal cookie length and understand how conversion rates drops over time, (how it can impact CPA and CPCs.). A lot of this is subjective and depends on your product or service. Use common sense and sound cookie driven insights to define your strategy. Most networks provide tools that have great frequency capping tools to assist with this.   

4. Target strategically - think logically and don’t get too carried away: Remarketing should not be treated as an average ad buy. Base decisions on sound insights and/or on the category of your product or field of business. If it does not make sense to your everyday business in the offline world, then don’t use these tactics online. For example if you were selling a certain model of car but in different colours, don’t remessage your customer just because they chose one colour over another. Use sparingly and wisely!  

5. Think beyond the last remarketing click: You’ve set your remessaging up and it worked a treat; you now have the intended customer back on your website and they are looking to buy. Now what? Think about what you want to achieve from your activity before running the campaign. Don’t leave their conversion to chance, tailor and optimise the perfect landing-page experience for them from studying cookie data.   

6. Previous display experience advantageous to running retargeting: like display advertising you can have a choice of ads. Think very carefully where your ads are going to be placed, for example do certain placements compromise your brand? Finally, rotate the ad designs more frequently, so your intended audience does not feel they are being stalked by the same ad.   

7. Remarketing a positive step to building brand & visibility: studies have shown that it can take up to 7 times before the average customer finally converts. However, all that time your brand is still being viewed and digested. Don’t think of it as wasted impressions.   

8. Segment your remarketing groups accordingly: prequalify users through keywords, form pages and conversion data. Don’t remessage everyone with generic landing pages. Remarketing is not scalable and should not be rushed; different segments demand varying strategies to secure conversion. 

9. Timing is everything: pull customers back into your site with timely reminders. Remarketing too early or too late can cost trust and sales.   

10. Employ the right tools for the job: serving retargeting tags and tailored content to returning customers can be a time consuming process. Having the right tools for the job will make remarketing easier. Free site personalisation services such as deep-linking can be a real bonus and a serious time saver. 

For more coverage from SES London follow @adCenter and keep an eye on the adCenter Blog or our special SES page.

Cheers

Kate

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