Now that the holidays are right upon us, what are the added tips and tricks we can share with you? For this series week, we’re each revealing some of our favorite areas to focus a little extra energy, starting with a revamp of your remarketing ads.
Remarketing lists are targeted audiences based on the individuals who’ve previously visited your site. As users enter your site, browse, and eventually convert or exit, you can then create lists of those visitors to whom your display ads will then target down the road. There are traditional remarketing list strategies that work across seasons and traffic tides.
What changes in the holiday season? As you step into the heightened activity that are the holidays, to whom and when you’ll want to remarketing shifts. During the holidays, it’s often not as simple as “who can we remind about our site?” – instead it becomes more about the specific user type and the way in which you can draw them towards the conversion process.
How to figure it out : Who are you targeting? There are many ways to build a remarketing list, the main divisions of visitors are:
- Those who visited the site but never began the Shopping Cart process
- Those who visited, began building a shopping cart, but did not complete the purchase process
- Those who completed a purchase that may be enticed to return for additional shopping
To best create your remarketing lists, you must understand whom it is you are trying to attract and how you want to appeal to them. If a visitor did not complete a purchase, what was the reason? If they did make a purchase, how can you continue that relationship? The structure behind your remarketing lists must include a targeted user at a particular stage in his or her buying cycle. As you evaluate the users whom you are most interested in targeting, work through the various pages of your site to build a list of interactions.
An additional factor in assessing your remarketing ads is to revise the time frame associated with them. As your promotional messages change each week, customizing a list to focus on those who’ve been to your site since the sale began will give you greater sway. Using your remarketing lists in groupings of 3-5 days, 6-10 days, and also the full Thanksgiving to New Years window, allows you to be extra creative with the ads these users are seeing.
Remarketing Ad Copy:
The message in your remarketing ads can be customized to the varying audiences you target. As mentioned, you will use different language and tactics depending on the engagement you’ve seen from the spectrum of visitors.
A sample remarketing list for non-converters: This list consists of individuals who made it to the Confirmation Page of our shopping cart. They were just one clicks from finishing their purchase. What happened? The ad copy for this list is focused on the idea that the failure to complete the purchase was due to outside factors (such as a random interruption). It assumes the user is actually interested in completing that purchase and simply forgot to follow up.
Ad copy in this scenario may be as simple as:
The copy in this example highlights the urgency of the promotion, the exact savings available with the previously visited offer, and the reminder of an order that has yet to be completed.
Because remarketing lists can cover varying lengths, an option during the holidays is to highly target audiences for a short period of time. In this scenario, a 3 day remarketing ad could pertain specifically to those who’ve already visited the site, during the existing promotion, and yet did not complete a conversion.
Another remarketing list consists of the visitor who has already purchased an item from your site. This list would lend itself to complementary items or simply a return for another purchase. While this remarketing group is certainly able to be targeted all year long, the holiday season is the perfect time to suggest another purchase to go along with previously browsed items. Through text ads denoting common items or complementary items, targeted audiences are reminded of the appeal of a site from whom they’ve already been a customer. These ads can continue over a longer period of time than the 3-5 day “big push” ads of the previous remarketing group.
Holiday themed ad copy messages have the opportunity to highlight time sensitive messages and ideas:
- Urgency (deals ending soon, ships by Dec 23rd, etc.)
- Specific mention of savings or coupon codes
- Reminder to complete purchase
- Complementary or similar items (“stocking stuffers,” gift cards, socks for those shoes)
Although creating an account-wide list of ad copy is imperative to harnessing the waves that come with the holiday season, don’t neglect the special connection you have with your Remarketing lists!
As you make these adjustments for the coming weeks, be sure to check in for the next installments of holiday PPC management, including CRO, Facebook, and budgeting for the holidays.
