Transcripts
1. Welcome to the class: Hi, my name is Nikki Parsons. I'm a marketing
director working on strategic and digital
marketing projects. Do you often hear about
retargeting and remarketing, but you're not sure
what the difference is for you've heard that we're
moving into a cookies world, and you want to understand how that will affect
the way you market. Join me in this
skill share quest to understand what
these concepts are, how they work, and
how they're changing. I'll also share some of the latest research
about retargeting, which might surprise you. So if your goal is to get a basic understanding of
retargeting and remarketing, then this short course
is perfect for you. I hope you'll join me.
Let's get started.
2. What are retargeting and remarketing?: What are remarketing
and re targeting? Remarketing and re targeting are terms which are often
used interchangeably, but there's actually
a key difference. Re targeting is a marketing
tactic which advertises something to someone again and usually through
a different medium. For example, a comment
tactic targets individuals who have previously interacted
with your website or app, but did not complete
a conversion. The purpose of re
targeting is to get these warm leads to come back and complete a
conversion action. AA, fill out a contact form, make a purchase on
an e commerce site, or whatever other event or activity your business
considers to be a conversion. Remarketing is about re
engaging existing customers. In this case, you might
advertise to customers based on their past purchase history or target a particular
customer segment. The lines between these
two terms are starting to blur simply because the
way we market is changing. It used to be that
e mail marketing was exclusively for
remarketing purposes, while website data was exclusively for re
targeting purposes. But with ad platforms
and digital tools constantly evolving and giving
marketers more options, we start to be able to
do e mail marketing and use web data for both
retargeting and remarketing. I'll often use the terms
interchangeably in this course as the lines are a little gray and otherwise it can
sound repetitive, but now you understand
the core difference.
3. How does retargeting work?: How does retargeting work? Traditionally,
retargeting has worked through the use of cookies. When a visitor
comes to your site, a cookie is placed
on their device. Later, when they go
elsewhere on the Internet, this cookie informs your
ad provider, for example, Google, to serve specific ads based on the pages the
person visited on your site. This helps you remind them about your business and also
lets you tailor the creative they see
specifically to someone with at least some
knowledge of your brand. Another way we can re target
is using remarketing lists, which allow you to customize a specific campaign,
for example, on Google or Linked in ads
to that particular audience. So you might upload a list of
your leads from your SM and set your ads to target those
specific people. Side note. You see here again
how the line blurs between retargeting
and remarketing, because you actually use a
remarketing list to re target. You can also use these
remarketing lists to actually remarket by uploading a
list of existing customers. Usually, you have to
have quite a large list of companies or contacts for these ad suppliers to accept your list for an
advertising campaign. It doesn't let you just target that one CEO you might be
going after for a sale. That kind of micro
targeting is not allowed. There are two main
variations of retargeting, I've already shared
the standard one, which is where ads are displayed to past visitors as
they go around the web. So for example, I was browsing books on
Amazon and later on, when I'm on a different website, I see ads suggesting I
buy something on Amazon. But there's also
dynamic re targeting. Where you take that a small step further and show or mention in your ad creatives the
specific products or services that the
individual was looking for. So in my example, not only am I now
seeing Amazon ads, But I'm being advertised
the specific books I was looking at in those
graphics in those ads. I'm being dynamically
retargeted. That's the main reason why retargeting is so
effective because the ads can be more engaging and personalized
to the user. Retargeting ads are successful because they help brand recall, they increase conversion rates, and ultimately give me as the marketer more ROI
on my advertising.
4. How is retargeting changing?: How re targeting is changing. Re targeting without
third party cookies has become increasingly relevant
due to privacy regulations, but also just changes in
consumer privacy preferences. This has a lot to do
with the difference in first party data versus
third party data. First party data is
collected by you, your organization,
from your leads, customers, and wider network. You can collect first party
data from your website, apps, social media, CRM, e mail, other direct customer
touchpoints. Typically users provide
their first party data through interactions
like form submissions, where consent can be
specifically requested. Third party data is
collected by a third party. A, AKA a person organization
that does not have a direct relationship with the person from whom
the data is collected. It's typically aggregated
from various sources and sold to businesses
for advertising purposes. Think you can already infer
from these definitions, which one is seen as more compliant with data
protection laws, and that's first party data. Because that data
is collected with a direct user interaction and typically with
specific consent, it poses fewer risks. However, third party data enables a business to
have a much wider reach. Until now, if you wanted to scale and reach new audiences, third party data remarketing has been a great way
to achieve that. Nevertheless, the current trend, especially as browsers
like Chrome are phasing out third party
cookies in the near future, so they say for some time, is towards first party data. This will also significantly change how marketers
run their campaigns, not just retargeting campaigns, but all campaigns, as
we'll need to find alternative tracking methods or use things like
contextual targeting. Contextual targeting
doesn't require user data, making it a privacy
friendly alternative. With contextual re targeting, add suppliers analyze the
content being viewed and display ads to repeat website visitors based
on this content. For example, if you
were browsing a website selling gourmet cookies and left without making a purchase, you'd then see an
advertisement for the same cookie company when reading a food blog
about cookies. But importantly, neither
the cookie company nor the ad provider knows
exactly who you are. But research shows that
better tracking of consumer behavior can
actually be a good thing for consumers because it
reduces the length of time when they receive
irrelevant targeting. Better tracking allows the
company or the ad supplier to realize earlier
that the consumer is not relevant to
the ad campaign, and therefore, the
targeting can stop earlier. Of course, AI and
machine learning are changing retargeting, just like they're changing
everything else these days. Both use algorithms
that can analyze large datasets to predict user behavior and better
optimize ad placements. We can also use AI to help create a huge number
of add assets, which can dynamically display
in the right copy, graphic, and format that will resonate most with our target audience. Ultimately, retargeting
is changing because of privacy concerns, changes in consumer behavior, and because of new technology.
