Market To Mondays – Part 1

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Welcome to the very first edition of our brand new weekly blog series, Market To Mondays. Each week, we will introduce you to a new group of people you should market to. We’ll tell you who they are, why you should market to them, and how you might get started.

Today’s Group = Website Visitors

People who visit your website are interested in what you do. They may have searched for you. They may have clicked on an ad. They may have found you in social media. Or they may be a past customer who is coming back for more.

Regardless of how they got there, the point is that they got there. And that means two things: they’re interested, and you’re at the top of their mind at that moment.

These two things make them an excellent group to market to.

But how?

First you market to your website visitors while they’re on your website. You do this by designing a great website, one that highlights key offers, answers all the questions someone has about your products, and employs effective calls to action.

But not everyone will purchase from you right away. So next, you market to them after they leave your site. You do this through retargeting. You can serve ads to your website visitors across the web and social media sites through networks and services like Google, AdRoll, and Retargeter. You can control how often they see your ad and how long you continue to serve them ads before stopping.

In addition to retargeting, you can use email to market to your website visitors. Create an opt-in list for people who are interested but not quite ready to buy. That way, they can sign up to keep in touch and you can continue to contact them after they’ve gone.

And maybe you already have an email marketing program. If someone visits your website and they’re already in your email list, you can send them an email soon after they visit while you’re still at the top of their mind. Studies show those “activity-based” emails have the best response rate.

Your website visitors are a great audience to market to because the hard part is already done. They already came to your website. Now you’re just convincing them to buy.

What group should we cover next? Now accepting submissions for audiences that we will cover in an upcoming “Market To Mondays” post. Submit your ideas via our contact page or in the comments section below.

Marketing Trends – Part 5

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Welcome to the latest installment of our weekly blog series, Marketing Trends. Each week, we will identify a key trend in the world of marketing. We’ll discuss the trend, why it’s important, and suggest ways that you can take advantage of this trend in your company.

Last week’s trend was Featuring Customers.

Today’s Trend = Remarketing

It’s a long-told fact that it costs less to keep a current customer than to acquire a new one. Marketers are taught that very early on in their professional careers.

Marketing acquisition costs are high. And that’s why remarketing is an important trend.

Remarketing means marketing to people who have already interacted with you in some way. You can remarket to existing or past customers. You can remarket to people who visited your website. You can remarket to people who downloaded your app or followed you on social media.

Essentially, you are taking someone you have already acquired and trying to sell to them. And new tools and technologies are making this easier than ever before, which is why this trend is catching on.

How can you take advantage?

You should test out a couple of different remarketing solutions to find out what works for you.

First, test out website retargeting. Depending on your website traffic, this can be a very cheap way to test out remarketing. All you have to do is sign up with a company like AdRoll or Retargeter, install a piece of code on your website, and create some ads. Then people who visit your site and do not purchase from you will see your ads across the web.

Next, you can test out the same thing, with Facebook. Using Facebook’s custom audiences tool, you can create a group of people on Facebook who have visited your website and serve ads directly to them.

You can also work with Google and their remarketing solutions, allowing you to target ads to people who have searched for terms relating to your business, or target ads to people who have previously seen your ads.

Finally, you should develop a remarketing program for your current customers. Make sure you have a way to get in touch with them, such as email. And reach out on a regular basis with exclusive offers and news about your products and your company. This will get your customers used to hearing from you and will allow you to sell to them in the future, creating a more loyal customer base.

What marketing trend should we cover next? Now accepting submissions for marketing trends that we will cover in an upcoming installment of this series. Submit your ideas via our contact page or in the comments section below.

How to Get Started with Google Remarketing

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Do we all know what retargeting is? If not, here is a quick summary of retargeting.

Google now offers their own version of retargeting, which they call remarketing. Google’s Remarketing program is built right into their AdWords platform, so that anyone who is already paying to advertise on Google can easily add remarketing. And it plugs right into their content network, which many advertisers are also already using. So setting it up is easy.

You can visit this page where Google explains how the remarketing program works and why you should try it. From there, you can click on “Try It” in the top right corner to get started.

Google will supply a pixel that you can add to your website. That pixel will track visitors to your site. Then, when those visitors leave your site and find themselves on another web page that shows Google Ads, they will see your ads, beckoning them back to buy from you.

It’s a great way to market directly to people who are already familiar with you and interested in what you’re offering. And since the whole program can be managed through Google Adwords, it’s easy to see how well the ads are performing.

My advice, even if you’re not using Google Adwords to target search results, give the remarketing program a try.

Are you using Google Remarketing? Let us know how its working for you in the comments below.

 

Personalization: How Much is Too Much?

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Technology has made it much easier to get specific with our marketing messages. We can personalize and customize at will. But where do we draw the line? At what point is it just plain creep?

Is it creepy when your name is in an email, ie. Dear Zach? Is it creepy when your name is in the subject line, ie. “Zach, a special offer for you”? Is it creepy when you see an ad for a product you almost bought on a different site?

Those are all versions of personalization that have been around now for some time (measuring in internet years). And along with letters or direct mail pieces that have your name and address, these things are more or less commonplace by now.

But what’s coming next? What are the cutting edge marketers doing?

Soon almost every piece of marketing or advertisement that you see will be customized. You will be seeing it for a reason. From TV commercials to billboards, the ad will know who you are, it will know whether or not you saw it, and what you did next.

Creepy? Or brilliant?

Why People Don’t Purchase from You

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The good people at Get Elastic shared the following infographic the other day:

 

Cart abandonment is a hot topic in the online marketing world, one that I’ve touched on here and here.

The infographic above shows us why people generally leave the shopping cart without completing the purchase, and suggest some things that you can do to keep them there.

But if they do leave, what a perfect time for site retargeting or email retargeting.