Remarketing is the process of trying to re-engage people who visited your website without taking any action, through targeted ads that can refine your company’s message, and remind a prospect of what he or she is missing.

Let’s take a look at three principles you should always keep in mind to help ensure that your remarketing campaign is as effective as possible.

1. Segment the Audience You Want To Target

It’s nearly impossible for you to generate new leads by targeting all the visitors who abandoned your site before they performed some kind of CTA.

That’s why it’s vital that you segment your audience so that you can spend money on the ads targeting the groups you feel are most likely to re-engage with your business.

Some of ways you can segment your audience include:

• Visitors Who Abandoned a Shopping Cart – Maybe you want to only target people who actually placed items in a shopping cart or other type of holding area for purchase, but then left your site without buying the items. This type of targeting could work well for a business looking to increase sales in the next few weeks to meet a sales goal, because it’s clear that the visitors who abandoned the cart were ready to convert. You could send this audience a discount code or a two-for-one deal to help bring them back to complete their purchase.
• Every Website Visitor – You could also target every visitor who came to your site and left without performing any kind of CTA. This would be a larger group than the one above, but could also provide you with more leads to work with.
• Visitors To Specific Web Pages – If your landing page isn’t the page with largest conversions, you could target the page that converts the most. For example, if you sell watches, and your throwback product page is the big conversion page, you could send your ads exclusively to the group that visited that page. Effective ads include promos and specials that incentivize these prospects to take the next step toward converting.
• Email Prospects – You can target people who never opened the emails you sent, people who opened an email but didn’t clickthrough to your site, or people who arrived at your site through an email, but didn’t convert.

Segmenting your audience refines your remarketing, and according to marketing expert Susan Waldes, it is also an effective way to create audiences that are grouped by the likelihood to convert.

2. Don’t Forget About Video

Too many business owners target their ads to written content, and forget that they can also show personalized ads to their selected audiences on their YouTube channels and other video partner sites.

Video remarketing lets you place ads based on how your audience viewed your YouTube or partner site videos.

We know that video has fast become one of the most effective ways to engage audiences, and is looming bigger every year as a means of generating leads and driving traffic back to your site.

Other benefits of video remarketing include:

• Offers Segmented Audience Targeting – You can target your audience based on whether they viewed any videos you created from a channel, only specific videos they viewed, subscribers to your channel, viewers who visited a specific channel page, viewers who commented on a video, and viewers who shared a video, or added it to a playlist.
• Flexible Pricing – If you’re using Google AdWords, you can pay for your ads based on a cost-per-view (CPV) model in which you pay for views or interactions such as a visitor performing a CTA based on your ad.
• Boosts ROI – Video targeting can also improve your video ROI by targeting prospects that have already shown an interest in your company’s video content.

3. Make Your Ads Relevant To Your Audience

There’s no point in going to all the trouble to segment your audience, if you don’t actually send them ads that match where they are in the marketing funnel.

For example, if you were remarketing to an audience of people that filled a shopping cart on your site then abandoned your site, you wouldn’t send them an ad that invites them to download a whitepaper or case study.

Instead, you need to send them ads with discount offers that will encourage them to revisit your site and complete their purchase, now that that they are even more incentivized to buy.

The reverse is also true. If you’re targeting people who visited your landing page and left without going to another page or performing a CTA, sending an ad for a discount or coupon may not be effective, because that group is probably still at the ‘cold’ stage of the marketing funnel.

At this stage, ads that make small offers that help customers learn more about your products and services would be most effective.

You have to understand the buying stage of each group to which you are remarketing, and ensure that the ads you send make sense to your audience.

Remarketing Should Be Subtle and Non-Threatening

The worst thing you can do is to constantly pepper your audience with remarketing ads. Online marketing strategist Mona Elesseily said that it’s not a good idea to spray every nook and cranny of the Internet with your ads. This is basically what you do if you don’t tailor your targeting.

We’ve discussed the importance of audience segmentation, video targeting, and making sure your ads are relevant to the buying stage of your prospects. Done right, remarketing can generate a ton of qualified leads that are more likely to convert because they already have some experience with your business.

If you need more marketing advice, please contact us for a consultation.