5 Remarketing Ad Strategies You Need to Start Using Today

There are an infinite number of ways you can slice and dice your visitor segments to get the best results for your remarketing efforts.

In this article though, I’m going to share with you 5 simple strategy structures you can use to remarket to your website visitors based on their behavior and stage in the buying cycle.

Specifically I’ll be showing you how to remarket the:

  • Casual visitor to increase awareness of your business
  • Active visitor who has viewed your product pages
  • Visitor who has abandoned their shopping cart
  • Existing customers you have by up-selling or cross-selling different products
  • Customers you had a few months after they’ve purchased

Why you need to use remarketing

If you have to see ads anyways, wouldn’t you rather see ads that are highly relevant and personalized to your interests? Chances are, you’d be way more likely to click on an ad that offered something you really wanted. Well, your customers feel the same way.

And the numbers don’t lie…

Remarketing ads are up to 10 times more likely to be clicked on than a regular paid display ad.

As you start to thoughtfully define your audience, it will be easier to tailor your ads and be competitive among the 1700 ads/month the average internet users sees.

Ready to start strategizing? Let’s go!

1.) Remarketing to the casual visitor to increase awareness of your business


A casual visitor is someone bounces from your website before navigating through your products or pricing page. It’s not that your products or services aren’t right for them, they just haven’t seen what you have to offer. You can use retargeting ads to increase awareness of your products, services and business in general to entice them to come back to your website and learn more.

You can showcase your offers (discounts, free-trials) and benefits (how your products will assist them) to entice bounced traffic to come back to your site and purchase.

Although these people are generally less engaged they’re still way more likely to click on your ad than someone who has never visited your website.

You can target all visitors that visit your homepage or some of your general pages, like the “about” page. Keep in mind that if they’re visiting targeted pages like your pricing or products page, you’re able to create more highly targeted ads (we’ll get into this later).

Since you don’t have much information about what they were looking for, your remarketing ads will be aimed at your main benefits or offer. They already (vaguely) know who you are but chances are they don’t have enough information to make a purchasing decision. Your remarketing ads need to entice them to come back and learn more (on a designated landing page).

Here are three ideas you can use to get the casual visitor to click your retargeting ad and be sent to a designated landing page:

  • State a benefit they’ll get from using your product
  • Share an offer like a discount or free-trial
  • Customer testimonial from a well-known brand or influencer

2.) Remarketing to the active visitor who has viewed your product pages


Visitors who browse multiple product pages but never actually make a purchase can be targeted by the products they’ve viewed. Your ads will be a mix of general product categories, “Shoes” or a specific products like the “brand of the shoe”.

For your remarketing ads, keep in mind that most remarketing ad clicks will happen within two weeks of the initial site visit (for B2C businesses). This means that the majority of your remarketing efforts should end within 14 days of a person visiting your site. Chances are if they haven’t purchased in this timeframe they’re probably not going to.

For the rest of this section I will show you how to set up your remarketing campaign for an active visitor who has visited some of your product pages.

You can create your remarketing segment, meaning the group of website visitors you want to retarget, based on the URL of each product category and/or individual product you have (though it’s way easier for you to just set one up by category). One example of a product category for a cosmetics store would be ‘Skincare’, and would, hypotetically, contain all of the products with the parent URL “https://mybeautystore.com/skincare/cleansers/” for example would also contain “ https://mybeautystore.com/skincare/bens-cleaning-scrub”.

3.) Remarketing to a visitor who has abandoned their shopping cart


Chances are, if you own an ecommerce store, there will be people who abandon their cart. In fact approximately 68% of people will abandon their carts.

These visitors are generally close to making a purchase but they’ve left to find more competitive pricing. Don’t let this person buy from another store without putting up a fight. If you reach out to them using retargeting ads it will help them remember you and (hopefully) complete the sale with you.

You can reach people who have put at least one item in their carts by creating a segment of customers who have visited your “Shopping Cart” page. Keep in mind that you also need to exclude people who’ve visited your shopping cart but have already converted (we’ll get into how to retarget these people later on).

You can create an audience segment for visitors who’ve added items to their cart but have abandoned their carts before completing their purchase.

Follow these steps to remarket to these visitors :

  • Create a segment based on the URL for your shopping cart page. Everyone who visits the shopping cart will go into the “shopping cart” segment.
  • Create a segment based on the URL for your order confirmation page. Everyone who makes a purchase will go into the “order confirmation” segment.
  • Next you’ll create a custom combination segment to include everyone who visits your shopping cart page but not your order confirmation page.

 

Targeting people who have visited your shopping cart page but have abandoned their cart before buying encourages them to come back and complete their purchase. When creating your creating ads you want to instill a sense of urgency to get them to come back and complete their purchase. You can use limited time offers that expire at a specific time to get them to come back and buy now.

Here are some urgent offers you can put on your retargeting ad:

  • Discount – 20% off your entire purchase! Offer ends at Midnight.
  • Free shipping – One day only! Free shipping on all orders.
  • Offer a free gift with purchase – Spend $50, get a free bag. Supplies limited, act fast!

 

4.) Remarket to existing customers by up-selling or cross-selling different products


When a visitor completes their purchase they become a customer. This person (so long as your product lived up to your promise) is going to be more likely to purchase again than a new visitor to your site. These people are incredibly valuable to your business and a great candidate to use remarketing ads on.

You can remarket to them with new products or services that will compliment the services or products they already have. If they bought a dress they might need a pair of shoes to go with it. Or, if they started off with your basic service, offer them a free-trial of an upgraded service.

By creating a segment of “converted customers,” you’ll be reaching a smaller group of your site visitors, but these customers will already be using your products and interested in your business.

You can customize your ads and sell additional products tailored to specific groups based on the products they’ve purchased or whether they’ve made a purchase, period.

You can set this up in the same way you did for shopping cart abandoners where now instead of focusing on the “shopping cart” segment you’ll focus on the “order confirmation” segment.

For example, if someone buys a television months down the road you can retarget them with a sound system, DVD player or a video game console.

5.) Remarketing to your customers a few months after they’ve purchased


If someone makes a large purchase, chances are they’re not going to make another large purchase for a while. The good news is, a customer will remain cookied (meaning they’ll keep being tracked) for up to 180 days. This means that you can continue to target them for up to 6 months.

Here’s how it would work:

You’re a B2B company that products that require a large initial investment. Someone has been looking at your product for a few months and over time they decide to purchase your product. Retargeting this person with ads immediately after they’ve made a purchase (especially such a large one) will probably annoy them. You can keep them in a segment and wait for a few months before showing them your retargeting ad. This way they’ll have had time to get value from your products and will be primed to take the next step.

Here’s how it will work:

  • Place a tracking pixel on your post-conversion page so that every time someone completes a purchase they’ll be placed into the “order confirmation” segment.
  • After they’ve been in your system 30-60-90 days, whichever timeframe you find most relevant based on the products they’ve purchased you can start showing them ads.

Conclusion


In order to have the most positive return on investment from your retargeting efforts you need to have a solid retargeting strategy. Knowing who your customers are what their buying habits are will help you produce more targeted and relevant ads.

I hope this article has given you some guidance in running your own retargeting ads based on where a customer is in the buying cycle. If you have any questions or comments please comment below.

For further reading:

– Written by Samantha Mykyte

When Samantha isn’t crushing content at Wishpond she performs with her burlesque troupe, casts spells in dungeons and dragons and enjoys baking and eating cookies.

wishpond

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *