Well, what a week. A very difficult and surreal week for most of us in some way shape or form.
As I write this it is about a week in the UK since the Coronavirus outbreak became something quite real.
The schools are now disbanded apart from Keyworkers children who will still have to attend.
Cinemas, Gyms and Theatres are shut.
Pubs are closed.
McDonald’s and Costa are even closed now.
We are also supposed to be socially distancing ourselves from each other, but based upon the scenes from yesterday in the UK, that message is yet to sink in for many of us.
And here we are with another blog, which in many ways is superfluous.
But what do we do? Are we meant to just stop and give up?
It’s not what we are going to do here at Pencil and Coffee.
We will continue doing our work, helping people and companies with their marketing needs. Perhaps now more than ever we have to listen to our existing and new customers, to help them, and ourselves, of course, to get through this period.
Its called working together, because we are all in the same boat.
So here we are, with another blog.
Today we are going to be looking at remarketing.
It won’t be a surprise, well I hope it’s not that you have a digital footprint, in the sense that you are moving around the digital nanosphere, and ever time you do so you are being followed, tracked if you will.
This happens in different ways, but the upshot is that you are being followed digitally.
In Marketing, we call this remarketing or retargeting.
So if someone has visited your website you can use this process to your advantage, and to the customers’ advantage (arguably) in a few different ways:
The customer can receive advertisements that are specific to them, they are based upon what they may have viewed previously. If you have nearly bought a product on one platform then don’t be surprised if you see an ad for that’s specific product pop up when you are online in some shape or form. This is because you have been tracked and remarketed with that product.
In other words, you can be retargeted at many different stages of your digital journey with a product. The seller is trying to engage with you and is engaging with you via what can be described as a sales funnel. More of that next week where I will discuss funnels.
The benefit for the business, of course, is a good return on their marketing investment, which will hopefully lead to sales for their product or brand
So to recap then Remarketing is when content and often advertisements are served to consumers who have already had a digital touch with you, which is because they have visited your website for example. You can essentially follow people around in a digital sense by popping back up with an advert when people are on their favourite platform.
It works because at some stage you are met with a pop up when visiting a digital experience. It will ask for your permission and agreement, which you never read and you just press ok or yes.
This agreement can be in regards to many things but often one of those things will be to do with cookies, which are files that store information.
You say yes and agree to the pop-up and here is when the game of remarketing begins. You have agreed to be targeted now, and you will be.
A good analogy in regards to remarketing would be something like the below:
My favourite hot drink is a mocha, so I go into a new coffee shop and I am given a mocha without even asking for it, it’s almost like I have a big neon sign above my head flashing ‘Mocha, Mocha, Mocha’.
How this works in a digital sense is that if I visit a website to look at something like a pc, the next time I go on Facebook or a news website I may see that very pc flashing up in front of me again – like witchcraft!
As I said last week people often don’t buy something on their first visit to a website. It takes time.
What may help to convert that visit into a sale is remarketing.
There are lots of different types of remarketing.
• Social media Remarketing – You can use Facebook or LinkedIn to serve ads to people who may have visited your site and shown an interest.
• Video Remarketing – You will see a video when on YouTube that is tailored towards you.
• Search remarketing – Adverts are shown at the top of search engine results when someone who has visited your site searches for services on google.
There are some key things to remember with remarketing.
• Always invest in sites that are giving you a good return. If social media remarketing is costing you less, giving you more conversions then this is where you should focus your investment. If it costs more to use google remarketing and the conversions are costing more than you can swallow or is sensible, then stop. Its common sense.
• Focus on your existing customers as well as new ones. Keep that email list of existing customers in good order. When you have a new product or something interesting to say then these are the people who will care most, and potentially buy from you.
• Use research to know when are the best times to pull the digital trigger. Not all hours of the day work well. Research and think about which hours of the day are best to target people in your world.
I hope that gives you a brief overview of Remarketing.
We will continue to work with you, perhaps now more than ever to ensure you are meeting your digital requirements, so get in touch for a friendly chat.
