While you’re comfortably scrolling through this blog, an android assassin has descended upon the year 1984 through undisclosed time travel means. Should you exist in that time timeline, this might be scary. But for ours – the Terminator’s mission failed.
It gave us a great movie instead and many lessons to be learned. Unlike the Terminator, you’re not so easily crushed.
While your marketing tactics may not yet produce the results your CMO is looking for, you’re resilient and adaptive. Which is why we’re going to analyze how you can say “I’ll be back” to your prospects, like the Terminator, and mean it. To answer that, we need to consider remarketing. Yes, remarketing.
Recapping the Buyer Journey
First, let’s do a quick and dirty overview of the buyer journey. We’ve got three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. These principles can be applied to both B2C and B2B marketing.
The buyer is hanging out in the awareness stage when they know they have a specific problem that needs to be solved. They move to the consideration stage when they define their problem and begin doing their own research on how to solve it. (This could include Google searches, competitor research, and more). The buyer transitions into the decision stage when they thoroughly evaluate and choose the right product or service to solve their initial problem.
So, where do remarketing and retargeting fall throughout the buyer journey?
What is Remarketing?
Remarketing is a digital marketing tactic—primarily email—that follows up with current or past customers to get them to continue doing business with you. A good example of remarketing in action is reaching out to a lead that left an item in their shopping cart. To encourage them to complete the purchase, you might engage in a remarketing strategy such as sending them an email reminding them of what’s in their cart. Remarketing normally occurs in the decision stage of the buyer journey. However, it can also extend past the initial three stages to the retention stage of the customer journey.
Whether you want someone to interact with your company, sign up to an email newsletter, or buy a product or service, remarketing allows you to do so in the most effective way possible. It combines a more targeted approach and several follow-up touchpoints that customers are more likely to engage with due to its personalization and their existing relationship with your company.
Remarketing should be a lead generation tool that every business has in its arsenal. It also opens up the possibility of rekindling a flame by using an incentivized email to grab a previous customer’s attention once again. One may argue that in today’s times, social media would probably have a one up on email marketing, but the numbers disagree.
As John Connor says, “This is the world now. Logged on, plugged in, all the time.” Around 92% of adults—AKA Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and the very early years of Gen Z (do you feel old yet?)—still use the internet version of texts. Something people in 1989 were still just learning to understand.
This makes it easy to re-engage those who’ve either visited your site or have entered their email in a promotional box or newsletter request. It might be easy to think that retargeting (we’ll get to that) is more effective, because email is “outdated.” However, email marketing is livelier than ever. Did you know that 99% of email users check their email every day? That’s a lot of potential eyes on your content.
Like a Cyborg and Terminator, There’s a Difference Between Remarketing and Retargeting
You may have heard these words being used interchangeably, but they’re not the same and marketers who know the difference may start giving you the side-eye if they hear you’re not using the terms correctly.
To explain the difference, let’s talk about retargeting. Retargeting is the process of using website cookies to track users across other platforms and provide them with targeted ads. Have you ever shopped online, then encountered an ad for that same store on Facebook a few hours later? You’ve been retargeted, and these efforts are slapping you in the face at the consideration stage.
Retargeting focuses on grabbing the attention of not only those who’ve shown interest in your brand, but also those who may have passively happened across your brand. Once these individuals leave your site, your company can use information from the cookies the potential customer—sometimes unknowingly, although it should be as clear as possible—agrees to curated targeted ads on other websites once they leave yours.
These strategic ad campaigns aren’t as personalized as an email, but they can also serve a similar purpose. They can pop up on a search engine, on another business’ website, or on social media channels to try and drive sales and keep you in the back of your potential customers’ minds.
Why Follow-Up Touchpoints Create Successful Remarketing and Retargeting Campaigns
The goal of this type of marketing is to ultimately increase ROI. Remarketing and retargeting are re-engaging, creating a second opportunity to convert a lead.
Around 78% of those who work in marketing see an increase in email engagement with remarketing campaigns. Retargeting campaigns increase prospect engagement rates by 400%. With results like that, you can see your cost per conversion drastically decrease.
I mean, remarketing and retargeting are pretty much saying, “Come with me if you want to live.”
Best Platforms to Focus Your Conversion Efforts
To implement successful remarketing campaigns, high-yield retargeting tactics, and digital marketing efforts that make your CRO your biggest fan, you first need to choose the proper channel.
Remarketing through Email
We’ve discussed how often people open their email, but do they really lay eyes on your remarketing efforts? Absolutely. Regular marketing emails only have a 21% open rate, while remarketing emails average 57%. That’s a huge leap. Worried that an abandoned cart won’t convert into a sale? Over 60% of abandoned carts are converted into sales via remarketing emails. This is because personalization improves engagement—a tailored email reminding someone about their purchase makes the consumer feel like their needs are recognized.
Retargeting PPC via Search Engines
It’s no secret that search engine ads convert. They anticipate buyer needs during the most crucial stage of a purchase: the consideration stage, where research occurs. 81% of shoppers research a product or brand online before making a purchase, so having your ads appear to a shopper that is already familiar with your brand strengthens their interest.
Retargeting PPC via Social Media
Much like search engine retargeting, focusing on previous engagement through social media—where over half the population practically lives—drastically increases your chances of quality lead generation. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the top dogs, and where you’ll likely spend most of your efforts. While privacy policies are making it harder and harder to retarget on social media, many users still want their efforts to be tracked, as this provides them with a more personalized online experience.
Where Did the Terminator Go Wrong?
Remarketing and retargeting are all about conversion. Successful remarketing campaigns and retargeting efforts can completely refresh your customer base. You want to be memorable, proactive, and savvy with the constantly changing tides of the customer journey.
The Terminator wanted to stop Sarah Connor, but his strategy ultimately failed. Firstly, nobody gets anywhere with a shotgun. Secondly, he failed to remarket effectively during his second chance at stopping her. Who knows, maybe he would have received a better result had he simply tried to sell the idea of not having a baby through a television commercial or whatever they used for marketing platforms in 1984. Would she have listened? Maybe!
The moral of the story: reach out to your customers through targeted ads and content, because it works and makes your sales teams fall in love with you—and never endorse Skynet.