5. What channels can we use for retargeting?: Let's talk more about the different ways we can re target. There's quite a few
tactics we can use, e mail marketing, SMS
or messaging apps, direct mail, display ads, app advertising,
social media ads, RLS A ads, and video ads. With e mail marketing, we use trigger based
e mails to re target users who have interacted with their website or
brand in general. To send them highly personalized
and well timed e mails. With direct mail, we can take the online
communications offline by sending physical adverts to users to create a
tangible touchpoint. With display ads
on platforms like the Google Display
Network or Ad role, we can serve ads to users as they browse
different websites. Even those we have
no connection with. App advertising is quite
similar and done through Google's AdMob or Facebook's
audience network. We can serve ads to users on mobile devices as they
interact with apps. Social media ads ensure we can market to engaged audiences, and we have a lots of
targeting options due to the rich demographic
and behavioral data that these platforms collect. Our LSA ads on platforms like Google Ads or Bing ads
allows us to reach users in the moment
they are actively searching for related
products and services. Adds on video platforms like YouTube or Video can
help to reinforce our marketing efforts to keep our products and
messaging top of mind. We can also use our
videos on Smart TVs to place adverts on streaming
platforms like Roku and Hulu. That allows us to
reach audiences in a more distraction free
environment when they are likely ready to watch content and therefore quite
highly engaged. Hopefully, talking through all these options
is triggering you to think about what channels could work
in your own business. Just remember,
remarketing shouldn't be done just in isolation. Typically, you'll use several of these channels and use them
together for maximum impact.
6. When is retargeting most effective?: When are retargeting
ads most effective? Re targeting ads are
obviously only effective when targeting users who are already familiar with your brand
and have shown interest, but not yet converted. When exactly, should you reach out to this
target audience? Once they've shown interest, should you leave a bit of
time before reaching out, or should you reach
out immediately? There have been several
recent studies on this topic, which I think are
interesting to share. The first study was published in the Journal of
Marketing Research. Researchers conducted
an experiment with Canadian Home Improvement
Retailer Build Direct, which spends millions of dollars every year on retargeting
for its website. They wanted to
study if there was an optimal temporal
distribution of advertising, AKA, find what time retargeting ads would
be most effective. For a bit of background, the retailer Bill direct
sells expensive products. The average order is $1,800, and only 0.4% of web
visitors make a purchase. If a web visitor does
return to the site, the average number
of days between the first and last
visit is 35 days. The company also faces
significant competition. For example, users who visit
the Bill Direct website have a 50% chance of visiting the Home Depot website
in that same month. Bill Direct launched
the campaign using a generic display ad. It had the logo,
value proposition, a call to action, and a visual. However, the ad only
promoted one of the possible product categories
used in the campaign, and no specific products were
advertised on the creative. Researchers found that the
effects of retargeting happened within a day of the
user leaving the website. Their research
showed that within the first week of advertising, the most effective
day was the first, and 50% of the total
effective advertising in the first week occurred
within the first two days. When considering
that this retailer sells high ticket items that normally require
significant time and multiple visits
for a lead to convert, this is particularly noteworthy. In addition, they saw
evidence of complementarity. What do I mean by that?
