How Remarketing Can Boost Sales for Your eCommerce Site

What is Remarketing?

Have you ever noticed that one week you might google something about dog collars and within a few days, Facebook is displaying everything from dog treats to those collars you looked at… only cheaper?

This is a clever technological advancement that is giving a substantial amount of power to businesses and marketers. But, that power isn’t only in the hands of larger companies. In fact not only is it easy to implement – but it’s easier to nail more sales once you’ve set it up. 

Let’s break this down into two main categories:

Remarketing basics

How to maximise the impact 

When it comes to remarketing, it’s better that you go in armed with the knowledge to make it work. Dabbling won’t have the same effect. 

Remarketing

What? 

On a basic level, remarketing is precisely what it sounds like. It is remarketing a product or service to someone who is already interested. They have shown this interest either by clicking relevant links on a website or searching for that item directly via Google or Bing (or another internet search provider). Or, by clicking through via your email marketing materials. Most of the time, remarketing will target people that have browsed your website, looked at an item, but never completed the purchase. Their interaction with your website causes a reaction in the advertising chain. Retargeting and remarketing should be combined to maximise your marketing efforts.

Why? 

To close that sale. Use the analytics and tools you have with statical heavyweights like Google Webmaster Tools. Every social media platform from Facebook to Pinterest gives you pretty detailed information. 

Once upon a time when someone left your website, you’d be hard pressed to be able to make that sale happen. Now the process becomes much more interesting. Only a low % of customers will commit to a purchase the first time they visit a website. Unless they know exactly what they need. When you put remarketing into the mix, showing someone ‘what they could’ve had,’ and enticing them back with sweet deals like free delivery or a discount. You’re going to see a higher conversion rate. They are already interested in the product too, so it’s marketing budget well spent, especially when you consider the high conversion rate associated with this type of marketing. 

How? 

Unsurprisingly there are a lot of options, and they work for different budgets. There are a few types of remarketing, and it’s better to know what they are when you are talking about how to boost sales in this way. 

Video

Via Google, you can show video ads to people on YouTube. Anyone who visits your site can be targeted when they are anywhere else in the Google ad display network. We all know a video is eye-catching and effective. But, you should expect this one to cost a lot to do it properly.

Email

By creating a good email marketing campaign, you will be able to see what people are clicking on in their email system journey. Because of course as well as ‘live’ emails, you have created a campaign geared towards the sale of certain products. Since it is more likely that a person in your email list has opted in to receive them. You know they are currently interested/have previously been interested in your website, product or service. When you are first creating your email campaign, each behaviour that a potential customer shows should lead them on a different email pathway. If you struggle with how these work, then you can check out something like ConvertKit. They make it easy and have some great options in terms of funnels. 

Ad Display

This is the one that you will hear people talk about the most. Google, yes, them again! They Have one of the most powerful PPC platforms, putting the power into the hands of the business owner. When someone is anywhere in the Google display network ecosystem they can be targeted for advertisements. So after leaving your website, if they head off to their favourite blog – they are likely to see an advert for the product they were just looking at. So in a more relaxed state, scrolling a website they enjoy, they see the product they just checked out. More conducive for sales. 

These ads don’t just stop there. You can extend them through to social media. Twitter is a great option, but Facebook is more visual. In general, people spend more time on Facebook per day. They also both offer their own ad display which you can take advantage of (again with full access to all of the analytics to make this work). For some perspective, there are around one billion people active on Facebook every month, with a side of over 100 million for Instagram too.

A user chain example:

Without Remarketing & Retargeting – A User pays an initial visit to your store > They leave > ???

With –

A User pays an initial visit to your store > Upon leaving they are tracked. Google will place display ads and video ads in notable places > User clicks the advert and returns to the site and completes a purchase.

A User pays a visit to your store > signs up to the email list > leaves. Email campaign sequence is triggered > user revisits your store and completes the purchase. 

Understanding remarketing is half the battle to making it work. 

Website and Emails

Your website should be easy to navigate, avoiding too much distraction in the form of gifs and clashing colours. Unless that is your brand, of course. It should also load fast which means you’ll need to optimise its performance. Including getting a good hosting provider with proven track record. This epic list should be a good place to start. Finally, it should be simple to sign up to your mailing list. Four key placements for signs ups are:

• Top of the website
• Footer
• A Pop-up when the user displayed behaviours that might signal that they are leaving the site, or within 1-2 minutes of browsing
• After they have made a purchase

Your emails are going to play a dominant role in encouraging buyers to come back to the site again, and enticing people to buy for the first time. After you have set up an initial email chain, you should do a test run. Hook up an automated email delivery system like MailChimp, ConvertKit or Sendinblue to your eCommerce website. These platforms will complete the sales funnel emails, sending from your specified email address. If you don’t have an email address that matches your store, then for the sake of branding and familiarity you should invest. For example, as a Shopify owner, you could use Shopify email hosting to give that a cleaner look. 

Use your emails to upsell. Recommend new products and give loyalty discounts. Keep them interested in you!

When you begin to set up your remarketing tags, make sure that you are clearly differentiating between the various pages. For example, if you sell, shoes, bags, scarves, and keychains you should have each of those categories in a different remarketing tag. 

So this would mean someone who checked out shoes, would be shown shoes in the display ad. Because that is what they are interested in. Likewise for bags, scarves and so on. Break shoppers up into the right remarketing tags, and you are much more likely to get a sale. This is called segmenting your campaign. By identifying your high-value pages, you will also be able to see who is most likely to purchase in the future, by going on past performances.

Get it in Sync

If your adverts aren’t in sync with your website look, it won’t feel familiar. People are less likely to make a commitment and click on it. Have a range of advert sizes tailored to both your website and your consumer. It needs to convince them to come back. 

Decide what matters to you here. Do you want people to complete the purchase on an already filled basket? Or are you looking to make the sale on something they have looked at? Both are completely possible. It is better to opt to market not to people who simply landed on your homepage, but rather that they displayed a buyer’s behaviour. That is how you’ll know where to spend your marketing money. 

Testing Testing 1,2,3…

This is vital to the success of any campaign. You need to be sure that everything is running smoothly each and every day. As well as that type of test, you need to run tests to see what works and where. Facebook might work better for a particular kind of buyer, but you might see a high spend come from google ad displays. Keep an eye on everything, keep track of the numbers and adjust your spend and placement accordingly. 

Cash Counting

Only invest money where you see money coming in. Your marketing money isn’t well spent on a single platform that hasn’t been able to show results. Many companies make the mistake of pushing more and more money into a non-converting platform, avoid this waste. It is not converting for a reason, and while you should run some tests on it, put the budget to good use elsewhere in your remarketing system. Remarketing isn’t a difficult thing to do. With all of the platforms designed to help you manage this with ease, it is a case of deciding what you want out of it. Plan ahead for special shopping days on the calendar. Like the January Sales, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and so on. Use your emails to drive traffic, and follow up any none sales with display ads.

Featured image by Fancy Crave on Pixabay