The Importance of a Remarketing Strategy

Average conversion rates for websites these days average around 1-2%.

That is, 1-2% of the visitors to your website will actually become a paying customer. That may seem low, but for most, this is enough to sustain their business.

Average ‘abandoned cart’ rates (someone starting but not completing the purchase/checkout process) are closer to 70-80% depending on the business and the product.

This creates a huge opportunity to get more leads and make more sales, without having to bring additional people to your website - a true low hanging fruit in the world of software subscription and eCommerce businesses.

From Baymard.com

“Now in all fairness to the e-commerce industry, a large portion of cart abandonments are simply a natural consequence of how users browse e-commerce sites – many users will be doing window shopping, price comparison, saving items for later, exploring gift options, etc. These are largely unavoidable cart and checkout abandonments.”

It may well not be that these potential customers didn’t like your product, many of these customers may have simply not been ready to buy at that time.

For a highly considered purchase, not only does that person need to think about that purchase, they may need to also involve others in their buying decision. This inevitably increases the time it takes for them to make a decision. And the longer they take… the less likely they are to buy.

From Watertight Marketing:

In a considered purchase both emotional and rational appeals need to be met. This is because the buying decision tends to be more important, for one of the following reasons:

• Expense: there is a high financial outlay involved or an ongoing commitment.

• Other people: the purchase affects more than one person.

• Status: a person’s sense of identity or reputation is affected by the purchase.

When these elements come together, the buyer has a lot to lose if they get their decision wrong. They are taking a risk. The job of your marketing is to reduce that risk.

Where remarketing comes in:

There are entire companies built on abandoned cart and remarketing, but you can do pretty much exactly the same things that these companies do directly through a (free) Google AdWords or Facebook Ads account.

Between Google and Facebook, you can reach almost everyone online. On Google, this could be via text ads, display ads, and YouTube video ads. On Facebook, you can reach people in their Facebook News Feed, on Instagram, and on the Facebook Audience network.

Here are a few ways to increase your conversions with remarketing:

1. Create custom remarketing audiences in Google Analytics:

Google Analytics linked to an AdWords account gives you powerful ways to remarket to your potential customers. The audiences you can create in GA can be customized to almost any behavior. For example:

• Users that visited certain pages on the site

• Users that spend a certain amount of time on the website

• Users that viewed a video on your YouTube channel

These audiences can then be imported into AdWords and used for remarketing campaigns using text, display, and YouTube video ads.

2. Install the Facebook pixel on your website:

If you haven’t done this already… do it now. It’s free and the sooner you set it up, the sooner you be collecting audience data for future campaign efforts.

Facebook gives a full walkthrough of that here.

This will allow you to setup custom audiences that you want to remarket to. Same as with Google Analytics audiences, these can be customized to user behavior on a website.

3. Tailor your message to that person with dynamic remarketing

For eCommerce businesses, and businesses that sell a variety of different products - you may want to tailor the message to the last product or products that they were viewing before they abandoned.

You have more than likely seen ‘dynamic remarketing’ ads before where the ad is customized to show the products you were last viewing or put in your shopping cart before you abandoned.

These ads work extremely well because of the relevancy. And there is a good chance that something caused you to leave that product page and not buy. Maybe you got distracted at home by your dog, or the BART train you were on arrived at your stop.

Once you see one of these ads, you would be highly likely to return.

Bonus - If you are a software product, make the bar as low as possible:

Consider removing a credit card requirement until after you have collected their name and email. This way, if they do abandon the checkout process you can follow up with them via email and remarketing.

Remember that it can take at least 7 interactions with a potential customer before they buy. And if you can do that via email and advertising - you are going to have a better chance of winning that person over.

To sum it up:

Remarketing is seriously powerful and cost-effective. If you want to start selling more products, and increase sign ups, you should take steps to implement a remarketing campaign as soon as possible.