Essentially, that if users were exposed to
advertising in Week one, then the advertising in Week
two had a larger effect. That sounds pretty
self explanatory, but it was also interesting
to read that if the user had no exposure to ads
in the first week and only started receiving
ads in Week two, that their performance
was actually worse than if they received no
ads in both weeks. After learning this, you may think like most marketers today that we should retarget in the moment the customer
leaves our website. Indeed, websites
like booking.com deliver re targeting
notifications within minutes after
customers abandon their shopping carts and leave
without booking a hotel. But according to other research, that's not the best approach
and will actually backfire. In a later study published
in the Journal of Marketing, researchers conducted
an experiment with customers that
were randomized to receive a remarketing ad
via e mail and app channels across different hourly blocks after they abandon their cards. They also used a control group that received no
remarketing ads. Results showed as expected, that without remarketing ads, customer purchases in the control group
decayed over time. This is consistent with
other marketing literature. However, they found remarketing ads sent up to 1 hour
after cart abandonment, actually had a significantly
negative incremental impact on customer purchases. AKA, running re targeting ads at that time within the first
hour of cart abandonment, meant the brand was paying for worse results than
running no ads at all. The same researchers
then did a second study. This time retargeting via SMS
and found the same results. Interestingly, they also found that when there was
a higher number of products in the customer's cards or at higher average prices, that the results were
further amplified. So according to the research, according to the
latest research, the answer right now to the question when are
retargeting ads most effective would be anytime between 1 hour after
card abandonment, up until two days after. Just keep in mind that
this research focused on that segment of retargeting
for cart abandonment, and we also retarget Fort
Brown's abandonment to re engage customers or have them complete other
conversion events. So this answer is
still somewhat niche. There's a lot of other
research ongoing. Nevertheless, I find
it interesting to help us challenge
our assumptions and showcase why we need
to test things out and see what works best for
our own businesses.
7. Is dynamic retargeting always better?: Is dynamic retargeting
always better? You heard me talk about standard versus dynamic re targeting
a few lectures ago, you probably think the
more specific an ad you can show to lead the better. But did you know that if you're retargeting at an earlier
stage in the buyer's journey, that standard retargeting is actually going to
be more effective. Surprising. Research
published in the Journal of
Marketing research, focused on dynamic retargeting. To aim to discover A, whether it was actually
effective, and B, what information
marketers can use to decide when to deliver
these types of ads? They used data from
an online experiment, where leads who
viewed hotel options on a travel company's
website were then retargeted with display ads by the travel company when they
browsed their websites. On the other websites, leads viewed either
a random ad that contained an image of
the specific hotel they had previously browsed, plus three similar hotels, so a dynamic retargeting ad or a random generic brand ad for
the travel company itself, a standard retargeting ad. They found that the
generic retargeting ad performed better on average. The researchers
were also surprised and hypothesized that
the effectiveness of a retargeting ad depends
on how concretely its message matches how narrow
consumer preferences are. For example, initially, when consumers started
searching for hotels, they have only a broad
idea of what they want. They focus on higher level
goals like relaxing vacation. Over time, they narrow down
what they're looking for. For example, they decide they
want a hotel on the beach. The researchers proposed that leads with a focus on
the higher level goals, respond better to
advertising messages addressing that pain point. While consumers with more
narrowly construed preferences would respond better to
dynamically retargeted ads. They tried to test for this by observing if ad visited
a travel review site, thinking that if they visited product specific information on a review site like
trip advisor.com, that they would be thinking more narrowly about a
specific product. They found indeed that standard
retargeting was the most effective for consumers who hadn't yet visited a
travel review site. While dynamic retargeting
became relatively more effective only after
AED visited such a site. What should we do
with information like this when we're thinking about setting up retargeting ads? First, if we have limited
information about our audience, other than the fact
that they visited our website or social
media channels in general, we should just use
standard retargeting ads. As on average, they'll
be more effective. If we do have good data on
our leads or customers, then we can use that to
determine where they are in the buyer's journey to decide if dynamic retargeting
makes sense? For example, if we know
that a lead has visited our specific product page three times in the
last two days, this person probably has
pretty narrow preferences. If we know they visited many
different product pages, then they're probably
still browsing. But if all those product pages
are in the same category, then again, we have some
level of focused search. Ultimately, this research
shows why it's important to understand who
your target audience is and what they're looking for. Because your advertising
will be more effective. It's also good news
for us in marketing, because marketing
teams can create more general
advertising pieces with a lot less effort and
with the peace of mind that those will actually be more effective in certain cases.
8. Thanks for joining me: Thanks for joining me
in this short class for an introduction to
retargeting and remarketing. After this class, you
now have the answers to some of the most frequent
questions about these concepts. We discussed what the difference between retargeting
and remarketing is, how they work, how
they're changing, as well as when retargeting
is most effective. I feel confident that you now understand the
core fundamentals. So you're better
prepared when you decide to create your own
retargeting campaign. And the first thing
you should do when preparing any campaign is
to consider the goals. So if you're looking
for help with that, I suggest to check out
my skill share class, setting goals for
marketing campaigns. And if you enjoyed this course, I'd also suggest you follow
my skill share profile. That way you'll be notified when I release another
course in future. Lastly, you know, thanks
again so much for joining me. I'll see you next time.